Latter-day Saint histories tell us that residents of Nigeria and Ghana learned something about the Restoration in the early 1950s and began writing letters asking for more information and for the sending of missionaries to Africa. In response, Glen G. Fisher of the South African Mission visited central Africa in 1960, and LaMar Williams of the Missionary Department in Salt Lake City visited Nigeria in 1961, both men gathering information and gauging the sincerity of those who had written to ask for a Church presence there.
Africans had been writing such letters even earlier than generally reported, though. As early as 1945, O.J. Umondak of Uyo, Nigeria corresponded with the South African Mission and with Church offices in Salt Lake, pleading for the visit of missionaries.
The South African office told Mr. Umondak that the Church did not have enough missionaries to be able to send them everywhere. It’s true that there were far, far fewer missionaries in 1945 than there are in 2016, and in the immediate post-war years, when missionaries were needed in Europe and South America and in the Pacific to strengthen and reopen missions that had been closed during the war, there were very few elders available. I haven’t been able to find a reliable number of elders in 1945 or 1946. But surely there were more than eleven?
Mr. Umondak thought so. “I would say,” he wrote, “that the reason is not quite passable – for Christ commissioned ‘only yet” eleven Apostles to go into all the world and preach his gospel which they obeyed and the work was spiritually blessed.”
He appealed for missionaries to “start this great work of saving these lost souls for Christ. This is truly God’s call; make an attempt, your work will be blessed by the Owner of the Vine Yard.”
In a later letter, Mr. Umondak reminded the Church again that the “fewness of missionaries” could not excuse the neglect of people who were earnestly seeking the gospel. “Your last letter was read in a congregation of twenty-five villages who prayed for immediate success.”
It would be another generation before the prayers of those many villages were answered. I do not know whether Mr. Umondak lived to see missionaries and be baptized – but his faith, and his willingness to school Church leaders on their responsibilities in the “Vine Yard,” may have played a part in the eventual fulfillment of those prayers.
Today there are 7 wards and 8 branches in the Uyo, Nigeria Stake.
Wonderful story Ardis. Thank you for sharing. Someone needs to tell Margaret Blair Young about this post. I know that she has studied the history of the Church in Africa in some detail she may know morw about this story, and if not, I’m sure that she would want to know about it
Very interesting.
Do the letters reveal how Umondak first learned about the church?
That isn’t mentioned in the letters I found, Niklas — it’s an incomplete series. Would be fascinating to know, though.
Another great and important find, Ardis. Thanks.
Like many Latter-day Saints, I had heard about such letters having been written. But actually to hold one of them, and see the handwriting and read the name of the writer, was a profound moment in this researcher’s life.
That would be a profound moment. And thank you for sharing it with us.
Thanks for sharing this. Please keep us updated if you run across more information about this man.