Hundreds of Latter-day Saint Youth Attend the First FSY Conference Held in Tanzania

More than 300 young members and friends of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ages 14 to 18 participated in a For the Strength of Youth (FSY) conference in Tanzania during 26-30 June 2023.

The FSY conference was held at the Korogwe Teachers College in Korogwe, located in a picturesque area 280 km north of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The youth came from Church congregations throughout this beautiful east African country. This was the first FSY conference ever held in Tanzania.

For five days the youth attended inspiring devotionals, classes, workshops, and activities, which helped them to strengthen their faith in Jesus Christ and learn how to “hear Him.” The conference theme was taken from Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ.”

Elder Thierry K. Mutombo, First Counselor in the Africa Central Area Presidency, spoke during an inspiring devotional. He urged the youth to use their divine potential to meet their challenges which are becoming increasingly forceful over time. Elder Mutombo testified to the youth that Jesus Christ cares for them and will help them during difficult times. Elder Mutombo also led the youth in a tree planting service project.

Conference participant Dunstan Julius Kwagilwa said, “it was a great blessing to be here. FSY has helped me grow spiritually. I’ve made new friends from around Tanzania. The FamilySearch activity was really fun and helped us set a goal to seal our families in the temple. And I enjoyed the food! Seriously, the food was really great.”

During the conference, Jean Claude Mabaya and Robert Ouko Opiyo from FamilySearch Africa gave a two-hour presentation on family history to 305 youth, including 48 nonmembers. Their goal was to get the youth more involved in creating their family trees and uploading names to their FamilySearch accounts.

The youth learned about the importance of temples and doing their family history work. After the presentation they were grouped into companies and provided with a keepsake tree to fill in their family names and answer a series of questions on the back of the page.

Brothers Mabaya and Opiyo helped the youth with computer accounts to add names to their FamilySearch accounts. At the end, each of the youth was given a lapel pin of either the Johannesburg temple or an illustration of a temple.

This was the first FSY to be held in the Africa Central Area in the summer of 2023. Upcoming FSY conferences will gather hundreds of youth in Lubumbashi, DR Congo (10-14 July); Likasi, DR Congo (17-21 July); Mbuji-Mayi, DR Congo (24-28 July); Kinshasa, DR Congo (31 July-4 August, and 7-11 August); Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo (14-18 August); and Kigali, Rwanda (21-25 August).