Moses Mahlangu: Fourteen Years of Waiting in Soweto (South Africa, 1960s–1980)

Moses Mahlangu was a preacher from Soweto, South Africa, who was introduced to the Book of Mormon sometime in the 1960s. Though apartheid laws then restricted black South Africans from attending public meetings with white members, he recognized the truth and waited. Brother Mahlangu, whom E. Dale LeBaron likened to an Elias preparing the way, waited for more than fourteen years—preparing himself and others for baptism through the long years when the ordinances could not yet come to them. When at last the way opened, in 1980 he and his family were baptized, and he was ordained to the priesthood and made a counselor in the elder's quorum presidency. His eyes welled with tears as he said softly, 'I have waited for fourteen years.' His life is a faith-promoting witness of the faithful who, in the hardest of circumstances, wait upon the Lord and are at length remembered and blessed.