NAIROBI, Kenya — On the afternoon of Tuesday, Feb. 17, 1998, President Gordon B. Hinckley met with nearly 900 Latter-day Saints — including some who had traveled for days by bus from Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda — in a large hotel conference room in Nairobi, Kenya.
It was the first visit to Kenya and East Africa by a president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and more members wanted to attend but lacked the funds. Others pooled their resources to send representatives so they could return and share the experience.
During his remarks, President Hinckley promised that as members are faithful, the Church “will grow and grow and grow” in that part of the world, the Church News reported. After telling the members he had announced a temple for Ghana, President Hinckley spoke of a future house of the Lord in Kenya.
“There isn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that the time will come, if you will walk in faith and patience, that a temple will be built in this land to serve the needs of this people. Now, don’t count on it for a few years ... but it will be so.”
Emphasizing that the gospel is for all people, President Hinckley also said: “The Lord loves you. He wants to help you, He wants to honor you. He wants to bless you, and He will do it. And your numbers will grow, and you will rejoice in the Spirit of the living Christ, the sweet and wonderful Spirit which becomes the bedrock of this work of faith.”
Elder Joseph W. Sitati, an emeritus General Authority Seventy who was then serving as the Church’s first district president in Kenya, believed the Prophet, but would he live to see it? At that time, he said, the district was struggling and the nearest temple was in Johannesburg, South Africa — a distance of more than 1,800 miles by air.
“We knew the time would come when that would happen, but we did not imagine it would happen in our lifetime,” he told the Church News.
Less than 30 years later, it’s happening.
Elder Ulisses Soares of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will dedicate the Nairobi Kenya Temple on Sunday, May 18, with the single dedicatory session to be broadcast to all units throughout the temple district.
The Nairobi Kenya Temple is the first house of the Lord built in Kenya and the second in East Africa, following the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple, dedicated in 2019.
‘Built for a purpose’
Speaking to news media at the start of the temple open house on April 14, Elder Thierry K. Mutombo, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Africa Central Area, said, “The temple is literally the house of the Lord.”
“It’s not built to be seen — it’s built for a purpose: to worship the Lord, to learn more about God’s plan and to receive strength to live as disciples of Jesus Christ," said Elder Mutombo in the Africa Newsroom report.
Before Elder Mutombo’s father joined the Church, he had a dream that fueled a desire to enter the house of the Lord. His father’s dream also instilled in Elder Mutombo a lifelong love for the temple, beginning at age 9. He quoted the words of the Primary hymn “I Love To See the Temple,” noting how the temple connects families and deepens faith.
Following the open house, which ended May 3, Elder Paul B. Pieper, a General Authority Seventy and first counselor in the Africa Centra Area, noted the impact the Nairobi temple has already had on members and visitors alike.
“The most important thing I have observed is that many members of the Church have been able to feel the spirit of the temple for the first time. I have personally heard several members say that after feeling what they felt, they are going to prepare to receive their temple ordinances,” he wrote in an email to the Church News.
“I think we have all been surprised to see how many friends who attended the temple felt the Spirit and asked to know more about the Church. It has given members a new energy to invite friends and family to learn about the Church. One of those we invited is being taught by the missionaries and is loving what she is learning.”
Elder Pieper wrote the temple has created an “excitement” that has reached far beyond Nairobi to western Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
“Many have organized buses to attend the open house with friends and family,” he wrote. “It has been wonderful to see their faith and testimonies grow as they experience the sacred atmosphere in the temple.”
Elder Pieper also wrote that for many years, rumors have circulated about the teachings and worship of the Church. The building of the temple and open house have provided opportunities for members to answer questions and inform others, changing significant misperceptions and correcting false information about the Church.
“The temple has brought a great power and spirit that is strengthening the faith of members and is reaching out from Nairobi to people and places throughout East Africa,” he wrote.
Elder George K. Munene, an Area Seventy, explained how unlike chapels, the temple is the most sacred place on earth, where individuals can receive sacred ordinances and covenants and be sealed together as families.
“The dedication of a temple marks a historic moment, not just for Church members but for the entire community,” he stated. “It signifies growth, faith and a lasting commitment to serving God and our neighbors.”
Church history in Kenya
Small groups of American expatriate Latter-day Saints began worshipping in each other’s homes in Nairobi during the early 1960s and operating as a branch from 1967 to 1970, according to records on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
This practice continued over the next 20 years, with members often inviting their friends and neighbors to their meetings, sharing Church literature and teaching the gospel in small, private ways. During this time, Kenyans living abroad also encountered Latter-day Saints, and some were baptized.
Following the announcement of the Church’s 1978 revelation, which extended the priesthood to all worthy male members, Ebisiba and Elizaphan Osaka and their two oldest children, Margaret and Jairo, were the first Kenyans to be baptized in Kenya, in 1979.
A year later, the first missionaries to serve in Kenya, L. Farrell and Blanche McGhie, arrived in Nairobi and began the long process of registering the Church with the Kenyan government.
Within two years, the first district was created with branches in Nairobi and Kiboko.
More than 180 native Kenyans had joined the Church by the end of 1987, but Church leaders were concerned about jeopardizing efforts to obtain official recognition. As a result, in July 1989, the Church stopped all missionary lessons, suspended baptisms and withdrew all foreign missionaries. Elder Sitati was named the Church’s presiding elder for Kenya.
Along with the Church’s formal applications, members lobbied government leaders in support of registration. Elder Sitati also organized a fast among members in Kenya.
These efforts eventually led to a meeting with the president of Kenya, and the Church received official recognition from the Kenyan government in February 1991. Elder Sitati remembers how he felt when he learned the Church was legally registered.
“That was like a bolt of lightning,” he said.
In July of that year, the Church organized the Kenya Nairobi Mission, which then covered Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and later Ethiopia.
In October 1991, Elder James E. Faust, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, visited Nairobi and dedicated Kenya for the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The first permanent Church-built chapel in East Africa — for the Langata Branch in Nairobi — was completed in 1994. A stake center in the Buruburu area was also completed a short time later.
As the Church grew steadily in the following decade, a full translation of the Book of Mormon was published in Swahili, a language spoken in Kenya and countries across East Africa, in 2000.
On Sept. 9, 2001, the Nairobi Kenya Stake — the first in East Africa — was organized, with Elder Sitati as its president.
President Thomas S. Monson announced a temple for Nairobi — the Church’s first temple in Kenya — during the April 2017 general conference.
President Russell M. Nelson, accompanied by then-Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, visited Nairobi as part of a global tour in April 2018 and spoke to 2,000 eastern African Latter-day Saints in a devotional.
Elder Sitati, then a General Authority Seventy and Africa Central Area president, presided at the Nairobi temple groundbreaking on Sept. 11, 2021. He invited the rising generation in East Africa “to look at the temple that will come up in this site as their temple. This is the place they will get married; this is the place where they will make covenants that will bless them for all eternity.”
In December 2024, the Church facilitated a Giving Machine in Nairobi.
Today there are more than 22,000 Latter-day Saints in more than 70 congregations across Kenya.
