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Matt Heiss was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He served as a missionary in the Germany Dusseldorf Mission
from 1975 to 1978.
He met and married his wife, Becky, in 1980
while attending Brigham Young University, and Becky's with us
tonight.
You want to just stand in and wave?
Thank you.
You deserve an extra measure of gratitude,
because it's not easy being married
to a historian, especially one who
travels as much as Matt has.
They're the parents of two children.
Matt graduated from BYU in 1984, and then
went on to attend graduate school
at the University of Virginia, where he graduated in 1986.
He began working for the Historical Department
of the Church.
It's now called the Church History Department,
but he began here in 1987.
The focus of his work has been on the international Church,
specifically central and eastern Europe and Africa.
Presently, he's the area manager in the global support
and acquisitions division.
And as the area manager, he has one third
of the world as his responsibility.
He strongly believes that that is the best third of the world,
and I'm sure he'll mention that today.
I don't believe that there's anybody
more passionate or dedicated about the history of the Church
than Matt Heiss.
It's been a privilege to work with him
for these past several years, and it will be our privilege
to hear from him tonight.
Matt?
Thank you for being here tonight.
Jacob chapter 5 is not my favorite chapter
in the Book of Mormon.
It's very long.
I don't relate to ancient gardening practices.
There's a lot of repetition--people going back
and forth and back and forth.
I find it somewhat tedious to plow through,
and I don't find it personally relevant
until I need to give a presentation on Church history,
and then all of a sudden I find it incredibly relevant.
I'm going to use Jacob 5 as a framework for what
I want to talk about tonight.
In Jacob 5 we read about an olive tree that
represents the House of Israel.
The master of the garden transplants
branches of his prized olive tree
into several parts of his vineyard.
When I read this passage, I think
about the Church in Africa.
"And these branches will take place
in the nethermost part of my vineyard, withersoever I will.
And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard
went his way, and hid the natural branches
of the tame olive tree in the nethermost parts
of the vineyard, some in one and some in another,
according to his will and pleasure.
And it came to pass that the servant said unto
his master, how comest thou hither
to plant this tree or this branch of the tree?
For behold, it was the poorest spot
in the land of thy vineyard."
Often when we think of Africa as a whole,
we think of it as the poorest continent in the world.
It has a legacy of colonial abuse, pillaging, and neglect.
It's a place of war, civil war, tribal warfare, terrorism,
and genocide.
I looked up life expectancy statistics
and found that 42 of the 50 nations with the lowest life
expectancy on Earth are in Africa.
According to researchers at the Wall Street Journal,
18 of the 20 poorest nations on Earth are in Africa.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo
is listed as the poorest nation on Earth in terms of GDP,
and it is interesting that DR Congo
is one of the places where the Church is growing fastest.
Today there are approximately 38,000
Latter-day Saints in DR Congo.
The country has two missions and 12 stakes,
and the Church has announced a temple for Kinshasa,
the capital of DR Congo.
Even one of the most prosperous nations
on the African continent, South Africa,
is still plagued by the legacy of apartheid, which wasn't
dismantled until the 1990s.
I asked my coworker in South Africa--a native South
African--about this, and he replied,
"Societal issues today are still being blamed on the apartheid
laws of yesteryear.
Some correctly, because the actions
and mentality of apartheid went deep and wide,
while others, due to a lack of action in the people's sphere,
are looking for someone or something to blame.
So apartheid becomes a convenient scapegoat.
Yet we must not underestimate its legacy still today.
With all that being said, apartheid legacies
still plague the country."
Africa is also hit with its own fair share
of periodic natural disasters, such as famines, droughts,
and floods.
And because of its lack of infrastructure,
these localized disasters have huge consequences.
The list goes on, but I think you get the point
that Africa seems to be the poorest place in the Lord's
vineyard.
Africa has been called the dark continent.
This may be rooted in racism or in our ignorance of the place.
And yet despite all this darkness,
there is amazing light resulting from the establishment
of the Church and from Church members who
are striving to make and keep sacred covenants with the Lord.
I'd like to share a few stories about the Lord's dealings
with His children in Africa and about the powerful influence
of the gospel in giving hope and healing lives.
And it is my hope that your faith will be increased
and that your resolve to make and keep covenants
will be strengthened.
I'd like to focus on three different areas.
First, God's love for all his children,
which is manifest by his preparing them for the gospel.
I've called this Patterns of Preparation.
Second, being in the world but not of the world--that is
overcoming in worldly traditions.
And I want to focus primarily on the treatment of women,
which will ultimately, like leaven,
raise a society and a people.
And third, I wasn't sure what to call the last category,
so I simply titled it a few of my favorite stories.
But before that, a little history lesson.
Most of what I want to talk about tonight
is based on work that I've done in Africa or work
that I've helped others do over the past 25 years.
A lot of my focus has been to collect stories
of Church members who are the living
pioneers in their nations, but the history
of the Church in Africa didn't start with the 1978 revelation
on the priesthood.
Consider this.
The first LDS missionaries to set foot on African soil
were called by Brigham Young in August of 1852.
These missionaries, William Walker, Jesse Haven,
and Leonard Smith, arrived in Cape Town
in what is today South Africa in April 1853
after traveling seven months to reach their mission field.
By the time they left Africa at the end of 1855,
there are 176 converts.
Six branches of the Church had been organized.
And I know that this is hard to read,
but these are the first two pages of the earliest Church
record from South Africa.
It contains minutes documenting the organization of the Church
on the African continent, dated August 1853.
The mission they established closed in 1865
but reopened again in 1903.
By 1917, there were 339 members of the Church in South Africa.
Missionaries were withdrawn from South Africa
during both world wars but returned
after hostilities ceased.
Missionaries began to work in southern Rhodesia--now
Zimbabwe--in 1930, and in Northern Rhodesia--now
Zambia--in 1951.
In fact, we even had a Latter-day Saint,
Gail Phillips, who was crowned Miss Lusaka in the capital
of Northern Rhodesia in 1960.
On the 22nd of March, 1970, the first stake
was formed in Africa.
It was called the Transvaal Stake
and was headquartered in Johannesburg.
But this time, there were over 6,000 members of the Church.
And the first temple on the African continent
was dedicated in August of 1985 by Gordon B. Hinckley.
So based on what I've learned about the Church in Africa
prior to the 1978 revelation on the priesthood,
I most certainly honor the early missionaries to Africa,
as well as the white South Africans
who joined the Church and who have
kept the light of the gospel burning in Africa.
So that's a little bit of background for what
I want to talk about tonight.
Now I want to focus on these patterns of preparation.
The stories of how the Church got started
in Ghana and Nigeria have been published and told
for many years.
In fact, there have been a couple
of videos made about Joseph William Billy Johnson.
If you've seen those productions,
you'll recall that Johnson, who was living in Ghana
came across a copy of the Book of Mormon,
read it, was converted, and spent 14 years preaching
Mormonism to his best ability.
He organized small branches, and these resourceful would-be
Latter-day Saints in Ghana went so far as
to print their own baptismal certificates.
And remember that none of them had the authority
or the priesthood to baptize.
At the bottom of this certificate,
they printed the Articles of Faith.
I've always enjoyed how they slightly altered
the 10th article of faith.
And let me read the first part of their version, which
is right here.
We believe in the literal gathering of Israel
and the restoration of the 10 tribes,
that Zion will be built upon this--fill
in the blank--continent.
I think they might have wanted to put Africa in there,
but they didn't.
They just took America out.
Johnson had a meeting house in Cape Coast which
contained a large statue of Moroni,
patterned after the cover of the Book of Mormon.
He led his converts the best he knew how,
and when the missionaries finally arrived in 1978,
he was the second person baptized.
A similar thing happened in rural Eastern Nigeria.
Anthony Obinna had dreams and visions
that led him to write Church headquarters
and ask for information about the Church
before the revelation on the priesthood.
Upon receiving basic information,
he proceeded to preach Mormonism to the best of his ability
and to organize congregations of people
who believed what he taught.
He and his small congregation did the best
they could without the priesthood
or input from missionaries.
And it's hard to read, but the little girl in front holding
the sign--the sign says LDS 1971.
And each of the children is holding an Improvement Era,
and you can see the one little boy--you can see Joseph
Fielding Smith on the cover of that magazine.
Obinna was not alone in establishing an organization
patterned after the LDS Church.
There were many such congregations
scattered across Nigeria.
Some of the leaders of these wannabe congregations
even went so far as to register the Church with the government.
And this is a photocopy of one such registration paper.
And note the date at the bottom--1964.
That's 14 years before the revelation on the priesthood.
In 1978, one of the first missionary couples, the Mabeys
and the Cannons arrived in West Africa.
They met with these would-be Latter-day Saints,
taught them the discussions, and baptized them by the hundreds.
They were a people prepared.
So the pattern of preparation looks something like this.
A faithful person stumbles across information
or has led to information about the Church.
This person is converted.
He teaches his family and friends or anyone
willing to listen.
Those people are converted, and they continue
doing member missionary work.
This person then writes the Church headquarters
and asks for missionaries, literature, direction,
and support.
Small groups are established.
The people do their best to wait for the arrival
of the missionaries, and when the missionaries do arrive,
these patient people are quickly taught
and they are baptized by the tens and even hundreds.
We often recount the great missionary success
that was experienced by the likes of Wilfred Woodruff
and Brigham Young in England in the 19th century.
The same thing happened in West Africa in 1978, 1979.
This slide and the next one were still shots made by Randall
Mabey--one of those first missionaries--who made home
movies during his historic mission.
And these give you some sense of what the Mabeys and the Cannons
accomplished in establishing the Church in West Africa.
It should also be noted that sometimes a few
of these first forerunners fall away
from the Church for a variety of reasons.
Nevertheless, the work that they did
paved the way for the establishment of the Church
in Africa.
I want to tell you about how the Church got
started in Mozambique, which, in a way,
follows the same pattern.
This story, however, testifies to me
that the Lord is the master of history,
and that He can, to quote Gordon B. Hinckley,
"turn the hand and the work of the adversary to the good
and the blessing of many of God's children."
How the Church got started in Mozambique
makes me also believe that maybe the Lord has
a divine sense of irony or at least a sense of humor.
But first, a little bit of historical context.
Mozambique was a Portuguese colony until 1975,
when it won its independence.
It soon adopted a Marxist Leninist form of socialism
and began to associate closely with the Soviet Union.
A civil war began soon after Independence
and lasted until 1992.
It was a proxy war--East versus West in the Cold War era.
It's estimated that a million people died
from either the fighting or from starvation and malnutrition
resulting from the war.
In 1992, a cease-fire agreement was signed,
and the war was over.
Also in 1992, Church leaders traveled to Mozambique
and found that there were small groups of people worshipping
as Latter-day Saints.
In one remote village, they had even
built their own meetinghouse.
The would-be Latter-day Saints in Beira, Mozambique,
even created a stamp that they used
for their official documents, and here's a photo of what
it looks like on paper.
Notice the cross in the middle.
How did this would-be Latter-day Saints get there?
We have the Communists to thank for that.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s,
after Mozambique became an independent nation,
it began to send young students to eastern block nations
and to Cuba for training.
This training consisted of opportunities
for vocational and university education.
An underlying desire was to educate and indoctrinate
a generation of loyal communists.
In 1982, 13-year-old Chico Mapenda
left his hometown of Beira, Mozambique,
for the German Democratic Republic,
commonly called East Germany, where
he finished his basic education and received technical training
as a welder.
In 1989, after moving to a new city in northern East Germany,
while looking for a branch of his church,
Chico noticed a sign advertising a video presentation
about the Book of Mormon.
He went in to see the movies, but the missionaries
decided to teach an English lesson instead.
Chico stayed for the free lesson,
the missionaries gave him a Portuguese Book of Mormon,
and he began to read it.
In an interview, he said: "I decided to start reading it,
but it left me really confused.
I was a religious person, but I knew only personages
from the Bible.
But I kept reading it, and the missionaries took my address.
I decided to keep reading the book,
and then I felt the power of God telling me
that the book contained the word of God.
From then on, I started to have a testimony."
That was 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell.
On the 14th of January, 1990, Chico was baptized.
Shortly after Chico's baptism, Germany was reunited.
Many of the foreigners in East Germany returned
to their homelands, as the former German Democratic
Republic began to transition to democracy
and their socialist support dried up.
Chico went back to Mozambique.
Soon after arriving in his homeland,
Chico began to share his new religion
with his family and friends.
His brother Gimo--Gimo wears the blue shirt and Chico has
the white shirt--was working as a minister in a Protestant
congregation, and he was one of Chico's earliest followers.
The Mapenda brothers began to organize
small groups of unbaptized Latter-day Saints.
They served as traveling ministers
for these congregations.
Chico had the Aaronic Priesthood,
and Gimo hadn't even been baptized.
In November 1991, the Elder Earl C. Tingey,
a member of the Africa Area Presidency,
visited Mozambique and reported that Chico
was leading and teaching groups of up to 150 people.
Five years later--this is before missionaries arrived--Elder
James O. Mason, also a member of the Africa Area Presidency,
visited Beira and organized the first official LDS group.
He authorized the first baptisms.
Gimo Mapenda was finally baptized.
Missionaries living in Zimbabwe were given the responsibility
to make periodic trips into Mozambique in order
to care for these new converts, and finally,
on the 30th of January 1999, nine years
after Chico Mapenda was baptized,
the Beira branch was officially organized.
When I was there in May 2000, the first four full-time elders
and first missionary couple were still in the country.
The young missionaries had just returned
from that remote village where Chico's father-in-law lived.
Chico had taught his father-in-law, Francisco Dique
Sousa, who returned to his village
and formed six or seven congregations
of unbaptized Latter-day Saints who were waiting and praying
for the missionaries.
In four days, the missionaries taught 69 first discussions
when they went up to this village.
People waited all day outside of the huts
where the missionaries were teaching, just
to hear the first discussion.
Shortly after I got back from that trip,
I got a letter from one of the missionaries,
who said that they had returned to that village,
and in 3 1/2 days had taught 21 more discussions.
Many in this remote village were eventually baptized.
Today, after only 15 years since the first missionaries arrived,
there are approximately 7,000 Latter-day Saints
in Mozambique.
The country has its own mission, and just two months ago,
the first stake in Mozambique was organized.
A great work is going forth in Mozambique,
and how did it all get started?
At the invitation of a communist government.
I find it wonderfully ironic that Chico Mapenda was supposed
to enter the communist world to become a dyed-in-the-wool
socialist, but instead he became a Latter-day Saint and the man
who, in many ways, is responsible
for the establishment of the Church in Mozambique.
The communist leaders in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
tried to suppress religion.
The Soviets blew up ancient Orthodox Church buildings
or turned them into barns or swimming pools.
Priests were sent to Siberia or simply shot.
Faithful people in Eastern Europe
were often persecuted, including the handful
of Latter-day Saints who lived behind the Berlin Wall
in East Germany.
But this did not stop the work of the Lord from progressing,
and from the era of oppression in Eastern Europe
arose the beginnings of the Church in Mozambique.
Maybe there's a lesson in this for all of us.
Sometimes the strange situations and seemingly impossible events
in our lives turn out to be great blessings if we
have the eyes of faith to see.
I think of these lines from one of our hymns,
"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.
His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour.
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower."
In my mind, this story and so many other similar stories
bear witness to the scripture found in Jacob 4.
"Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord.
How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him,
and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways."
There are many other similar stories that I could tell,
but I need to move on to the next revolutionary topic.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks in October 2014 general conference
said: "We are to live in the world, but not be of the world.
We must live in the world because, as Jesus taught
in a parable, His kingdom is like leaven,
whose function is to raise the whole mass by its influence."
In this next section, I want to consider
how the gospel is raising African Society
and think about the potential for it
to raise the entire world.
I had the opportunity to record an interview with Elder Richard
P. Lindsay, who was the first president of the Africa Area.
One of his priorities was to maintain
the purity of the doctrine.
As the Church was just getting started in many nations,
there was always the possibility of non-LDS beliefs
and practices creeping into the Church, which
is often defined as syncretism.
I recorded interviews with some of the first missionary couples
who had to contend with members in these early congregations,
wanting to have drumming and dancing in their meetings,
passing the plate, or having a very charismatic person
lead the congregation as a Pentecostal minister would.
I've even found evidence that there
was, before the revelation on the priesthood, a woman
in Ghana, Rebecca Mould, who was known as apostle, president,
and even prophetess.
And this slide is a letter, dated 1972,
addressed to the Prophetess Rebecca
Mould signed by the Presiding Bishop, Dr. Reverend A. F.
Mensah.
They did the best they could with the knowledge they had.
Those kinds of practices, in many ways,
were fairly easy to confront.
Correct principles relating to LDS meeting standards
and practices were taught to the first generation
converts and quickly adopted.
There are, however, deeper traditions of the world
that are more difficult to get rid of, and one of these
has to do with the treatment of women.
And the amazing thing is to witness just how revolutionary
LDS doctrine related to women is in Africa,
where women are often considered second-class citizens.
Back in 1998, I was preparing for my first trip
to West Africa.
As part of my preparation, I interviewed Larry B. Duke,
who had recently returned from Ghana, where
he had been Mission President.
I went to his home in Heber, Utah, for this oral history,
and while I was in his study, I saw the usual array of African
souvenirs--carved animals, kente cloth, etc.
But there were two statues that really caught my eye.
It was a statue of a man and a woman.
So here's a young woman who is likely
illiterate or under-educated, pregnant,
carrying an infant on her back, having another toddler
tug at her leg, and carrying a heavy load on her head.
And standing off to the side, not doing much of anything
to help, is her husband, or the man in her life.
President Duke said that this was the plight
of many West African women.
I was so moved by these statues that when I got to Ghana,
I did two things.
I got in touch with the artist and commissioned
a set of these statues for myself, which are now
in my office, and I used President Duke's comments
to add some questions to my interview outlines.
And I've continued to ask these questions over the past 16
years.
One of these questions deals with the place
of women in Society.
The other one has to do with marriage practices.
From the interviews that I've recorded,
I've learned that the wordly tradition
or perspective in many parts of Africa
is that women are inferior.
In an interview I recorded in 2005 with one of the earliest
converts in Aba, Nigeria--a woman--I learned the following
about the African way of doing things.
Sister Fortune Okwandu said: "Anyway, the truth--you know,
we are for the truth.
The truth is that in Nigerian society,
women are treated as second hands, and that is the truth.
If anybody tells you other things--no.
The women are treated a little bit under trodden."
Women's lot in life is to do all the hard work
and maintain the family while the man stands back and does
whatever he wants to do.
And this is sometimes reinforced by the tradition
of bride price, or the dowry, known commonly
in many places in Africa as lobolo.
I believe that the doctrines of our Church
provide women with a set of revolutionary beliefs
that have the power to change their worlds
and to liberate them, thereby making the meaningful exercise
of agency possible.
In other words, the gospel gives women
the power to act and not to be acted upon.
So what are those revolutionary doctrines
that provide liberation to women and take them
and their husbands and sons out of the world
and into the light of the Lord?
I have a short list of quotes that
represent some facet of LDS theology that
has this power to liberate.
This is certainly not a comprehensive list.
Rather, these short quotations are a starting point.
So listen to these and see if you can
recognize where they come from.
Each of us is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly
parents, and as such, each has a divine nature and destiny--the
Proclamation on the Family.
We are daughters of Heavenly Father who loves us and we love
Him--Young Women theme.
Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care
for each other and for their children--Proclamation.
Fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another
as equal partners--Proclamation.
This one's a little harder, the next one.
I will continually seek opportunities
for learning and growth.
It's one of the Young Women values--knowledge--and
the color is green.
So see if you know where this one comes from.
"A new celestial culture is developing in homes,
nurtured by the ready hearkening to the counsel
of the living prophet.
As a result, many are able to break
free from the shackles of traditions that restrict
the exercise of their agency.
As an illustration from personal experience,
three of our children were recently married in the temple
without the encumbrance of dowry."
Elder Joseph Sitati--in his first general conference
address in 2009, and he just spoke this past weekend.
So did you catch the reference to shackles and agency?
And what about dowry?
Dowry is not something that we generally
think about here in America.
However, Elder Sitati's reference
was a clear signal to Church members
in Africa that changes are still needed.
Let me talk for a brief moment about the notion of the dowry
and some of the LDS revolution not to participate.
Back when I was a teenager in seminary,
I was introduced to the idea of the dowry
by none other than Johnny Lingo and Mohanna.
Theirs was the classic ugly duckling
story, where the homely woman becomes a 10-cow wife.
And thanks to those 10 cows, Mohanna
turns beautiful, acquires tons of self-esteem,
and lives happily ever after with Johnny
in their tropical paradise.
This story was intended to teach self-esteem
through proper self-perception made possible by love.
Well, I've met and interviewed people
in Africa who have participated in the dowry.
The husbands seemed burdened by it,
and not many of the 10-cow women felt like Mohanna.
In fact, it seemed that the whole system
was somewhat negative, expensive, and even degrading.
One of the consequences of the lobolo practice
is that men postpone marriage, often living with women
and testing them to see if they can bear children, preferably
sons.
Also, this practice can make women
feel like they are owned by their husbands
and their husbands' families, and that they have
been sold by their families.
They are often made to feel like second-class citizens
and are treated as such.
This is the tradition against which
Elder Sitati spoke in his first general conference address.
In an interview that I recorded with him after the talk,
I asked about the dowry, and he explained
that in times past, before the colonial powers took
over East Africa, the dowry was a way of economically
binding families.
Extended family members would all chip in a cow or a goat,
fully understanding that these assets would at some point
be returned to them as other marriages in the village
or area occurred.
However, after colonial powers introduced a new and different
economic system, the dowry became about acquiring wealth,
and the woman became the bargaining chip.
The more educated she was, the higher the price.
Imagine the liberation that is offered
by our Church's revolutionary way of thinking about marriage
and family in Africa as suggested by those statements
from the Family Proclamation, the Young Women program,
and by Elder Sitati.
So returning to my list of basic doctrinal quotes,
what do these doctrines represent,
and what are the results in the lives of LDS women?
As I see it, they are positive, liberating ,
and make meaningful agency possible.
A few of the positive results may be one,
self-esteem based on a belief of divine destiny,
unconditional love, and sincere gratitude--self-reliance
through education, time and energy to be human based
on shared responsibilities in the home,
and freedom from worldly traditions that bind women
to second-class status.
So with that in mind, let me conclude
with two quotes from interviews I
recorded with West African women,
and see if you can catch the spirit of this LDS revolution.
Back in 2000, I interviewed Monica Opare, whose husband
was one of the first Area Authorities Seventies called
in West Africa.
I asked her about the status of women and the dowry
and I love what she said.
"Some other things like marriage, dowries,
big dowries--people have to pay before they can get married.
I personally feel that it is wrong.
I have been telling my sisters in my ward
that the only dowry I'm going to ask for for my daughter
is a temple recommend."
In 1999, I was in Lagos, Nigeria, where I interviewed
Sister Florence Chukwurah, who had graduated
from college with a degree in nursing,
had lived in the United States, had
served as a leader in Young Women and Relief Society,
and who had been a mission president's wife, which
meant that she gave a lot of training
to women in districts and branches.
When I walked into her home, I was
surprised to see that she had a set of these statues
on her table.
So naturally, I asked her about the status of women in West
Africa, and here's her answer.
And when she refers to "Third World,"
she named the woman here in this picture--that statue--third
world.
"African men think that they are above women,
generally speaking.
But when they have the gospel, they
treat their wives differently.
They show more love, more respect,
and more regard for the mother of their children.
I remember there was a time I gave a talk.
I had to go with this Third World,"
and she pointed to the statue.
"I was giving a talk on the family,
and I went with my Third World.
You'd see the woman with the load on her head,
the child strapped behind, carrying a child in her tummy.
Where's the husband?
He couldn't do something?
I think the men enjoyed it when I said, let's not
be like this woman.
Let us treat women with love and gentleness
because we deserve it."
Coming back to Elder Oaks's conference talk
and the notion of leaven raising an entire society.
Imagine the huge, huge changes that
are occurring as people embrace the gospel
and leave the traditions of the world behind.
OK, I want to conclude with a few of my favorite topics--home
teaching.
And who doesn't love home teaching--and the temple?
On my first trip to Ghana, I met and interviewed
a newly called stake president named Charles Sono-Koree.
Before his baptism, in his own words,
he was a man of the world.
He had worked at a brewery before becoming
an entrepreneur.
His wife had found the Church and was very interested in it.
At first, Charles avoided the missionaries.
He had a very cynical view of religion.
However, he finally came around, was taught,
and agreed to be baptized.
He and his family were baptized in December 1987.
He had a testimony, but his faith
was small and in need of nurturing.
A short year after the Sono-Korees were baptized,
the government of Ghana banned the Church from operating.
It locked up the meeting houses, arrested a few Latter-day
Saints, and deported the senior expatriate missionaries.
And this is a page from the passport of one
of those missionaries, who was serving with his wife in Ghana.
Noticed the big Deported sign on his passport.
And on the other side of the passport
is the deportation notice.
This period became known as the freeze.
Brother Sono-Koree, being young in the gospel,
may have fallen victim to inactivity
and even apostasy at this time, but he remained faithful.
I asked him what kept him in the Church
during this period when it was illegal for Church members
to congregate, and this was his reply.
"My home teacher was very, very, very strong.
He visited, even during the time of the freeze.
He always came with his vehicle, took the whole family
to his house, and we'd hold our sacrament meeting with him
in his home.
After that, he refreshed us.
We'd sit in his home and learn about the scriptures
or discuss any of our concerns, and then in the evening
he'd bring us back home."
I asked who that home teacher was,
and it was Brother [INAUDIBLE] Hammond.
Since that time, Brother Sono-Koree
has served as a bishop, a stake president,
and was the first West African to serve
as a counselor in the Accra Ghana Temple presidency.
His faithful home teacher has made a huge difference.
So let me conclude with a few short thoughts
about the power of the temple.
South Africa, with its legacy of legal discrimination,
known as Apartheid, has struggled to unify as a nation.
I believe that we may have the answer when it
comes to healing those wounds.
Back in 1995, I had the privilege
of being part of an interview with Julia Mavimbela,
and this is the same Julia Mavimbela
that Elder Dale Renlund mentioned
in his general conference talk on Saturday.
Julia was born in South Africa in 1917.
She acquired the education necessary to qualify
as a teacher.
In 1940, she became a school principal.
In 1976, during political unrest in South Africa,
she sold the family business to focus on the needs of children.
She began using gardening to teach
literacy and responsibility to children in Soweto.
Through acts of reclamation and gardening
came lessons of social healing.
Where there is a blood stain, she taught, a beautiful flower
must grow.
On the 4th of November 1991, only two months
after the repeal of the apartheid laws in South Africa,
she was elected as the first Black woman
to be vice president of the National Council of Women
for South Africa.
My companion interviewer that day, Francine Bennion,
asked this question, "Tell me about what difference
you think the temple has made to the people in your area."
Sister Mavimbela said this: "I'm grateful to be
working in the temple.
I take two days each week, meeting
people of all colors and races.
It has become one of our best meeting places,
and it has humbled many people, and at times we least expected.
There is no touch of Afrikaner.
There is no English.
There is no Situ nor Zulu.
You know that feeling of oneness.
You find it in the temple, and it
has been a real blessing for us in Africa to have a temple."
Finally, I want to show you a video clip containing
the story of Clara Cooper, who lived through the Liberian
Civil War.
This video was shot by a Park City
woman named Jill Johnson, who was asked by the Africa West
Area Presidency to capture some of the pioneer stories.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Clara Cooper also recalls the hardships of wartime.
- During the war, 1990, there was no food in Liberia.
Everybody was going here and there searching for food.
We couldn't find no food for anybody.
As a result, we would go in the bushes looking for leaves,
bush yam to sustain our family.
As we go in the bushes to get the food,
the stray bullet who gave chase.
We should be bending down, lying down
on the floor to get a safe cross to go in the bushes for food.
My husband couldn't go out because they
were looking for men to kill.
So he used to stay home, are I go out
there to search for food.
At the time, I was pregnant.
Because of my legs swelling up, they used to give me problems.
Sometimes when I walked, I would sit a little bit
to gain a little strength.
We were living on water, and as I moved about,
I made sure I drank enough water to carry me
through for that day to find something for my family.
Then a friend came to me and told me that at Hotel Africa
they can feed children, but not you, the mother.
So I said, I will go there.
I was pregnant.
I put Willy on my back.
The one who is serving a mission today, I put on my shoulders,
and the older one who was eight years at that time,
I would hold his hand.
I woke up around 4:00 in the morning
to get ready to go to Hotel Africa.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- As God would have it, I delivered and gave birth.
After two months--the child was two months at that time,
and she passed away.
And my oldest son that I had, at that time
he was seven years old.
Because of no food, he, too, passed away.
And the two children died.
The little girl died Saturday, and my son died Monday,
within the same course of days.
It was terrible for me at that time.
It wasn't easy.
I just fell down.
I had no hope.
There was no food and my two children died,
and only I, the woman, could go out for food.
I just felt that there was no way at all in life.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- I used to have a dream of my son.
Each time he comes in my dream, he always
asks: "I'm waiting for you.
Go!
I'm waiting for you."
I said, "Where am I going?"
He said: "Just go.
I am waiting for you."
All the time.
Each time I had the dream, I woke up and told my husband
this is the dream I had.
He always tells me we should go, but I don't know.
He says where we should go.
So we prayed that the Lord would tell us
where he wants for us to go.
- Some years later, Clara and her husband
were able to attend the Johannesburg
temple in South Africa.
- It was a wonderful time for me.
And When I went to the temple in Johannesburg,
after I had done the sealing process, the baptism
and marriage in the temple, I was
sitting with my daughter that came with me.
She was five months old.
So I was sitting in the nursery room, taking care of her.
And just within a time I was between sleep
and awake, I just bowed my head like this.
And my son who died, coming to me with running.
When he came, he embraced me like this:
"Oh, mama, thank you.
I'm free now."
From that day, up until this present,
I never dreamed of him again.
[END PLAYBACK]
This story is moving, but also testifies to a principle
that Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin taught
in his last general conference address
on the principle of compensation.
He said: "The Lord compensates the faithful for every loss.
That which is taken away from those who love the Lord
will be added onto them in his own way.
While it may not come at a time that we desire,
the faithful will know that every tear today will
eventually be returned a hundredfold with tears
of rejoicing and gratitude.
One of the blessings of the gospel
is the knowledge that when the curtain of death
signals the end of our mortal lives,
life will continue on the other side of the veil.
There we will be given new opportunities.
Not even death can take from us the eternal blessings promised
by a loving Heavenly Father.
Because Heavenly Father is merciful,
a principle of compensation prevails."
What an amazing truth that is, and think
of what that means to each of us.
So let me conclude by returning to my least favorite chapter
in the Book of Mormon, Jacob chapter 5.
That long chapter ends with a call
to action and an interesting thought.
And think of what this means for us and for our brothers
and sisters in Africa.
"Wherefore, go to, and call servants,
that we may labor diligently with our might in the vineyard.
Graft in the branches.
Begin at the last that may be first,
and that the first may be last, and dig about the trees,
both old and young--the first and the last and the last
in the first--that all may be nourished once again
for the last time.
And the branches of the natural tree
while I graft into the natural branches of the tree.
And thus will I bring them together again
that they shall bring forth the natural fruit,
and they shall be one.
And thus they labored with all diligence,
according to the commandments of the Lord of the vineyard,
even until the Lord had preserved
unto himself that the trees had become again the natural fruit.
And they became like unto one body,
and the fruits were equal.
And the Lord of the vineyard had preserved unto himself
the natural fruit, which was most precious unto him
from the beginning."
I believe that we are witnessing this as the Church continues
to grow and spread across Africa--the nethermost part
of the Lord's vineyard.
And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
OK, questions--and only the easy ones.
Mine is not a question.
I witnessed all of this in a mission
with my husband in Nigeria, Africa in Aba.
We were there for the groundbreaking of the Aba
temple, and I witnessed all of this.
It is all true.
It's all true.
Thank you.
Brothers and sisters, I'm so very happy to be here.
This is not really a question.
I just want to make a few remarks.
My name is Imar Ashet.
I live in North Carolina--Greensboro.
I come to Salt Lake City every April and October to help
in the translation of general conference
into African languages.
I've been a member of the Church since 1994,
getting to 21 years.
I have five children, three sons and two daughters,
and all three sons have served missions
in Springfield, Missouri; D.C.; and Lagos, Nigeria.
I know that all that Brother Matthew Heiss has
said this evening is very true, and I believe
that this meeting is about me.
And that's why I'm so very happy to be here.
And I only got wind of this meeting
yesterday as I prepared to come over
for the translation of the conference,
because we do it post conference.
I determined that I will be here once I got to Salt Lake,
and here I am, and I am very happy.
And the Church, not in this dispensation--right from
the time of our Lord Jesus Christ has always been
in Africa.
So Africa dates back in the history of the gospel.
You remember that Africa played host to the Lord
when his adversaries wanted to kill him as a baby,
so he went to Egypt and was hidden there.
And when the Lord was about to be crucified,
it was an African that happened to carry his cross.
And after that, there was a guy who was his
Apostle--Philip--and he was proselyting.
And one day he come about an Ethiopian eunuch on the road
and he was reading the gospel.
And Philip approached him and said, "Do you
know what you are reading?"
And he said, "How could I know without somebody
to instruct me?"
I'm just paraphrasing.
And he received instruction from Apostle Philip.
And then they got to a body of water,
and the Ethiopian eunuch said: "Look, here is water.
What does [INAUDIBLE] need to be baptized?"
And he was baptized and he took the gospel to his land.
Today in Ethiopia, if you go to Ethiopia,
you will find churches that are older
than some churches in Europe and even in the Americas.
So we have always been very interested in the gospel.
It is true that we have problems,
as Brother Matthew has said.
I am a victim of one of those problems.
I used to be a professor in Nigeria,
and because of the situation, I spoke out
against the military regimes, and then I was kicked out.
So I came over to the United States.
I have my wife, and we've been doing the best we can.
We have been pioneers in the Church in Nigeria,
and I was very lucky to be taught by some elders--senior
couple of missionaries who came from the United States to work
in Nigeria.
I held some leadership positions, and so did my wife.
We have reasons to be grateful for the Church in Africa,
and I think that the gospel and the temples in Africa
are doing a great deal to mitigate
the disaster that would have become of the entire continent.
I strongly believe that Nigeria is still
one nation today because of the temple in Accra,
and I strongly believe that there
was no catastrophe in South Africa because of the presence
of the temple in Johannesburg.
The good influences of the temple
have continued to permeate the entire continent at one time.
I really believe that the gospel is
the only hope for the continent of Africa,
and I have reasons to say that.
My grandfather married 36 wives.
He had well over 70 children, and he
was look it was easier it was a chief priest of a divining
cult. And in those days, twins used to be killed in Africa.
My father was born a twin.
And my grandfather faced a dilemma.
He was a big chief--faced dilemma.
He had, as we heard from Brother Matthew--he had so many female
children daughters, and the sons only started coming in when he
was very old.
And here he was blessed with twins.
And he had been presiding over the killing of other twins,
and so he was instructed to kill these twin boys.
And this dilemma was such that I don't know how he resolved it,
but this is part of the family history.
Mysteriously, my grandmother died, and my father survived.
He died along with the other twin boy.
So somehow my grandfather figured out a way
to deal with that situation.
And here I am today, and my father never
knew who the mother was, but he survived it.
The interesting thing is that my grandfather later on turned
around and said look, this religion I am practicing
is not the religion of the future.
On his deathbed, he called his children and said,
I don't want you to take after me.
I do not want you to take after me.
This--my religion, tradition Africa religion--served
my purpose.
Now, the missionaries came to Nigeria and started
building schools.
I wanted to go to that religion.
And when I was six years old--six or seven,
in 1966--I lived with an uncle who encouraged education,
because education is the only window out of the poverty
so far as I know in Africa.
And those of us who don't have anything,
we just try to get as much education as possible
so that we can turn around and bless the lives of other people
in the continent.
So my uncle used to subscribe to Reader's Digest,
and he will read it and drop it around so that I, too,
would read.
He wanted to encourage me to read.
So one day I read the Reader's Digest.
I came across the story of Joseph Smith,
and I was so excited.
So I took the book to him and said: "Uncle, you see?
This guy saw God and His Son, Jesus Christ."
My uncle turned around and said: "You don't
mind these crazy Americans.
Nobody ever sees God or the Lord Jesus Christ.
So don't worry about it.
Don't worry about your story."
So I forgot about this story.
But 40 years after, someone handed me the Book of Mormon,
and I said: "I remember this book.
I remember this book"--and started thinking about it.
And the man who gave me the book was a minister
of Presbyterian Church.
So I asked him, "What do you know about this?"
"Oh, don't worry about these Americans.
They have everything.
They even have a religion, have their own Bible.
And don't worry about the Book of Mormon."
So I said, "OK."
I read it just like literature, and then gave it back to him.
Then one day, my wife, who used to love to go
to church--because I was so disillusioned with going
to church because people using it and making money in Africa,
so I didn't want to be part of it.
But my wife used to love going to church.
We had a Volkswagen Beetle, a little car.
So she would load our children into the car and drive around
from one church to another looking
for the truth--unconsciously, without seeing it.
So one day she landed in a chapel
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Then she came back all fired up with the children.
Said: "Listen, we found a Church.
We want you to come and listen."
And I said to her: "Lavina, remember we had an agreement.
You can go to all the churches you
want, but don't bring church talk or anything to the house.
So I'm not coming."
But my kids--my first daughter, she was four years old--she
insisted that I needed to go to that Church.
And being the only daughter I had at the time,
she had me wrapped around her finger.
So I made a promise that OK, just
to let her let me live my life, I
will go to the Church with you on Sunday.
I thought she would forget it, but she didn't.
That Sunday she got my shoes and got me ready to go to Church.
So I went.
When I went there, it was just a congregation
of about 15 people.
And there was a young returned missionary who was everything.
He blessed the sacrament, he passed the sacrament,
he did everything.
And the rest of the people were mostly investigators.
So I looked at him.
I was surprised at what he was doing, so I asked him,
"How much do you get paid for all this?"
He said nothing--that he just does it for the Lord.
I couldn't believe it.
So he said to me: "If you will come and join us,
you will find out what the truth is.
You'll do what I'm doing, and you won't get paid,
and you'll still love it."
So I decided to take the challenge,
and we became members of the Church.
That was in 1994.
And I found out for sure that I saw what was lacking
in my country--leadership.
I saw it in that young man.
He was barely 23 years old, and he was doing what I'd never
seen in the country before--volunteering,
saving people--just for the love of it.
So we became members of the Church.
And fortunately, we had the missionaries--senior
missionaries--who came out from United States to help us.
And he's talking about faith.
My wife--one of the first testimonies I had about
the Church was faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We had a piano in our little branch,
but there was nobody to play.
And so the senior missionaries called my wife
to play the piano, and my wife didn't know anything
about the piano.
And the couple missionaries--the sister missionary herself who
was called to teach her--did not know anything about music.
So she would sit with my wife on the piano.
She would be reading the musical scores
and telling my wife what to do.
But tell you what, brothers and sisters.
In the night, my wife would go to sleep,
and she would have dreams of someone
teaching her to play the piano.
And in that dream, she started practicing
how to play the piano, until eventually she
was able to play during sacrament meeting.
And she would tell me about these dreams.
One day I will go with her here, and I
didn't believe it until I saw her actually playing the piano.
Even the sister missionary herself was very surprised.
So brothers and sisters, we need education
in Africa, both spiritual and secular education.
I write for a Church-related website called NauvooTimes.com,
and my column is known as the "African Voice".
If you go there, you will see some of my articles.
My general editor is a Brother Scott Card.
You probably know him very well.
I try to tell African stories about the presence
of the Church in Africa, and I invite
you to go to that website and see for yourself what
the Church is doing in Africa.
What he says about women is very true.
But let us see Brother Matthew has today as King Benjamin.
He has given us a discourse--a very powerful discourse.
Let us have a mighty change of heart.
We can walk outside--we can walk along with an outside choice
channels to bring greater light to the people of Africa,
because we are really suffering from under education,
lack of education, superstition--it's killing
the entire place.
As I sit in the United States, I'm a political refugee,
but I'm trying to build a school in my village so that people
who go to school--so that people who read the Bible--my maternal
grandfather was a big chief, but he couldn't read.
But he was interested in the stories
that missionaries told him, so he went and bought a Bible.
Even though he couldn't read, he would
hold the Bible in his hands, and people would be mocking him.
"What are you doing with that book you carry?
People read the book with their eyes.
You are reading yours with your nose."
And he sent his son to school, and his son
came back and taught him how to read and write.
And the information that he has about his family
is what I use today for family history.
So brothers and sisters, I know this is true,
and I know that the Church will do
great, great things in Africa.
And I say that humbly in the name of our Lord, Jesus
Christ, amen.
Amen.
How many members, how many missions, and
how many temples in Africa?
I don't know, but I know where you can find out.
There's cumorah.com, and there are a couple of websites.
The Mormon Newsroom I think has those stats.
They might be a year off.
In terms of temples, of course we just
had one announced this past Sunday for Ivory Coast, which
is awesome.
There are two announced for Durban, South Africa,
and Kinshasa.
There's one in Johannesburg, one in Aba, Nigeria,
and one in Ghana.
So three functioning temples, three either announced
or under construction.
I know the temples.
I don't know missions or number of missionaries.
Sorry.
Yeah, from your perspective some missions in Africa
are baptizing many more than other missions.
Why is that?
Like you referenced DR Congo and the influence
of the Catholic church, the Dutch Reformed Church,
the Anglican Church on these people.
Is there any correlation on how they are being baptized along
with what was the influential Church in those areas?
That's another one of the hard ones,
and I said only easy questions.
I don't know that I have a good answer for that.
I'm sure there's a lot of mission presidents over there
that have that same answer when they
compare what's going on in DR Congo as opposed
to South Africa.
I do know this though--that we have a debt of gratitude
to those Catholic, Protestant, Dutch Reformed missionaries who
went there for centuries and spent their time preparing
the people--teaching them about Christ.
There are Christian nations there,
and it's those people who are joining our Church.
That's the best answer I can give on that one.
I might be able to answer part of that question.
We just returned last year from Uganda on a mission there.
The mission president--we were fortunate to have two mission
presidents when we were there.
The mission president before pushed baptisms very much.
Now the Church as a whole is trying to recover.
One of the problems that we had in Uganda
was people didn't have food.
So when they had--had were in the city or close
to the chapel, they would be converted and go to Church.
Then they'd run out of money and then
have to go back to their village, which
was too far for them to come into Church.
So we lost a lot of members that way,
but they were still active.
And so the focus today is they're not letting
the missionaries go out teaching long ways away--center
of strength.
And that's the reason for that.
We had many--and I won't take any more of your time.
We had several villages where they begged
us to come out to their groups.
We had a group that was close to Tororo, Uganda,
who they were--actually the whole congregation wanted to be
converted the gospel.
But we just did not have the manpower
to support them in their group.
So we had them--each week they were teaching out of the Gospel
Principles book.
Awesome.
A very brief comment.
I have a great love for the African nation,
and I'm glad that you've mentioned
about early Christians teaching there.
I'm actually a descendant of two of the pioneers from the London
Missionary Society--and this is prior to the Restoration
of the gospel--that went to the Mascarene islands--Madagascar
and Mauritius--and taught Christianity.
And my understanding is that it's a dark continent
because it lacked the spirituality,
and they did not know of Christ.
When David Livingstone, who was one
of the very first Christian missionaries that
went to Africa to open up the continent to Christianity,
it was nothing to do with the color of skin.
And I've read many, many letters from my ancestors back
to the London Missionary Society,
and I've never once heard anybody mention
in the letters--this is going back to the late 1700s,
early 1800s--mention the color of anybody's skin,
to be honest.
And their drive was they lost their families to Malagasy
fever, and it was their great love of Christ that
really helped this continent.
And they started the first schools there.
So I am thrilled to see the Church
as it is growing now in Africa.
And I follow it quite closely.
As you can probably tell, I'm actually from England,
so we were probably those that were the early settlers there
in Africa.
And all my family all along the southern route of Africa--I
found many, many graves of my ancestors going back
into the 1800s.
So it's a wonderful country, and the people are wonderful,
and there's a huge amount of work that needs to be done.
So thank you so much.
I agree.
Thank you.
Actually, it's not my question it's [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
Abelow.
His name is Abelow--Abelow's question.
And he wants me to ask it in English,
because he only speaks French.
So he is a recent convert.
He just joined the Church in February
here in the US as a visitor in the East Coast.
And he wanted to come here for conference,
because he heard that it's general conference time.
And he decided to stay a few more days here, too,
when he heard about this lecture.
But he's going back to Africa in a few days--a few months.
And he's from Burkina Faso, where there is no Church there.
And so his question is, "Do you have any suggestions what
he can do to support himself and keep
that spiritual mind in himself until maybe the Church will
get there one day?
We don't know."
Yeah.
I have one thing.
Are your ready to translate?
I heard about Abelow from Jeff Chance, who sent me an email.
And I passed that information on to Elder LeGrand Curtis, who's
the President of the Africa West Area, who emailed me
back and said that there are a handful of members
in the capital city of Burkina Faso.
And he wanted your email address,
which I forwarded to him.
And so I'm hoping that the Africa West Area
Presidency--and I think it's the mission president in Cote
d'Ivoire--is going to establish contact with you.
I think that's the way it's going to happen.
And I'm hoping that you're coming into the Church History
Department next week for an interview.
We've invited him in French.
Not me.
But my question is are you aware of any stories or traditions
in Africa about a great white God
that might refer to Jesus Christ?
No, I've never heard that.
Nope.
Oh, what's that?
One more.
Oh, there we go.
How's family history work treated in West Africa?
I imagine it's kind of an oral tradition,
but what about written records?
It is, and I wish I knew more about that.
This I can tell you.
They do allow oral genealogy--people to do that
and to produce temple cards.
And there's a stake in Ivory Coast that
is the third-most productive stake in terms
of producing its own family names
and taking them to the temple, which may be one of the reasons
why they're getting a temple in Abidjan.
I was talking to Brother Sono-Koree earlier this week,
and he's really concerned that the use of the temple in Accra
is going to go down when those Ivorians finally
get their own temple and they can stay in their own country.
So think of that--a stake in West Africa is the third-most
productive stake in terms of family names.
It's awesome--in the Church, the entire Church.
Yeah.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]