Elder Edward Dube expects not to get much sleep in the early hours of Sunday, March 1st.
The member, a member of the Presidency of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is likely awake because the Harare Zimbabwe Temple is being dedicated nine time zones away from his home country.
“You don’t have to be there to enjoy the spirit of this situation, but this is a time to really wake up,” he told Church News, adding, “I will be there with Zimbabwe in my prayers and thoughts.”
Thoughts range from reflecting on his own temple experiences and how the temple grounds have been a “sacred place” to him for decades, to reflecting on the immediate and future blessings of the temple in Harare.
And he expects to receive a flood of WhatsApp texts from friends there sharing their experiences and thoughts. Last month’s temple open house was similarly flooded with messages.
Elder Dube, who has served as branch president, district president, stake president, and mission president in the capital, Harare, is one of many longtime Zimbabwean Latter-day Saints who have endured the absence of a nearby house of the Lord, and have made financial sacrifices and long journeys to make temple covenants.
When Elder Dubé was first introduced to the gospel in 1984 by a member of the Kwekwe branch (more than 130 miles or 215 kilometers southwest of Harare), he read the Book of Mormon on his own in the absence of missionaries in the area. He remembers being moved to learn about the temple where the resurrected Jesus Christ visited the Nephites and ministered to each one of them.
“I felt the Savior’s love. It felt as if the Savior was inviting me personally,” he recalled as he continued to learn about the temple. “And that imprint, the goal of the temple, I set a goal that day to get married in the temple.”
After his conversion, he served as a missionary in his home country from 1986 to 1988. The missionaries’ offices, homes, and training centers were located where the temple now stands. When Africa’s first temple opened in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1985, he served without an endowment, like many indigenous missionaries who were far from temples across the continent at the time.
After their missions, Elder Dube and Sister Naume Dube were civilly married in December 1989, but it took years of sacrifice and savings before they could make their first temple covenants as individuals and as a couple.
“I couldn’t afford to go to the temple. It took so long,” he said, recalling the 14- to 18-hour journey each way to Johannesburg, which was compounded by long delays at border crossings.
The Dubes were sealed in the Johannesburg South African Temple in May 1992.
In the mid-1990s, Elder Dube and the district presidency set a goal to help bring 20 couples to Johannesburg for temple endowments and sealings, long before the Church offered its current comprehensive temple sponsor support fund and on-site temple sponsor accommodations. Members saved money and helped school districts pool their funds to organize trips.
Arrangements were made with member families who lived near the temple for the group to stay for a week. But the woman ran into the street to protest when she saw an old, smoky bus disembarking carrying a large group of people to stay in the five-bedroom house.
Elder Dube recalls taking her to his home for a personal talk and giving her an appointment. “We will leave your house as it is. If you are concerned about your neighbors, we are a religious people. … Your neighbors don’t even know what happened,” he told her, then he showed her a bundle of South African rands that would cover his expenses and stay.
“That year and the next three years, we did the same thing. We put 20 couples together in a five-bedroom house, put sisters on one side of the house and brothers on the other, and spent a week there. It was truly amazing.”
Elder Dube was serving as First Counselor in the Africa South Area Presidency when he was asked to preside over the groundbreaking ceremony for the Harare temple on December 12, 2020. The last time he saw the temple was during his “summer vacation” in Harare in December 2025.
He said his desire is for all people, especially “my fellow Zimbabweans,” to know our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ and know that He has them in mind and that the temple is to bless them. “This is truly the Lord’s house,” he said. “And when they do all that is necessary to prepare to enter the house of God, they will find peace and joy in this life.”
