The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Sierra Leone


As of January 1, 2011, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 8,907 members in two districts, 23 branches, and one mission, in Sierra Leone. By January 1, 2018 membership had risen to over 19,000.

History

The first official meeting of the LDS Church in Sierra Leone was held in Goderich in January 1988. The first LDS missionaries arrived in May of that year. They were under the Liberia Monrovia Mission. A district was organized in Freetown in 1990. At various times in the 1990s missionaries were withdrawn due to the civil war in the country. In 1991 The Liberia Monrovia Mission was discontinued and Sierra Leone was placed under the Accra Ghana Mission. The first LDS built meetinghouse in the country was completed in Bo in 2004. In 2007 the Sierra Leone Freetown Mission was created covering both Sierra Leone and Liberia. In December 2012 Jeffrey R. Holland created the first LDS stake in Sierra Leone in Freetown. In 2013 Liberia was split off to be its own separate mission.
A brief history can be found at or

Membership history

The Freetown Sierra Leone Stake was organized on December 2, 2012 making it the 3,000th stake in the LDS church.

Stakes

After two LDS Church members died during the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the LDS Church required its missionaries remain in their apartments as a precautionary measure. Then on August 1, 2014 the LDS Church announced that it would transfer all of its 274 missionaries out of Sierra Leone and Liberia, thereby closing the Sierra Leone Freetown Mission for the duration of the outbreak.