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SALT LAKE CITY — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently broke ground for the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple.
Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presided over the ceremony that took place Feb. 12. Church and community leaders attended, as did government and religious leaders and 800 Latter-day Saints.
"This holy house will also bless the country and the people who surround it, whether or not they are members of the church. It will be a light upon a hill, and the glory of the Lord will be upon it," Elder Andersen said.
The general authority recognized the residents of Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"They are a spiritual people," he said. "They trust in God, and they pray to God. Our Heavenly Father loves his sons and daughters here and answers their prayers."
More than 40,000 Latter-day Saints reside in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The current operating temples in Africa include the Johannesburg South Africa Temple, the Accra Ghana Temple and the Aba Nigeria Temple. The LDS Church has announced plans for the Durban South Africa Temple and the Abidjan Ivory Coast Temple.
Mormon temples are constructed in communities with a strong and mature Latter-day Saint presence that is growing.
Thirty years ago, there were about 22,000 Latter-day Saints in Africa; today it has more than 1,600 congregations and half a million members. Church leaders attribute the growth to the church's focus on families "and the refinement of soul that comes from a humble lifestyle," according to the LDS Church.
"We are a family people in Africa," Zimbabwe native Elder Edward Dube of the Seventy said in a statement. "You would find that whatever we have, whatever little we have, we share among ourselves. So when the church talks of family, people easily identify themselves with family cultures, family values."
Elder Joseph W. Sitati of the Seventy is from Kenya and said the meager circumstances of a lot of Africans has cemented a deeper appreciation for the most important things in life inside them.
"These are just grateful people; they are happy people," Elder Sitati said in a statement. "They have been humbled by their circumstances. And they look to the Lord with real intent, and when they are taught things, they embrace them."
Soon, a missionary training center will be operating in Accra and can train up to 400 missionaries at a time.
The Freedmen's Bureau Project
The Freemen's Bureau Project, or the digitization of handwritten records about former slaves, is halfway done.
The project is a national effort with a purpose to connect African Americans with their ancestors who lived during the Civil War, according to the LDS Church.
"We have completed 50 percent of the indexing and arbitration of the records of this project," Thom Reed, marketing manager for FamilySearch International, said in a statement.
More than 15,750 volunteers have indexed more than 1 million records by transcribing the information from the digital images of records of freed men, women and children. The Freedmen's Bureau Project will be finished in the fall, and Reed thinks African Americans will be able to search through millions of names online to access their family history.
Mantua resident JoAnn Gilbert Jeppsen has volunteered her time to index census records and other documents for FamilySearch for the last decade. She recently learned she arbitrated the one-millionth record.
"I was just amazed," Jeppsen said. "I didn't know the government had these programs for [Civil War–era African Americans]. I just think about what happened to them when they were freed."
Fort Collins Colorado Temple
The Fort Collins Colorado Temple will be dedicated Oct. 16, and the public is invited to tour the temple beforehand during the free open house. The open house begins Aug. 19 and runs through Sept. 10, excluding Sundays. A cultural celebration will also be held Oct. 15 prior to its dedication.
The temple will be dedicated in three sessions at 9 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. Latter-day Saints in Colorado can view the dedication as it is broadcast, and regular church meetings will be cancelled.
Once dedicated, the temple will serve about 44,000 Latter-day Saints living in Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming. It will be the second temple in Colorado, including the Denver Temple.
