Lit in Review: Case Studies about LDS in Africa

Martinich, author of the LDS Church Growth blog, has published a series of case studies on the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints globally, including on opening new cities for missionary work in general and two case studies in Ghana and Ethiopia showing how that was done specifically. Of interest to me, he recommends leaders use cost-benefit analysis in determining where new cities should be opened as part of the "homework" required for the revelatory process.

In Sunyani, Ghana, there were previously no members of the church in late 2010 when 6 young missionaries and one senior couple were sent in to form three "groups" (very small congregations ... yes, very small) in a city of less than 100,000. In the course of one year they had not only turned two of them into "branches" (small, but self-sustaining congregations, in this case around 50 people attending each week) but a fourth congregation had also been formed. The branches are being led by local leadership instead of missionaries.

In Awasa, Ethiopia, one family had been meeting since 2003 but did not become a branch until 2008 (average attendance about 20). When full-time missionaries were assigned in mid-2010, attendance rocketed from 20 to 70 by the end of the year. There are now four congregations there, though attendance has been highly variable and most of the members appear to be under the age of 21. Some local religious leaders also joined the Church during this time period. The groups are still heavily dependent on the missionaries for leadership and training.

In other posts, Martinich reports on recent Church growth in Sierra Leone and the temporary removal of senior missionary couples from the Democratic Republic of Congo following the election violence last month.

Big Bag of Agriculture, Health, and Development

At a Cornell presentation (I'm at it now and have been tweeting its notes), Duxbury argued that we are leaving a LOT of crop productivity on the table by not following pretty basic techniques and that there are still some pretty gaping holes in our knowledge. He called into question the notion of "unproductive soils" in Africa, calling the notion "fantasy." It just means we haven't figured out what the real constraints are. In several trials on the effects of adding phosphorous, there was a modest improvement on the expeirmental plot, but there was a hugely productive section in the middle of the field straddling the experimental and control plots. In more difficult solutions, he encouraged eliminating flood irrigation, improving education, better small scale machinery (where are the agricultural engineers?), more effort on grain and multipurpose legumes, more attention to year-round supply of fruits and vegetables. Farmers know what they do and why; they lack knowledge about change.

Haddad's presentation at the IFPRI Conference on "Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health" focused on how to get there. His major points were that

• we have very few impact evaluations to guide us (out of 307 studies, only one tenth even attempted an impact study);
• increasing women's participation in the process will improve the connections between ag policies and nutrition (half of studies find no difference between men and women, the other half find more male access);
• "To intertwine nutrition and agriculture, it will help to have professionals who have an appreciation for both, even if they only have expertise in one or the other. ... what we have shows some demand for nutritionists (in Norway at least) who can think outside of the nutrition box and that agriculture students in the US will not learn about international agriculture unless it forms part of their core curriculum." 

I think that first sentence is one of the best descriptions of my ideal for multi-disciplinarity: appreciating what another profession can bring to the table while grounded in a firm set of tools you can bring. Duxbury noted how the tenure process discourages inter-disciplinarity that would improve crop diversity. "I'm not in favor of multidisciplinary specialists: you don't know enough of any one."

Haddad also lists the six men being considered for the new head of FAO:

Miracle in Sierra Leone

I was most fascinated to read the following account today about some of the first Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in Sierra Leone. The first converts in Freetown were baptized in 1988. By 1990 there were a number of LDS congregations with chapels, including several in Bo, second largest city in Sierra Leone. But then in January 1991, Ezra Taft Benson - then president of the church - sent a letter to the local leadership, Brother Touray,

in which he asked the Saints in Bo to abandon their meetinghouses and to gather again in their homes to worship. The young leaders were very discouraged, feeling that the buildings were such an important milestone for the Church in this part of Sierra Leone.
Uniformly, members were disappointed and unhappy about the request. Some members of the infant congregations were offended that the prophet in Utah would give such unwelcome advice. Others were heard to question whether or not the prophet understood their circumstances, and, lacking faith in the Lord's servants, they left the Church. Others felt the stirring of testimony and confirmation of the Spirit, and while they didn't understand why President Benson would ask such a thing, they knew him to be a prophet. They had also come to trust their mission president who they loved. President Touray spoke recently of those days with grateful appreciation. He was sad and discouraged, but "recognized that we had been given a formal commandment, and I had to obey. I realized it would be very important for us to obey although I did not know why at the time." The chapel doors were closed.
In March 1991, civil war erupted in Sierra Leone and this little nation became engulfed in a fiery battle that lasted more than a decade. Communities collapsed, infrastructures deteriorated, banks were shuttered, food was in scarce supply and repeated military coups left uncertainty as to who was a friend or foe. Churches were frequently targeted by the rebels with bullets and firebombs, and thousands of people lost their lives while sitting on pews hoping to pray and worship.
But the members of the Lord's Church were safe from this harm for they were home worshiping in obedience to a prophet's counsel.
President Touray spoke of the miracle that had come to the people because of their obedience. "No member of the Church died in Bo during the war — not one. The LDS Church was the only church that continued operating during the war in Bo — the only one. Every other church closed its doors. It was too dangerous for the people to walk to church and too dangerous to sit and worship. None of us (the Latter-day Saints) had any problem during the war. We worshipped through the whole war no matter how grave the situation was. Because we were obedient, our members received this great blessing."