Friday, January 10, 2020

Updated Country Profile - São Tomé and Príncipe

Click here to access the updated Reaching the Nations country profile for São Tomé and Príncipe. The islands are inhabited by slightly more than 200,000 people and number among the few predominantly Christian nations in Africa without an official Church presence. There are good opportunities for growth given the demographics of the country and the Church's historical successes in less populous island nations such as Cabo Verde and the South Pacific. See below for the Future Prospects section of this article.

In a period of Church history with unprecedented opportunities to expand mission outreach in Africa, São Tomé and Príncipe remains a lesser priority due to the lack of local members, remote location, and small Portuguese-speaking population. Nevertheless, the islands present a valuable opportunity for growth given the Church’s historical successes in other island nations such as Cabo Verde and in the South Pacific. Mission and area Church leaders will likely need to conduct additional exploratory trips to assess conditions and search for isolated members. The assignment of even one senior missionary couple may provide an impetus toward establishing a permanent presence and the opening of the islands to missionary work.

13 comments:

brycen said...

With the upcoming creation of a mission in nearby Cameroon (which will likely be English- and French-speaking primarily) I hope they will at least get some service missionaries in Sao Tome and Principe. The language barrier may prevent that, however. As someone who learned Portuguese for my mission in Brazil, I am quite interested in the history of this small island country, which played a big role in the development of slavery, mainly in growing sugar and later coffee and cocoa. This history was discussed at some length in a very informative history book called 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C Mann. In particular, the diseases to which the African population were largely immune greatly shaped the way the culture there developed, and the Portuguese mostly stayed away to avoid dying (except for some Portuguese deportees who had no choice). They achieved independence in 1975, and the society today is one of the most democratic places in Africa; despite having to import 90% of its food the country seems to have a lot of freedom and a fairly good economy, so I am hopeful we'll see some developments there. The wikipedia article says the Seventh-Day Adventists have quite a few members there.

Eduardo said...

Definitely need good leadeship here. Presidente Martins? There are many awesome Brazilians and other Portuguese speakers...

John Pack Lambert said...

Well with Elder Soares of the 12 having served in the Africa Southeast Area Presidency I am sure it is on radar.

James G. Stokes said...

Elder Renlund also served in that presidency from August 2009-August 2014 (spending the last 3 years as the area president). In fact, for a couple of years, Elder Soares served as a counselor to Elder Renlund in that presidency. It's possible that at least one other apostle called in the last decade or so also served at some point in that area, but I'd have to go back and confirm that. To me, the fact that two current apostles not only served in that area, but did so together for a few years, is a clear indicator of the Church's familiarity therewith. And the area in question must be doing well, since it is going to be split this August.

Above and beyond that, however, I wanted to reiterate something I have previously noted. With the Durban South Africa Temple's dedication coming up in just over a month, and with President Nelson having cleared the queue of all but 4 temples originally announced by President Monson, among those 4 are 2 for the Africa Southeast Area as it is currently constituted: Harare Zimbabwe, and Nairobi Kenya. with Elder Andersen having told Zimbabwe's Vice President in November 2018 that the Church hoped to break ground for the Harare temple in the latter part of last year, hopefully something will happen in that respect soon. And since the construction contract has been awarded for the Nairobi temple, there could be action taken relatively soon on that temple as well. Depending on how close construction might be to beginning for either or both of those temples, I could easily see President Nelson announcing at least one new temple for the current Africa Southeast Area in April. Just some additional thoughts, for whatever they might be worth to all who read them.

John Pack Lambert said...

The big obstacle with Sao Tome and Principe may be its small population. 211,000 is small but still bigger than Tonga. We can easily find unreached areas in even other countries in Portuguese speaking Africa with far larger populations.

I am still wondering if the best move is to but Sao Tome under a Portuguese speaking mission far off or just make Brazaville or Yaonede even more multi-lingual.

Cory said...

I used to work custodial at the MTC and each night we took down the flags of the countries that have missionaries in them. Interestingly, they have the flag of Sao Tome and Principe in the rotation, despite the lack of missionaries or even a member presence in the nation. I'm pretty sure it was just a mistake when they were ordering the flags when the new buildings were built.

Just to plug my Facebook page again:

https://www.facebook.com/latterdaysaintchapels

Eduardo said...

Side comment about Zimbabwe: A member in northern Virginia a few months ago explained from the pulpit that he lost his expensive home back there, I believe in Harare, to the corrupt "Catholic priests" or "Church". He said it was worth 400,000 USD, I think.
I hope our members and Church writ large, and Zimbabweans in general can overcome all types of corruption.
God bless Brother Mubaira and others in his situation.

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that no one is really talking about the opportunity to assign Sao Tome and Principe to the mission in Cabo Verde. Yes, distance is an issue, but missions elsewhere cover similar geographic areas, and the total target population for the mission would still be under one million. My feeling is that the Cabo Verde Mission would by far be the most likely one to dedicate any sort of resources to Sao Tome and Principe in the next decade or so.

Downtownchrisbrown said...

That's a great point as there are direct flights connecting the islands

Rodrigo Jofre said...

Angola is very close to São Tomé and Príncipe and Equatorial Guinea. In fact, Equatorial Guinea is extremely close to São Tomé and Príncipe. They could both be assigned to the Luanda mission. Portuguese and Spanish are mutually intelligible for people who live in countries bordering the other language. At least this is the case in Spain with Portugal, and Brazil with Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, and Chile, although Chile doesn't actually border Brazil.

John Pack Lambert said...

Cape Verde is already an odd outlier in the Europe area. Even though some historic facts link Sao Tome and Cape Verde, I still find an assignment with Angola more likely. However Angola is still in the early building the Church phase, and there are areas with far more population than Sao Tome that remain unreached.

On the other hand the Church has seen some of its dramatic success in island nations, so I can see why moving into Sao Tome could be very easily justified.

Chris D. said...

Any comments about the recent auxiliary leaders' visit to Mexico City?

James G. Stokes said...

Chirs, I am not sure what you mean exactly by "any comments". First of all, with the changes announced in October, the term "auxiliary" has been retired. So if you are asking for comments about the Mexico Area visit made by the general officers in question, it was a wonderful report. And it was another in the series of examples demonstrating that coverage of the ministry of the female general officers of the Church has increased under President Nelson's leadership.

But above and beyond that, I appreciated the part of the report that mentioned the faithfulness of the members they visited in attending the temple and living the gospel in their day-to-day lives. According to reports I have received from one of my contacts, the Mexico City Mexico Temple is currently underutilized. But apparently, it was utilized enough to warrant the announcement of the temple in Puebla in October 2018, and the groundbreaking for that temple just over a year later (on November 30).

At the same time, based on what that same contact has told me, the next Mexico cities most likely to get a temple, and not necessarily in this same order, are Torreon, Durango, and Queretaro. Before the temple in Puebla was announced, that city, along with Queretaro, were the only ones on my list. But since the Puebla Temple was announced, between my own research and what that contact has told me, Torreon and Durango appear to be logical additions as far as prospective Mexican cities that could get a temple in the near future. How near any of those prospects might actually be may depend on how soon construction can get underway on the Puebla temple, and how well Church growth progresses in the three cities in question.

Aside from these thoughts, at one point, 1-2 years ago,as I was just getting into sharing my thoughts on future temple prospects, I fully believed that a second temple in Mexico City would be a feasible prospect. But since that time, further study on my part, combined with additional feedback, not just from that contact, but from others who have weighed in as well, have molded my opinion as far as future Mexican temple prospects.

Just one other observation here: I have no idea how soon the next Mexican temple might be announced. A lot of that will likely depend on how ambitious President Nelson is with his temple building plans, and on what the members of the Church in Mexico can continue to do to expand the Church therein. In terms of distance alone, there are likely at least a dozen locations where a temple could be built. Hopefully as time goes on, the growth (or lack of it) in Mexico will clue us in to the most likely places and timing wherein Mexico will get another temple. But I am personally not of the opinion that the visit of the general officers to Mexico City suggests anything as far as a second temple for that specific region. FWIW, those are my thoughts on this subject.