“Africa has been held in reserve by the Lord,” Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said in an October 2010 visit to Burundi. “Africa will someday be seen as a bright land full of gospel hope and happiness.” Africa is one of the fastest growing areas of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with some 320,000 members, the majority of whom have joined the Church over the past 30 years. They have found that hope and happiness spoken of by Elder Holland by embracing the teachings of Jesus Christ.
To accommodate such rapid growth, many are needed in lay leadership roles to maintain more than 900 congregations across the continent. As a native of Nairobi, Kenya, Elder Joseph W. Sitati served in many lay leadership positions and now is serving in the Quorum of the Seventy, a senior leadership body of the Church where members are given the title of “Elder.”
His first knowledge of the Church came through a 1985 business conversation. The meeting agenda turned from engineering to religion, and Elder Sitati discovered an entirely new approach to life in the message his colleague shared.