When Mariama Kallon was fleeing the rebels in Sierra Leone, she grabbed her scriptures and the plastic bag with her hygiene kit in it.

She still has parts of the kit.

“It blessed the lives of over 25 women in three weeks,” Kallon said of their time in the refugee camp. The women would line up and she would give them each a pinch of toothpaste. They used the bars of soap sparingly to make them last.

They didn’t use the shampoo — it wasn’t labeled and they didn’t know what it was.

Kallon had lost family members during the civil war and ended up with friends who were members of the church. For some of the missionary discussions, she walked three miles to the chapel.

She later served a mission at Temple Square. She brought her scriptures, both changes of clothes that she had and the hygiene kit when she entered the MTC.

Later she was reunited with her little sister and nephew when a Lehi family brought them to the United States, she said during her at-times-emotional presentation of her conversion and the promises that were fulfilled to her.

“Heavenly Father loves each and every one of his children,” Kallon said.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700085724/Time-Out-speaker-offers-peek-into-prophets-life.html?pg=1

See this article on Ghana reunion of returned missionaries in Mormon Times, October 1, 2010

http://www.mormontimes.com/article/17499/Ghana-reunion-more-than-just-a-meeting-of-returned-missionaries

WEST JORDAN, Utah — If you happen to meet someone from Ghana, ask them about the handshake. “You go like this, and then you go like this, and then you go like this, and then you slide down, and you click on my finger and I’ll click on yours,” says Sally Murray as she teaches a child at the Africa Accra Ghana mission reunion. Murray is a former senior missionary to Ghana and the organizer of the reunion held at the Welby Stake center in West Jordan, Utah. …

See this story in Mormon Times, Sept 16, 2010

AMERICAN FORK, Utah — Most of the people in Ryan Wilcox’s life already knew he is a devoted father and caring pediatrician.

What they didn’t know about is his work as a humanitarian missionary for the LDS Church. …

See this article in The Church News Sept 18, 2010

A Mighty Change

ACCRA, GHANA

More than 10,000 young men and women, ages 12 to 18, from seven countries in western Africa, representing seven stakes and 32 districts, came together to celebrate the 180th anniversary of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and to hear a special message from President Thomas S. Monson. …

The first member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to graduate from the University of Ghana Dental School / Korlebu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Ghana, is David Ameyaw, age 33. He received his diploma on March 27, 2010 and was inducted into the dental profession by the Medical – Dental Council of Ghana on April 29, 2010. …

See http://www.ldsmag.com/people/100430heartwarming.html

PROVO — An LDS chapel and institute of religion are the only buildings left on a street in Abuja, Nigeria.

Other churches and businesses once occupied the area, but were razed over a four-year span for not complying with zoning laws.

The land is now mostly a national park, but the two Mormon structures remain.

“Why? Because we had all of the papers,” said Elder Adesina J. Olukanni, Area Seventy and director of public affairs for the Africa West Area. “We went in through the front door.” …

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700022304/LDS-front-door-policy-in-Africa.html?pg=1

As Sister Julie B. Beck, general Relief Society president, has traveled she has observed the homes of Latter-day Saint women.

Juliana Afulenu of the Hedzranawoe Branch, Lome Togo District, stands near shelf where she keeps her scriptures and other Church materials. …

http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59061/Relief-Society-Strengthening-faith-through-scripture-study.html

God’s children on the earth today have the opportunity to understand His plan of happiness for them more fully than at any other time.

A few weeks ago Elder Melvin R. Perkins, who is an Area Seventy serving in Alaska, and I stood at the pulpit in front of the congregation of the Vancouver British Columbia Stake in Canada. In a moving voice he invited the Saints to consider the image before them: a descendant of Mormon handcart pioneers and a pioneer convert of the Church from a faraway African nation serving the Lord side by side. …

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1117-33,00.html
(October 2009 General Conference talk by Elder Joseph W. Sitati of the Seventy)

On You Tube

During a historic 16-day tour of Africa on Aug. 16-31, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve dedicated Cameroon and Rwanda for the preaching of the gospel. In so doing, he became the first known apostle to ever set foot in either nation.
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/gallery/57850/Dedication-blesses-two-African-nations.html

If you have visited the Ikeja General Hospital lately, you would have noticed a blocked drainage that could only have been  a breeding place for mosquitoes. This is besides  some discarded items at the back of Ayinke ward that left the hospital looking unkempt.

Thankfully this unhealthy eyesore has disappeared since a three-hour sanitation exercise was recently carried out there with the result that the hospital now wears a new look. And it was courtesy of the corporate effort of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints which recently mobilised its  teeming members for a state-wide environmental sanitation exercise. …

See http://www.vanguardngr.com/2009/08/27/when-mormon-hands-helped-to-keep-lagos-clean/