HARARE, Zimbabwe — Sean Donnelly has not just witnessed four decades of growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Zimbabwe, he’s been an active participant in it.
That spans from being baptized more than 40 years ago when Church membership was only some 200 members in Harare to participating as the Church’s area relations manager over Africa in preparations for and execution of several major events leading up to the Sunday, March 1, dedication of the Harare Zimbabwe Temple, the first house of the Lord in the southeastern African nation.
Rhodesian roots
Donnelly was born in 1962 in present-day Harare, then known as Salisbury, South Rhodesia. His family fled during the Rhodesian Bush War that spanned the 1970s, leaving behind a five-bedroom, well-staffed home with a swimming pool. for more humble surroundings in Ireland, given the family’s heritage.
There his parents divorced, with his mother suffering emotional challenges before she and her daughter joined the Church. She became an English Latter-day Saint — what Donnelly labeled as “a double whammy” during a volatile era of political and religious turmoil in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
“We escaped one war and went to another,” Donnelly recalled, adding that his mother and his siblings then returned to Africa.
But Donnelly stayed, finishing his schooling and wanting nothing to do with the Church. “I was left alone at 17 to find my way and become self-reliant,” he said, adding, “I kept running from the gospel, but I was kind of scared of it because I knew I could feel its power — I was frightened of letting go and letting myself accept this thing because of the change it would bring.”
‘Now would be a good time’
Instead, Donnelly traveled the world for several years on merchant ships — avoiding the Latter-day Saint missionaries he saw in nearly every other port. Drinking and depressed, he found himself in Alexandria, Egypt, toying with the thought of ending his life by jumping overboard.
Weeping, kneeling and falling on his face, he thought of his mother and sister in Africa and pleaded: “Oh, God, if you are here, now would be a good time, because I don’t know if I can make it through the night.”
He recalled: “I had never said a prayer like that. We had always said Catholic prayers. But the next day, the dawn rose, and the light in my life changed quickly.”
He soon made his way to Harare, Zimbabwe, the city’s and country’s new names after gaining independence in 1980. There he found about 200 Latter-day Saints in a branch and a new companionship of missionaries — Elder Jeff Flake and Elder Peter Chaya, the former would later become a United States senator and the latter the country’s first black missionary who served despite being debilitated by polio.
The two were the third companionship in the country, with the mission then spanning South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana. Today, there are seven missions covering the same four countries, with two more to be added in July.
Conversion
Taught by Elders Flake and Chaya, Donnelly was baptized in 1983. “I went from honestly the darkest of nights, the darkest of times in my soul, to being the happiest person when I was baptized,” he recalled.
Less than a year later, he was sent on a mission to French-speaking Switzerland without any missionary training center experience or temple endowment. “I went from mariner to missionary in 11 months.”
His mother eventually remarried and moved with her husband and her other children to Mutare on Zimbabwe’s eastern border, continuing as pioneering Latter-day Saints by starting a Church group there.
With Church service in stake and ward leadership as well as presiding over the Madagascar Antananarivo Mission (2009-2012), Donnelly eventually moved to Church employment that has included area public affairs work while in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his current role at Church headquarters in Salt Lake City.
Recent events
Fast forward to late 2025 and early 2026, when Donnelly returned to Harare for the temple open house and several accompanying Church-sponsored events.
The house of the Lord in Harare will be the Church’s third house of the Lord dedicated in Africa over the past 10 months, following the Nairobi Kenya and Abidjan Ivory Coast temple dedications in May 2025.
“Each temple has built on the other, and it has seemed like in Zimbabwe, we’ve had a real crescendo,” Donnelly said.
That crescendo included family history and religious freedom events as well as the temple open house that drew a diverse range of visitors, from national leaders and media to large groups of local schoolchildren.
Nearly 120 faith leaders, scholars and civic voices representing 11 nations participated in the Jan. 16-17 Zimbabwe Religious Freedom Conference, with a guided tour of the Harare temple as part of their visits to several religious sites in the city.
On Jan. 22, Emmerson Mnangagwa, president of the Republic of Zimbabwe, along with other interfaith, government and civic leaders, toured the new temple. Other dignitaries included the vice president, ambassadors from nine nations and 11 ministers from the Zimbabwean government.
“Their experience was almost inexplicable — words can’t explain what happened and their feedback,” said Donnelly, adding that “the head of state had a very spiritual experience in the temple when the [Church] leaders prayed in the temple with him.”
Returning to Harare
The events leading up to this weekend’s temple dedication have provided many happy returns.
Flake, the returned missionary and former senator and U.S. ambassador, returned to Harare with his wife, Cheryl Flake, to serve as tour guides for ambassadors and other dignitaries at the open house. Donnelly’s sister was back home in Harare following a 40-year absence after leaving as a teenager.
Longtime members and returning former missionaries have flooded into Harare over the past several months, reconnecting and remembering and reliving past associations and experiences.
No one more so than Donnelly, who was back in Harare in late 2025 doing prep work and coordination for the early 2026 events, for which he also returned. In his pockets, he carried photos of members, missionaries and Harare’s sole meetinghouse from his early years, showing the images to others when he had the chance.
And from those early Church roots — the Donnellys and many others — the Church has grown to some 50,000 Latter-day Saints in Zimbabwe, with six stakes headquartered in the capital city alone.
“You can imagine the scenario there, the kind of joy in reuniting, of being with friends and family, going through the temple open house, showing people the temple,” he said recently from Salt Lake City.
“I can’t tell you how blessed I feel to have been there, and now that the temple is on the eve of its dedication, it really begins to matter. You know what’s happening now.”
