‘Tears’ and ‘excitement’: Idaho Latter-day Saint church gets nation’s first Swahili ward

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — Sunday marked a milestone for Treasure Valley members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: the announcement of the first Swahili-language ward in the U.S.

There are other Swahili-speaking LDS congregations around the country, but Boise’s is the first to be deemed a ward, or a geographically defined congregation of at least 125 members.

“There’s a lot of meaning there,” said W. Blake Bybee, who served as president of the Swahili-language congregation as it grew, before it became a ward. “There’s a lot of excitement.”

It all started with one church member who attended weekly services in Boise but didn’t speak English, Lonni Leavitt-Barker, a spokesperson for the church, wrote in the church’s Church News. A church leader arranged for interpretation services for the man, and the group gradually grew.

Two years ago, 25 members of the church who had moved to Idaho from Africa began to attend meetings, relying in part on a network of church members who offered rides and organized weekly meals, Leavitt-Barker wrote.

Now the ward, which meets at the Bogus Basin Chapel, at 3229 Bogus Basin Road, has nearly 200 members who attend in person. At a service on Sunday, others joined virtually from Africa, France and elsewhere in the U.S., Leavitt-Barker wrote.

Bybee told the Idaho Statesman that Denis Akulu was named a bishop at the service, marking the congregation’s transition from a smaller “branch” to a full-fledged ward. It was a moment of “tears and excitement” in a congregation where many of the members are refugees who left behind professional careers when they moved to the U.S., Bybee said.

“They had all of these amazing careers, and that was kind of stripped away from them,” he said. “In a sense, by Denis becoming the bishop, there is some of that sense of, ‘We have a new opportunity here, on a spiritual level but also just in life.’ ”

Akulu spent years living in a refugee camp in Tanzania, where he encountered a copy of the Book of Mormon, Leavitt-Barker wrote. He wasn’t able to be baptized, but he organized a weekly interest group that met for years to worship and study together.

“I believed one day I would be baptized and attend the temple,” Akulu said, according to Church News. “I had that hope, that faith.”

The church’s members hail from all over Africa, Bybee said, including Togo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. Some members were part of the church before they moved to the U.S., while others joined after they came. In some cases, newcomers have then shared the faith with their families back in Africa.

“It goes in both directions,” Bybee said.

Since 2017, nearly 8,000 people have moved to Idaho under federal refugee resettlement programs. Until President Donald Trump suspended those programs in 2025, the top country of origin among refugees in Idaho was the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the Idaho Office for Refugees.

Many of the church’s members are working to learn English even as they worship in Swahili, Bybee said. At the same time, he and his wife have worked to learn Swahili and have officiated five weddings in the language.

“It’s been really fun to share that common — they’re trying to learn English, we’re trying to learn Swahili,” he said. “We’re all struggling, but we’re all doing our best.”