The Tales that Bind: How an African Oral tradition Resonates with the Gospel

By Johnell DeWitt

Our first Sunday in Uganda I watched Brother Onyango Odongo, the uncle of our soon to be Patriarch, reverently sit as he was confirmed a member of our little branch, now a ward. His beautiful face read like an epic.  Each line told a story of great hope and great tragedy and I knew I had to learn his story.

Brother Onyango

Brother Onyango is “80 something” years old, as he told us. No one knows the exact date of his birth or even the exact year, and the closest he can get is he was born sometime in the 1920s. He has witnessed events we can only imagine in our worst nightmares. He lived through the corruption of Milton Obote, the madness of Idi Amin, and more recently the savagery of Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). This last tragedy seems to have affected Brother Onyango the most, understandably as Kony is a member of Brother Onyango’s tribe, the Acholi in Northern Uganda. …

http://www.ldsmag.com/church/article/7455?ac=1

Missionary zeal defines Young Men group

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. …

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. …

We believe that there must and will be a significant future for those of African descent in the Church, and far greater prominence in the leadership than we see today. But it won’t come without full acknowledgment of the complexities that always attend race issues, and some bold approaches to the challenges before us. …

See http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/The-Colorful-LDS-Future-The-Future-of-those-of-African-Descent-in-the-Mormon-Church.html

After arising at 4:50 each school-day morning, 16-year-old Sonia Brown leaves home at 5:25 to make her way by Chicago Transit Authority bus and train through the streets of the third-largest city in the U.S. Her destination: seminary class. …

http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/58913/An-early-morning-start-for-seminary-students-in-Chicago.html

Randall Silas is the new bishop of a Hattiesburg congregation of The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints…

…Silas said he hopes his new position will encourage other blacks to
explore the Mormon church, but “I would hope that no one would base
their spiritual …

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20090829/LIFESTYLE/908290329

 Part 3
http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2009/05/12-questions-for-marvin-perkins-part-three/

While the U.S. is generally considered a highly religious nation, African-Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole, including level of affiliation with a religion, attendance at religious services, frequency of prayer and religion’s importance in life.

See A Religious Portrait of African-Americans by The Pew Forum.