A Utah man who has been living in the US for 20 years is running for president in Kenya, which is his native country.
Amram Musungu says he has always wanted to run for the post to help Kenyans get control of a country he believes is ripe for change.
"I will be the best president the country has ever had," he told the
.
The 39-year-old auditor and married father of two added: "I want every Kenyan to have a better life. It is selfish for me to stay in America.
"The gospel has helped me to understand nothing is impossible as long as it has to do with blessing the lives of others."
As a child, he would walk miles to school each day, without shoes, in Hamuyundi.
After meeting Mormon missionaries in 1992,Musungu said
Russel Price was "the first white person I met who would speak to me".
This experience, among others, led him to convert to Mormonism and by the age of 17 he was called on his own mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
After his mission, he raised, with the help of family and friends, enough money to move to Utah and go to LDS Business College and later the University of Utah and Westminster College.
He fell in love and married wife Noelle and the couple now have two children, eight-year-old daughter Mira and four-year-old son Wesley.
For a bio on his university's
, Musungu said: "I
promised everyone that I would get an education, train well and return to Kenya to provide better leadership to my people."
He added: "I have lived that dream. I agreed to run for President as my family and I feel very strongly that this is what our Heavenly Father wants us to do."
Musungu said he was approached by Kenyan politicians to become a presidential candidate in the 2017 election.
He is also a former member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and founder of Salt Lake City's Swahili LDS Church.
Musungu faces seven other candidates, many of whom have decades of experience working for the government. The election is on August 8.
He lives in South Salt Lake, a suburb of Salt Lake City. He has dual citizenship of the United States and Kenya.
Read:
Also read: