Saturday, July 29, 2017
New Era of LDS Expansion in West Africa
I recently received a report that the Church in West Africa will organize
its first branch in another previously unreached nation within the
Africa West Area in the immediate future. Although the source did not
disclose the country where this branch will be created, Guinea-Bissau
and Burkina Faso appear to be the most likely possibilities. The Church
within the last 18 months has created its first branches in Senegal (May
2016), Guinea (June 2017), and Mali (July 2017). The opening
of branches in these nations has been the greatest coordinated effort
of the Church to expand into previously unreached countries since the
Church organized official branches in the former Yugoslav republics
during the early 2010s (e.g. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia,
and Montenegro). The seven countries within the Africa West Area without
an official LDS presence currently include Burkina Faso, Chad, The
Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Niger, and Western Sahara.
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10 comments:
Fue de mucha bendicion la visita apostolica del Elder David Bednar.
This is interesting news, to be sure. Thanks for sharing it with us, Matt! For any who may be interested, I have been hard at work blogging and would welcome feedback on recent posts about potential future temple sites, progress with current temple construction, and the predictions I am preparing for General Conference. Check them out at the link below. Enjoy!
http://stokessoundsoff.blogspot.com
Alfredo said it was a great blessing for the apostolic visit from Elder Bednar. Where did Elder Bednar visit?
Alfredo, ¿de donde es? Que bien tenía una Gran visita.
He's probably referring to Elder Bednar's visit to West Africa.
http://www.mormonnewsroom.com.gh/articles/elder-david-a-bednar-first-latter-day-saint-apostle-to-visit-three-african-countries
At Southfield Ward today we had an investigator from Cameroon. I gave a ride home to an African-American brother who used to live in Detroit but now lives in Southfield. He is staying with his father temporarily but seeking empliymrnt. It is gard because 22 years ago his wife left him and left him with two severly handicaped children. He was unable to keep a job over the summer because he had to care for his children. One died a year ago at age 24 and the other died a year before that. I hope he finds a job.
Also in Southfueld Ward there is another brother whose daughter just arrived from Ghana. In Sunday school our teacher wazva native of Singapore who just came here after getting an engineering degree at BYU.
I also went to Palmer Park branch. There was a sister there who is from Nigeria. Her mom who is a native of Nigeria wasvalso present.
One of the missionaries currently serving in the Detroit Mission is an Elder O'Brian from Samoa. I asked him how hd got such an Irish last nsme and he does not know.
That might be from the American area, Billiongraves also has an old US missionaries cemetery on the Samoa side documented that has a fair number of English surnames among the burials there
On my mission I knew a man feom Samoa whose Irish sailor grandfather had settled down in Samoa and married a local woman. The O'Brien name could come from direct migration from Ireland.
I don't know anything about the Irish situation in Samoa. However, Chile has a region with an Irish name, O'Higgins. It is named after an important independence leader who was the son of an Irishman, although he himself was born in Chile. According to the Wikipedia article, Bernardo O'Higgins also had a national park and a village in Chile named for him, and the main street in Santiago is also named after him. (I also found his father's article fascinating- he apparently moved to Spain in the 1750's and was in South America by 1756, spending the rest of his life there as a colonial official and officer in the Spanish military, with more than 30 of those years living in Chile. The Chilean city of Vallenar, which currently has a district headquartered there, was named after his birthplace in Ireland, Ballynary.)
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