The following is excerpted from the Church Newsroom. To read the full story, CLICK HERE.
“We are on the front edge of the gospel in the Africa Central Area,” said Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as he concluded a five-country ministry to East and Central Africa on Sunday, November 2, 2025.
“Everything that we’re doing here is putting in place a foundation for the Church to grow strong and be healthy and bring many, many more souls to the Lord Jesus Christ,” said the Apostle.
The senior Church leader was joined by his wife, Melanie; Elder Kevin R. Duncan of the Presidency of the Seventy and his wife, Nancy; and members of the Africa Central Area Presidency.
In the Republic of the Congo, Elder Rasband spent time with young adults at the Church-sponsored BYU–Pathway Global Education Center in Brazzaville on Friday, October 31, one of four centers worldwide. Students in the BYU–Pathway Worldwide program receive a spiritually based education available online.
“As I went from room to room, they were packed with students. They’re not only there for Pathway, but they’re there for institute,” said Elder Rasband. “It was a joy for me to see how members and nonmembers are responding to the invitation to learn English.”
Other Global Education Centers are in Nigeria, the Philippines and South Africa.
MTC Dedication
The Apostle crossed the Congo River by boat for his final stop in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he met with local Church leaders. It’s one of the fastest-growing areas of the Church of Jesus Christ, with new missions announced and Sunday’s dedication of a missionary training center (MTC) in Kinshasa by Elder Rasband.
“Many young converts are of missionary age, and they want to go on missions. And so, this MTC in the Congo will cater more to the Congolese missionaries,” he explained.
“We have missionaries come from other parts of Africa as well, coming here to learn to speak French, or we have some French speakers learning English,” added President Myles Proudfoot, mission leader at the Democratic Republic of the Congo MTC.
“I’ve been learning so many things about the English language,” explained Elder Khalifa Kikuli, a missionary from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who will serve in the South Africa Johannesburg Mission.
“I felt honored to be part of the missionaries who witnessed the dedication,” expressed Elder Deniel Siles Acquaah, who will be serving a mission in Cameroon. “And being the first Ghanaian missionary to be trained in the Kinshasa MTC. Elder Acquaah is the first missionary from Ghana to train at the new missionary training center.
To read the full story from the Church Newsroom, CLICK HERE.
