Marcell Noble's Book of Mormon Dream in the Desert — the Revelation That Planted the Church in Swakopmund, Namibia

In 2006, Hans Adolf Marcell Noble had been serving as president of the Windhoek Branch in Namibia for four years — a difficult period in which the Windhoek meetinghouse's classroom section had been destroyed by an arsonist's fire and rebuilt under his oversight.

One night, Marcell dreamed he was walking in a desert with wind blowing sand all around him. Suddenly the wind stopped, and before him in the sand he saw a blue book — the Book of Mormon. The next morning he shared the dream with his wife, Dorothy, and together they knelt in prayer to understand its meaning. They had been considering a move for some time, and they felt the dream was directing them to move to Swakopmund, a coastal city 320 kilometers west of Windhoek at the edge of the Namib Desert's famous sand dunes.

There was no branch of the Church in Swakopmund, but before the family moved, the mission president authorized them to hold sacrament meetings in their home. The Nobles contacted three member families in the area and invited them to attend. Though they felt isolated at times — making weekly trips to Windhoek and feeling neglected by distant Church leaders — they prayed for help and felt the answer was to "get their own house in order." The family began an intensive study of the gospel, reading each morning and listening to the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants audiobooks until, over several years, they had read or listened to both books in their entirety.

As they studied "men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause" (D&C 58:27), the family worked with local members and missionaries to build up the Church in Swakopmund. The small group grew steadily, and on March 8, 2015, a branch was organized in Swakopmund with Marcell Noble as its branch president — the fruit of a dream that came amid blowing desert sand.