I’m very excited about the new General Authority, Elder Joseph W. Sitati of Nairobi, Kenya, who was just called as a General Authority of the Church to the First Quorum of the Seventy. Yes, it’s wonderful to have someone from Africa among the leaders of the Church, and lots of people are cheering about that. But a big part of this story has been neglected by the press and many bloggers. Elder Sitati is an engineer. He has a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Nairobi. Now that’s totally cool!
Wonderful News: Elder Joseph W. Sitati of Nairobi, Kenya – an Engineer!
What a blessing to have the GA ban lifted on engineers, allowing Elder Sitati the opportunity to serve. That said, there is even hope for you, Jeff. 🙂
An mechanical engineer as a general authority. Wow. I never thought I would see this day.
Hey, guys, Elder Scott (of the Twelve) is a mechanical engineer, and a nuclear engineer at that. And he’s been a General Authority for over 30 years.
But I agree: we need more engineers. And fewer lawyers. 😉 ..bruce..
We need more Engineers and fewer lawyers in government too.
I don’t think I understand the big deal about him being an engineer.
Joseph,
You probably aren’t an engineer then. We (I am also an engineer) are the new discriminated minority (j/k).
Engineers got rhythm!
Can we look forward to a General Conference talk with a gospel analogy from computation fluid dynamics or finite element analysis?
I am always happy to see a fellow engineer in a leadership role. We have been under-represented for too long.
Just in case anyone doubted my status as an engineer, I may have misspelled a couple of words in my previous comment (I’m not sure).
On GA’s having their “themes”, I was pleased to hear Elder Uchtdorf make a joke during his recent conference talk about always using airplane analogies in his talks.
I am hoping that one of the other General Authorities takes President Uchtdorf up on his challenge and finds an analogous story within the field of nuclear engineering!
On a tangentially related (to the post) note, I followed the link that Jeff gave and was checking out the blacklds.org site. I’ve stumbled upon the video “Nobody Know: The Untold Story of Black Mormons” before, and saw it again. Has anybody seen this video? Is it a worthwhile investment?
Others have hinted at it, but I’ll ask outright: are you suggesting that a college-educated professional African man is anomalous? Surprising? Particularly noteworthy? Would you have been less surprised if the new GA were a carpenter? A safari guide? Unemployed? Please, please explain why you seem so surprised that the Church–the Lord–would select a black African man equally as educated as his White GA counterparts.
Anonymous–
You are missing the point completely–it’s a joke! It has nothing to do with his race or intelligence or a comparison with other races. This all started by an engineer (Jeff) and hilariously followed up by the tongue-in-cheek posts of several other engineers. Don’t know if you are from the US or not, but we like to poke fun at the stereotypical “engineer types” like they aren’t real people. If you read the comic strip “Dilbert,” you would have a good idea of the humor here that you missed.
No need to get offended or indignant…Seriously, I don’t understand how you could.
If it’s a joke, it’s poorly related and humorless. If it’s a joke, why even mention the University of Nairobi? Was that supposed to be funny, too?
Anonymous, a great very many of the current general authorities are teachers, lawyers, and businessmen. There are a handful of other careers there, I’m sure, but most of them spent their professional time in one of those three categories. So rather than make the obvious point that Elder Sitati is a Black GA, Jeff decided to focus on the fact that he is (OMG!) an engineer!
Don’t try to read too much into this. Sheesh.
Anonymous…wow, seriously wow.
Go to google.com and search for the University of Nairobi. The school was mentioned because that is where he earned his degree.
Wait, are you suggesting that an African country such as Nairobi wouldn’t have such a nice university??? 😀
The joke was related to engineering only, and it went about 10 feet over your head.
Brad, Alex, Bret,
Anonymous’s comments are typical of snarking done by the antis. He’s not being serious. Or if he is, he’s just being intentionally negative. His comment of 7:59 PM, April 12, 2009, is intentionally misrepresentative of Jeff’s original post. Jeff never said it was anomalous, surprising or noteworthy, just that others have largely ignored that the new GA is an engineer. Jeff also said that having a mechanical engineering degree is cool.
I find it noteworthy that antis like to take any comment or news item and try to turn it into something negative.
I don’t think it’s even necessary to take Jeff’s post as kidding or joking. It reads just fine when taken at face value.
Snark all you want, Mr. Anonymous. The work rolls on, and great things are happening.
Fringe left, Mr. Anonymous, is a mind-contracting place from which to view the world. Get real. It’ slike you can’t even read a simple positive note without looking for insidious racist overtones. You’re far from racial equality when you take on that kind of attitude.
Yes..finally the heavens have awoken recognizing the innate superiority of the Mechanical Engineering race. Elder Scott, Buzz Aldrin, Pt Uchtdorf, Elder Sitati all bear witness to this!
Note that Pt Uchtdorf studied MechEng for a year which prepared him well for that lessor job as airline pilot (Wikipedia, 2009)
So yes, lets all savor the moment -those of us Mechanical Engineers!
This is excellent news that I didn’t catch, thank you for sharing this. Always great to see a greater representation of the nations of the world within the General Authority of the church.
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I’m not surprised to see the comment that nearly always creeps up in discussions like this, that government needs more (fill in the blank) and fewer lawyers. But I think that’s an unthinking remark. Government, most especially legislation, is all about law. It’s about creating laws with meanings that will stand up to interpretation by courts. The people most trained to do that are lawyers. So although I agree it’s important for other professions to be represented in government, I don’t think it’s bad that the process of making, carrying out and interpreting laws should be done by lawyers.