BEIRA, Mozambique — A young man who found the gospel in South Africa 14 years ago now serves as a leader in the Church and is working among the underprivileged in Mozambique to change lives.

Photo by Ann Hobson

Solomon Malidadi and his wife, Amalia, and daughter, Takunda, pose for a picture outside the Nampula Branch meetinghouse.

Photo by Ann Hobson

Solomon Malidadi presents a teacher in the Stay Alive program with five new bicycles to be used by teachers to ride to schools to teach their youth classes. Such efforts are helping the underprivileged in Mozambique.

In March, Solomon Malidadi was named national director of Care For Life Mozambique, a family-based development program founded on priesthood principles of self-reliance.

Brother Malidadi, who was born in Mozambique and baptized in April 1993, works alongside his countrymen in Beira, Mozambique's second largest city, to encourage families to better their lives in the areas of health, hygiene, family gardening, education, income generation, sanitation, psychosocial, spiritual well-being, and home improvement.

With the help of the program's staff, families complete goals during six-month periods. They learn that burying garbage, using treated water and maintaining personal cleanliness can eliminate cholera, diarrhea and vomiting. Families earn construction materials to improve their homes by completing their goals.

Through this program, Brother Malidadi helps families accept personal responsibility for the caring of orphans and needy children, a critical issue in Mozambique and much of Africa. Recently, the Family Preservation Program was recognized by officials in the Mozambique government for its efforts to encourage people to work toward independence.

Care For Life USA was founded seven years ago by Blair and Cindy Packard of Gilbert, Ariz. The program's purpose is to alleviate suffering, foster self-reliance and instill hope among the poorest of the poor.

Born in Nampula, Mozambique, the youngest of nine children, Solomon Malidadi moved as a 5-year-old child with his family to Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1976 to escape the civil war, where an estimated 100,000 Mozambicans were killed between 1974 and 1992. After leaving school, he worked for the marketing agency of a clothing manufacturer and became branch manager. His abilities were noted and the company paid for his education in a marketing and advertising college in Johannesburg, South Africa. Then 20, he lived with an uncle in the township Daveyton, where his cousin's taxi-owner husband drove to the city each day and took Solomon to college.

After moving to Harare, Brother Malidadi knew good people who were members of the Church, including Edward Dube, the current stake president who was one of the first missionaries to serve from Zimbabwe. In Johannesburg, Brother Malidadi located the Church. He was baptized at age 21.

At Church one day in 1995, he met Amalia Dique, whose family had also fled Mozambique because of the war. They married in August 1999 in the Johannesburg South Africa Temple.

He went to work for Lever Brothers (forerunner of UniLever), and then earned a degree in marketing from the College of Business Management in Harare. Amalia completed her studies and taught English at a local high school and later at Catholic University in Nampula.

To help look after his father, Solomon and Amalia returned to their homeland in 2002 to live in Nampula, where their daughter, Takunda, which means "we have won" in the Ndau dialect, was born in 2003. For three years they were without the Church, although when he worked in Zambezi for a time he drove 800 kilometers to Malawi to attend the Blantari Branch.

In 2005, Sister Malidadi's mother, Ester Dique, was traveling from Nampula to Mozambique when she saw people with missionary name tags and met President Lynn Wallace and Sister Dorothy Wallace of the Mozambique Maputo Mission, which had been opened in 2004. Enquiring about the Church in Mozambique, she learned that Maputo and Beira, the country's two major cities, supported branches and that a few other members lived in Nampula. A short time later, Brother Malidadi was set apart as president of the Nampula Branch; meetings were held in the Malidadi home with all members taking turns giving talks and teaching lessons. Now living in Beira, Brother Malidadi has been called to the Beira District High Council.

Mozambique is slightly larger than the state of Texas and has a population of 20 million. Two districts with 16 branches have been organized. The mission, now under direction of President Blair Packard, who serves with his wife, Sister Cindy Packard, has a complement of 60 missionaries and five senior couples.