The Colorful LDS Future

The late Jacob Abel Chirwa, from Zambia, discussed these inevitable changes in an interview with Margaret Young in 2009:

I have always felt that there hasn't been enough encouragement for local artists to showcase their talent . . . One reason for this is the belief inculcated in the people that the only approved art com[es] from Utah. And so we sit to watch videos of stories of conversions as our missionaries do their work. This is well and good but I feel that watching a local missionary at work in any outside place would impact . . . our youth. I work in situations that expose me to a lot of challenges vis-à-vis the perception of the church in the eyes of the outside community, but all they see is me with no back up information in either print or electronic media. (Chirwa)

Chirwa's suggestion that the youth of Africa would be inspired by pictures of African missionaries, or stories in which the protagonist is African, bears consideration. As it happens, his own son was serving a mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the time Jacob wrote his observation. That son survived malaria and chicken pox during his mission, and then, near the end of his two years, learned that his father had died. Though Jacob Chirwa couldn't have predicted it, his own son's story could well be one that the LDS media decides to focus on, or be among many that get told in some future General Conference.

Indeed, we predict that in twenty years, General Conference will still include the standard pioneer stories we're accustomed to, but will be heavily peppered with stories from other nations, and from Africa in particular. The calling of Elder Sitati (from Kenya) to the First Quorum of the Seventy is significant, and will surely be followed by many more callings of Africans to serve not just in Africa, but in other areas of the world, including Salt Lake City.

We hope all things; we believe all things. We have seen the strength of so many Saints of color and know that their future, and ours, is being made better than our mutual past. As we become one in Christ, all of our histories and voices will participate in our legacy. Empowered and enlivened by divine harmony, we will all sing the song of redeeming love together. 

That is our vision of the future.

Darius Gray was a counselor in the presidency of the LDS Church's Genesis Group when it was formed in 1971 and served as its president from 1997 to 2003. Gray was also the director of the Freedmens Bank Records project for the church's Family History Department. He is a speaker on African-American genealogy, blacks in the Bible and blacks in the LDS Church.

Margaret Young is an author, filmmaker, and writing instructor affiliated with Brigham Young University.

Young and Gray have previously collaborated on a trilogy of award-winning books about African American Latter-day Saints called Standing on the Promises, and the documentary Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons.