Sunday, March 14, 2021

National Outreach Expansion Underway in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

There are reports that many additional cities will have an official Latter-day Saint presence established in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). The Church in the DR Congo operates official branches in 21 cities in this major African country of 105 million people. Recent reports indicate that as many as six additional cities will have branches organized in the immediate future, including:

  • Bukavu
  • Goma
  • Kabinda
  • Kikwit
  • Luiza
  • Tshikapa

The Church in the DR Congo has taken an extremely cautious approach to expanding outreach given concerns with low levels of economic development, transportation challenges, political instability, and illiteracy. However, the Church in the DR Congo boasts some of its greatest growth in regards to high member activity and convert retention rates. For example, it has been historically common for attendance at stake or district conferences to meet or exceed the total number of members on Church records for the specific stake or district. The creation of the new Africa Central Area has appeared to have been an important catalyst in these developments. See below for a map of the status of the Church in each of the major cities in the DR Congo.

10 comments:

Johnathan Reese Whiting said...

If Chris happens to be reading this...

Did you happen to make a new Temple Bracket Dropbox File to share for this upcoming April Conference. I always look forward to that. :)

Normally, I would have made one myself, but we've been pretty busy planning a move.

Eduardo said...

Great to see. A major country. French will continue to be a major language of the restoration of all things.

Jim Anderson said...

They are not teaching a whole lot in Lingala due to the success in French, that language is the other major language spoken along with French, the reason being is that the growth is so hot. At a future point they will but that point is not known yet.

What are the sizes of these cities? If they are larger, they may have a temple either in progress or announced within ten years if the growth patterns seen with Kinshasa hold true. The big challenge is getting meetinghouses and other needed basics built now, and dealing with other physical things like the power supply, they put solar on a roof of one, nearly blew the new fuse box they had turned on for the first time. That whole city had lost power for more than a month once.

Leadership meetings at times have to focus on how to use a computer--the basics of which we all know here but there many have never seen one, needed to run the branch finances and membership things and that which we know of in LCR. Internet connectivity is poor to nonexistent, but soon Starlink may change all that, and one of the big things other than the clerk's office is going to be family history, that will be a huge thing there. Heard a general authority seventy went to a stake building and saw the family history center, the room had rows of boxes filled with the paper 'My Family' booklet, waiting to be keyed in once a better connection is acquired, Starlink will be at least 50mbps, with some already getting 200mbps plus, and Africa will be covered by the end of this year, SpaceX has to do some work to get ISPs locally first before anything can be made available there.

Imagine walking from Provo to about Bountiful for a stake conference, that is what they did in the southeast of that country in about 2014, the stake had 85 percent attendance that time.

John Pack Lambert said...

In his biography of President Dallin H. Oaks Richard E. Turley quotes President Oaks as expressing the view that we should have multiple stakes in a capitol before we establish branches all across the country.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo not only has multiple stakes in the capital (over 10 I believe) but also a temple there. So moving to spread branches all over the country now is a wise move, or at least in more of the country. The splitting of the Kinshasa Mission in two also is a big help. At the FAIR conference a few years back a recently returned mission president from Kinshsa made a lot of remarks on the Church in the DR Congo.

Having a general authority from Congo also probably helps.



Keep in mind many of the congregations in DR Congo use Swahili and not French. A few may also use Lingala and I know the Church has been translating scripture into Luba. As we spread outside of the main cities we may need to use languages other than French even more.

John Pack Lambert said...

On further exploration, I believe Goma and Bukavu are in the DR Congo Lumbumbashi Mission. Bukavu has 1 million people, and is right on the border with Rwanda. War has plagued this general area heavily for the last 30 years, although it may finally be dieing down.

Bukavu is the main city of the Bushi region which has 7-12 million inhabitants. The language of Bukuvu is the Shi language. However it is also in the very broad region of the DR Congo where Swahili is the effective lingua franca. Bushi is relatively similar to South Kivu Province, which has Bukuvu as its capital.

If you look at article on Wikipedia [[Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo]] you will see that there are four broad language areas. The Lumbumbashi mission closely corresponds to the Swahili zone, although that zone goes further north. The Mbaye-Mabuji mission (I think I buthcered the spelling) covers roughly the Tshilubu zone. Kinshasa is in the Lingala zone, a language created to be a lingua franca in colonial times. The DR Congo Kinshasa East Mission covers most of the rest of that zone. The DR Congo West Mission covers a good portion of the Kikongo zone, which also goes into Angola. Except Kilwit is much west of Kinshsa.

On temples, I think initially there may be one temple cited to serve Rwanda, Burundi, Bukavu and Goma.

John Pack Lambert said...

On further exploration, I believe Goma and Bukavu are in the DR Congo Lumbumbashi Mission. Bukavu has 1 million people, and is right on the border with Rwanda. War has plagued this general area heavily for the last 30 years, although it may finally be dieing down.

Bukavu is the main city of the Bushi region which has 7-12 million inhabitants. The language of Bukuvu is the Shi language. However it is also in the very broad region of the DR Congo where Swahili is the effective lingua franca. Bushi is relatively similar to South Kivu Province, which has Bukuvu as its capital.

If you look at article on Wikipedia [[Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo]] you will see that there are four broad language areas. The Lumbumbashi mission closely corresponds to the Swahili zone, although that zone goes further north. The Mbaye-Mabuji mission (I think I buthcered the spelling) covers roughly the Tshilubu zone. Kinshasa is in the Lingala zone, a language created to be a lingua franca in colonial times. The DR Congo Kinshasa East Mission covers most of the rest of that zone. The DR Congo West Mission covers a good portion of the Kikongo zone, which also goes into Angola. Except Kilwit is much west of Kinshsa.

On temples, I think initially there may be one temple cited to serve Rwanda, Burundi, Bukavu and Goma.

John Pack Lambert said...

Only about 40% or maybe a less of the population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has any funtionality in French. This is one of the reason that at least around Lumbumbashi some of the units meet in the Swahili language.

John Pack Lambert said...

Kabinda is a city of about 250,000 people. It is the capital of the Lomami Province that has over 2 million people. Lomami province was formed in 2015. It looks to be closer to Mabuji Mayi than Kitanga, and may be in the general zone where TshiLubu is the lingua franca. The overall area was originally Kasai province, than split into two provinces, and then into more. I am guessing this is under the Mabuji Mayi mission. That is the city where Elder Andersen spoke of it getting a temple at some point on a visit there maybe 7 years ago.

John Pack Lambert said...

Kikwit has roghly 500,000 people. It is home to the Univeristy of Kikwit which gives instruction in French. This is the furthest east major city in the Kikongo zone. Kikwit is the largest city in the province of Kwilu which has about 5 and a half million inhabitants. The current Kwilu province was formed by dismembering Bandundu Province in 2015, but Kwilu Province previously existsted in 1962-1965.

Kikwit is closely associated with the dancing of the Pende. There are according to Wikipedia about 250,000 Pende, but that figure may be somewhat outadated. There is less information on languages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo than one would like. If one looks at the article on Kikongo one will find Kwilu as one of the places listed with large numbers of speakers. The same is true of Kinshasa, but evidently Lingala is more common in that city.

On the subject of Kikong, it has about 7 million native speakers and 2 million more speak it as a second language.

As far as I can tell the Book of Mormon is avaialable in Lingala but not in Kikongo. There are significant numbers of speakers of Kikongo in Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, although it is not the dominant language in any of these countries. Kikongo was the first Bantu language to be written in the Latin alphabet, but there is not a standard orthography for the language at present.

John Pack Lambert said...

I cannot find anything on the city of Luiza. In the case of Tshikapa it is in Kananga province, only 40 miles from the Angolan border. It has an airport but no paved roads. As of 2016 its urban area had an estimated population of just over 700,000 people.