Bolenge is a village located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is located exactly where the geographic equator intersects the Congo River, formerly the Zaire River. Henry Morton Stanley reputedly stopped at Bolenge during his epic voyage across the central Africa during the 19th century. In (the late 1890s) 1884 a mission station was established at nearby Wangata by the British Livingstone Inland Mission then moved to Bolenge in 1891 by the American Baptist Missionary Union Baptists. In the 1890s the local missionaries Murphy, Sjoblom and Banks were pioneers in bringing world attention to atrocities by Belgian King Leopold's Congo Free State. (Reference "Mission and State in the Congo" by David Lagergren 1970.) This mission was acquired in 1899 by the American protestant church c