The Gathering of Saints in Rwanda

In 2002, Nelson and Sapna Samuel moved from Bangalore, India, to Kigali, Rwanda. Though there had been a few members of record living in Rwanda in the 1980s and 1990s, the Samuels did not find anyone else to worship with when they first arrived. They held meetings on their own for several years before other Latter-day Saints came to Rwanda.

In 2007, Nelson and Sapna offered their home as a meeting place for the small but growing group of Saints in Kigali. At first, there were 10 members in the little group, including the Samuels’s infant son. Jean Pierre Ndikumana, a Congolese Latter-day Saint working as a doctor in Butare, rode four to eight hours on a bus each week to services. Another Congolese member named Justin also attended. Eric and Kathy Hyde, an American couple, had a daughter and son who were the only Latter-day Saint youth in the group. And Fabien Hatangimbabazi, who had joined the Church while visiting the United States, was the group’s first Rwandan, served on the country’s supreme court.

Though a moratorium on the registration of new churches in Rwanda stood in the way of launching formal missionary work or obtaining a meetinghouse, the Saints longed to see a branch created. As they continued to meet, the Lord gathered other Rwandan Saints to Kigali from different parts of the earth.

Yvonne Martin, who joined the Church in Scotland, arrived in November 2007 and began sharing the gospel with her friends. Jean Marie and Agathe Rumanyika, who had met missionaries in Missouri before business interests brought them back to Kigali, came in time to offer their home and, later, their hotel to host meetings as the group outgrew the Samuel home. Ruth Opar, a returned missionary, and former Relief Society president who had joined the Church in Kenya, came back to see if Kigali would be a good place to settle her family. The Kigali Branch was organized on March 16, 2008. Later that month Joshua Opar—Ruth’s husband and a former bishop—moved into the branch with their children.

That August, branch members traveled to Lake Muhazi, about an hour outside of Kigali, to hold the first baptisms in the country. A friend of Yvonne Martin named Damascene Ruhinyura and Mercy Opar, daughter of Ruth and Joshua, became the first people to be baptized in the country.

Over the next two years, the small branch could barely keep up with the demand for teaching and baptizing. They were soon baptizing 10 new converts each month. Among those baptized were John Hakizimana, Eric Habiyaremye, Dady Paul Hakizimana, Vincent Munanira, and others who had each lost their families in the ethnic violence of the early 1990s and had lived on the streets or in various makeshift orphanages for more than a decade.

These young men formed the foundation of the first Aaronic Priesthood quorum in the Kigali Branch. “As these young men learned to serve their brothers and sisters,” Branch President Eric Hyde observed, “they found that they were part of a family that loved them, and they had a home.”

In 2010, the first missionaries arrived in Rwanda. Brent and Cheri Andrus from Park City, Utah, USA, began missionary service in February of that year. Their assignment was to organize a humanitarian action plan for the country as well as support the existing small branch. Approximately 40–50 people were meeting in the basement of the Okapi Hotel owned by the Ruminika’s.

There were many unbaptized people attending Sunday services who were friends and family of members. Elder and Sister Andrus immediately began teaching the missionary lessons before and after Sunday services. In June, a baptism of twelve was performed at the branch’s new meetinghouse in Kimihurura. That same month, the Hydes left Rwanda and Joshua Opar was called to be branch president.

In 2011 the first missionary from Rwanda, Jackson Ndayambaje, was called to serve in the South Africa Johannesburg Mission. Another important step in the progression of the Church in those early years was the translation of the Book of Mormon. The first young missionaries didn’t arrive in Rwanda until 2012. In that year, the second Kigali branch was organized. A third branch was formed in 2013.