| WINDOW

 

Rolling savanna grasslands interwoven with groves of small trees make up much of Togo’s landscape. This 
 narrow West African nation is squeezed between Ghana to the west, Benin to the east, Burkina Faso to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south.

 

Togo’s short 40-mile Atlantic Ocean coastline was once considered the center of the African slave trade. For nearly 200 years European traders raided this region in search of slaves. This practice effectively ended in 1854 when France declared Togo its sovereign protectorate. France lost control of Togo in 1905 to Germany, which colonized the country. German rule was short-lived as France, along with Great Britain, following retook control of the country, Germany’s defeat in World War I. Togo was later divided between Britain taking the west and integrating it with present-day Ghana, and France creating the autonomous French Togoland.

 

In 1960 Sylvanus Olympio, Togo’s prime minister under French governance, helped the country gain its independence and changed its name to Togo. He became Togo’s first president the following year.  

 

Adventists in Togo 

The first known Adventist missionary in Togo was literature evangelist George Vaysse. Arriving in 1956, he sold French-language Adventist books and pamphlets for two years. As a result of Vaysse’s work many people became interested in Adventism and started calling themselves Seventh-day Adventists. Four years later H. Kempf, a missionary in nearby Côte d’Ivoire, visited Togo to see what he could do to help organize the country’s few members, but stayed only a short time. Four years later he returned, along with his family, as Togo’s first church leader. Kempf spent the next six years officially organizing congregations and establishing schools.

 

Today Togo is one of the 11 countries that make up the Sahel Union Mission. The Sahel Union is located at the far western corner of the 10/40 Window, a region of the world in the Eastern Hemisphere between 10 and 40 degrees north latitude. This region is home to more than two thirds of the earth’s population, many of the world’s major religions, the largest and fastest-growing cities, but few Christians. The Sahel Union in particular has some major challenges: poverty; a wide variety of different cultures, languages, and people groups; illiteracy; and a basic lack of Christian literature. To meet these challenges, Global Mission, in partnership with local Adventist churches, worked to plant a number of new congregations in the Sahel Union in the past decade. During that time the Adventist Church in the Sahel Union more than doubled.

 

This month the Sahel Union, part of the West-Central Africa Division, is hosting “Follow the Bible.” Sponsored by Seventh-day Adventist churches around the world, “Follow the Bible” is an initiative meant to encourage Adventists to take a deeper interest in daily Bible reading. The Bible started its journey in the Philippines in October 2008 and will finish at the General Conference Session in Atlanta, Georgia, this June.

 

To learn more about the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s worldwide mission work, please visit: www.AdventistMission.org.