The Church in Togo
Togo is a country in West Africa on the Gulf of Guinea. The organization of the Church began in 1997, with a branch being formed in 1999. In 2000, the Church gained legal recognition from Togo’s government. By 2014, the Church grew large enough to organize its first stake.
History of the Church in Togo
In the 1980s, a few dozen Togolese people joined the Church while living abroad. It was not until the mid-1990s, however, that a man named Dieudonné Attiogbe brought those who had returned to Togo into contact with each other. As a result of their efforts, the first Church group in Togo was officially organized in 1997. With encouragement and support from Saints in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, the group developed into a branch by 1999. The next year, the Church gained legal recognition from Togo’s government.
The first district in Togo was organized in Lomé in 2009; just four years later it became a stake. “Where rapid growth sometimes comes at the cost of maturity and depth, that is not the case in Lomé,” Elder Terence M. Vinson of the Africa West Area Presidency observed at the time. Saints in Togo heeded the scriptural call for Zion to “strengthen [its] stakes and enlarge [its] borders” (Moroni 10:31), and as a result, a second stake was organized in 2017.
Stories of Faith
More Areas of the Church
Notes
- Black, Peter M. “A History of the Latter-day Saint Church in Benin, 2009–2011.” Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
- Maki, Elizabeth. “‘The Lord Has Prepared the Ground’: Nigerian Arrives Just in Time to Build Church in Benin,” history.ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
- Notre Témoignage: L’histoire de pionniers saints des derniers jours en Afrique de l’ouest (video). Africa West Area, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
- Sono-Koree, Charles. Africa West Area Historic Sites and Some Pioneers: The Church in Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Togo/Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone, circa 2012. Church History Library, Salt Lake City.