The room was overcapacity, and Christie knew it. The addition of her family to the congregation that gathered at the small meeting place put the small room close to bursting.
So she offered her home as a solution.
With a husband employed by the State Department, Christie’s family was used to being in geographical flux, living transiently and moving from time to time, transfer to transfer.
“Part of the lifestyle that we have . . . we have to be flexible. We are flexible in what housing we are going to have, in what schools the kids are going to go to, with what our neighborhoods are going to look like, what are friends are going to be. We are always flexible,” she said.
The country of Senegal, Christie’s new home, however, was a unique challenge, especially in regards to worship. At the time of their move, the Church had not yet been officially established in the country.
“We have learned . . . to look at the barebones of a situation and say: What really is important about what we are doing now? And we have had to do that with our church attendance and with our church worship and how we live the gospel.”
Volunteering their house as the new congregational meeting spot for their Latter-day Saint neighbors was a large step, one which Christie’s family felt prompted to take.
“That was kind of how it started, and we knew that when we offered it up that it would be kind of a long-term thing,” she said.
And as they acted in accordance with God’s will, the family and the congregation were added to in miraculous ways, from people they didn’t know accepting invitations to their house to returned missionaries being directed to their area, the family knows they witnessed first-hand God’s work moving forward.
Listen to the full podcast below to hear how the Church became officially established in Senegal.