Members Voices
Gabin from Gabon
It was autumn of 1997 and Gabin Mendene had just passed the baccalaureate examinations at his high school in Libreville, the capital city of Gabon. This was a great personal achievement, and he looked forward to a continuation of his studies at the university level. He was hoping to take advantage of a scholarship program that years before had been created by the government of this French-speaking African country. The program sponsored college-eligible students who were accepted at a public or private university anywhere in the world.
Gabin had applied to, and had been accepted at, L’institut Supérieur Industriel à Mons, a technical university in the southern Belgian city of Mons. The government’s scholarship would provide tuition, supplies, housing, and food assistance. He also received a one-way airline ticket for the 8,000-mile journey from Libreville to Brussels. The return ticket would be sent to him after graduation.
For the next four years he studied in an electrical engineering program and upon his graduation in 2002, Gabin prepared to return to Libreville. His program of study was finished, and he had received the last of his scholarship funds. He communicated with the program office in Gabon about his return airline ticket and was surprised to learn that due to bureaucratic complications, funding for his return airfare would be delayed. Gabin was crushed and felt completely stranded in a very difficult situation. He had no money, no place to live, and no prospect of finding even a temporary job since he was living in Belgium with a student visa.
It was during this period of struggle that he met two young men, Elder Roueché and Elder Marin, in Charleroi, Belgium. They taught him about the Book of Mormon and about the gospel of Jesus Christ. “These were some of the craziest ideas I had ever heard—angels, gold plates, and prophets living in our modern times,” Gabin recalls. After a few lessons, the missionaries invited him to go to the Charleroi Ward with them. Gabin protested, “I did not want to go to church with them.” But he finally told the missionaries that he would go to church once, and then he wanted them to leave him alone.
The following Sunday, they met on the sidewalk in front of the Charleroi chapel and walked through the front door. To this day, Gabin remembers the moment when his feet touched the carpeting inside the building. He heard a voice—more of an electrified feeling, really—telling him that this was a place where he belonged. After church services were over, he told the elders that he wanted to be baptized. This happened not long afterward.
Meanwhile, Gabin’s return ticket to Libreville remained undetermined. Fortunately, the kind-hearted Havrenne family, members of the Charleroi Ward, invited Gabin to live at their home in Erquelines, a small town near Charleroi, while his situation in Gabon was being resolved. After several weeks, his hosts insisted that he stay and proposed to have him help with the gardening around the house. “It was a difficult time in my life,” Gabin recalls. “Here I was, a trained electronics engineer with no money and no job—stranded in Belgium, pruning bushes and pulling weeds. But through it all I learned humility and this experience was one of the best lessons in my life.”
By 2005, Gabin still worked for his room and board as a gardener—and he was still struggling with the government of Gabon to organize his return. His Belgian student visa had long-since expired. In limited correspondence with his older brother in Libreville, Gabin learned that his family was very discouraged by the situation and desperately wanted him to return home.
By this time, he had received the Melchizedek Priesthood and had been ordained an elder. He also received his patriarchal blessing. In separate interviews, his bishop and stake president asked if he might be interested in serving a full-time mission. Gabin responded, “Yes, I would.” A missionary application was completed and submitted—and a few weeks later Gabin received his mission call from Salt Lake City. He was instructed to enter the missionary training centre on 20 June 2006—and then report to the Brussels Belgium Mission—a mere 60 kilometers from where he was then living.
Missionary preparation began in earnest and Gabin went to The Hague Netherlands Temple where he received his endowment. He was anxious to serve the next two years as a full-time missionary, but after having informed his family in Libreville of his plans, they became angry with him. They could not understand why he was interested in running off on a mission. “You must return home”, he was told. “After all, we supported you and it is selfish not to return home to help out the family.” Gabin became conflicted and during this personal struggle, he met with President Kevin S. Hamilton, who at the time was President of the Brussels Belgium Mission and who was to become his mission president. He asked for advice and counsel. President Hamilton, told him, “Trust in God—things happen for a reason. Everything will turn out all right, but in unexpected ways”.
A few days before his departure—and in a twist of fate that can only be understood by going forward in time to several years later—Gabin received two official letters in the mail. One, from the government of Belgium, indicated it had recently discovered that he was living in Belgium on an expired student visa and ordered him to be immediately deported back to Gabon. The second letter was from Libreville—and included his return airline ticket.
The stake president recommended that Gabin fly home and then he would work with the missionary department in Salt Lake City to get things sorted out. So, in the spring of 2006—nine years after first having left his family in Libreville—Gabin was finally going home. He packed a suitcase, and among his personal possessions were two copies of the Book of Mormon, his mission call, DVDs of both 2004 general conferences, his patriarchal blessing, a few tithing slips, and some temple garments.
Over the next few weeks, the stake president in Charleroi worked with the missionary department in Salt Lake City to resolve this unusual situation. Things became even more complicated because in 2006 the Church was not officially recognized by the government of Gabon and no ward or stake was organized in the country. Gabin, now living in Gabon, had no local priesthood leader. The Belgian government was not prepared to issue a missionary visa due to the expiration of the student visa. Finally, a decision was made to cancel his mission call. Gabin was home to stay.
He moved in with his older brother, and during that year, found a job as an electronics technician in a local business. The dreams of his higher education were beginning to come true.
With no organized Church unit in Libreville, Gabin held unofficial meetings on Sundays and family home evenings on Mondays at his home. Some friends and a few family members attended with interest. Gabin would teach from the Book of Mormon and they would watch 2004 general conference sessions.
Throughout this time, Internet services inside Gabon were unreliable and costly—and accessing websites outside the country was almost impossible. From time to time, Gabin was able to access Church websites and download a general conference talk or two. These he would print out and add to his Sunday “lesson plans”.
In 2008, he met Fleur and fell deeply in love. Gabin remembers, “I found a girl!” Fleur had a daughter, Eve, and he fell in love with her, too. Fleur and Eve usually attended a local Protestant congregation, but throughout their courtship, he taught them missionary lessons. They started attending his Sunday meetings and family home evenings on Mondays. Gabin and Fleur were married in 2013 in a civil ceremony.
At the beginning of 2014, Gabin found an article online reporting that Elder David A. Bednar, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, had a few months earlier been in Libreville. It was just after the Gabonese government had officially recognized the Church and had permitted the beginning of missionary activities. Elder Bednar had dedicated the country of Gabon for the preaching of the gospel and he had organized the Libreville Branch. Gabin was stunned. For more than eight years he had likely been the only endowed member of the Church living in Gabon and suddenly there was a branch organized in his home city.
Using an email address found in the article, Gabin wrote to the Africa Southeast Area office, asking questions about the Church situation in Libreville. Elie Monga, president of the Brazzaville mission in the Republic of Congo, was informed and a few days later, while at work, Gabin received a visit from Elder Michael Moody, the first senior missionary to serve in Gabon.
After their initial greeting, Gabin said to Elder Moody, “I have a few questions. First, where can I pay my tithing?” For more than eight years, Gabin had carefully kept his tithing money in a small box.
“Second,” he asked, “Where can I buy new temple garments? Eight years ago, I brought a few to Libreville, and every night since I have been carefully hand washing them.” Elder Moody went to the car, opened his suitcase, and gave Gabin a brand-new pair of garments that he had been prompted to pack in his travel case that morning.
The next Sunday, Gabin, Fleur, Eve, Gabin’s nephew Yann, plus Annaïck and Pauline, Fleur’s nieces were six of the ten people sitting in the Libreville Branch sacrament meeting. Fleur was taught the missionary lessons and shortly afterward was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church. And so were Eve, Yann, Annaïck, and Pauline.
In 2015, Gabin adopted Eve. And later that year the three of them—Gabin, Fleur, and Eve—flew to Johannesburg, South Africa, where this unlikely story concludes with significant eternal consequences. Fleur received her endowment, she and Gabin were sealed together, and Eve was sealed to them both in the Johannesburg South Africa Temple.
Epilogue
In 2016, Elie Monga, president of the Republic of Congo Brazzaville Mission, travelled to Libreville to preside over a division of the Libreville Branch. Gabin Mendene was called to serve as president of the Libreville 2nd Branch. Shortly afterward, while attending district conference, Elder Kevin S. Hamilton—former Brussels Belgium mission president and now a General Authority Seventy and president of the Africa Southeast Area—looked out from his seat on the rostrum. And sitting there in the middle of the congregation was someone he had not seen in ten years—a patient man with an extraordinary conversion story and a church pioneer in Africa—Gabin from Gabon.