Welcome to the new normal...

No one gave me an inkling of the myriad of non-stop spiritual highs, crises, heart-aches, dizzying logistics and sheer ecstasy that come with this calling.  A sampling from our first five weeks in Liberia:

Michelle and I did five two-hour “Meet the President” zone meetings, held a pair of four-hour Mission Leadership Councils with our zone leaders and sister training leaders, conducted our first round of four-hour zone conferences, I did 15-minute interviews with each of our 90 missionaries while Michelle sat with their companions quizzing them about insights they have gained from their latest scripture study and feeding them cookies.

Saying farewell to five great missionaries, including a pair of stellar Nigerians and our three honorary Kente-clad "Blues Brothers"

This morning I gave final interviews and counsel to five departing elders, then we raced to the airport to send them off with Michelle driving while I juggled phone calls between an anguished new branch president and the Area Presidency over a tragic murder discovered last night of a faithful member in one of our mission branches.  In the next four weeks, we have another 13 missionary departures and 14 new ones arriving.

Each Sunday night, I send a group letter to all the missionaries and the following day I get to read each of their individual responses and determine which need a personal response to admire or acknowledge their faithful efforts, experiences and insights, grant permission or offer counsel, encouragement or gentle correction.  These young men and women are incredibly diligent, insightful servants of the Lord and reading each week of their love for the people here and the work they are doing and their experiences in seeing the hand of the Lord in their lives is the highlight of each week.

Our missionaries average about 100 baptisms each month.  Of that total, I am tasked each week with about five “special” baptismal interviews with people who have situations that need to be resolved with the mission president.  These are some of the sweetest experiences imaginable, people who have humbled themselves and want nothing more than the chance to be clean before the Lord.  My first one came less than a week after my arrival with a wonderful woman.  Her story started out semi-intelligibly, then suddenly shifted into rapid-fire but beautifully lyrical sing-song “colloquia” monologue (the local dialect with heavy Caribbean overtones) and I realized that I had zero comprehension of any of it.  I said a quick silent prayer, “Lord, I have no idea what this sweet woman is saying, but I need to be able to understand her to fulfill my calling.” Almost immediately, I could follow her perfectly and we had a fabulous interview that left us both in tears. 

In addition to caring for our own missionaries, I am the de facto stake president for almost 6,000 members in 20 congregations. In that role, last month, I set apart four missionaries leaving to serve elsewhere in Africa, interviewed several others preparing to go and released three missionaries returning to Liberia after completing their missions elsewhere.  And did a bunch of first time temple recommend interviews.

In six Sundays, I have attended seven of our branches, and been the featured speaker in each.  I have yet to be introduced as the mission president.  In Liberia, they all refer to me as “our beloved mission president.”  It is very sweet, but seriously sobering.

I have reorganized two branch presidencies, have another needing immediate attention, several elder’s quorum presidencies, am working on a new counselor in a district presidency, andhelped a district president plan a conference with a visiting authority.  

I managed to get several sisters in one branch upset at me when I advised their leaders that using tables from the building as stalls for selling fish on the church parking lot during the week was not an appropriate use of the grounds or furniture. 

I met with a former pastor of another faith living two hours from our nearest congregation who gave me the names and contact information on for about 60 of his flock that he has been studying the Book of Mormon with several times a week and who would like to be taught and baptized as soon as we can get missionaries out to their town.

We shipped 75 surplus chairs to another group of members living about 20 hours away on very nasty roads that are only passable during the dry season.  We have authorized them to meet weekly for a simple sacrament service, but we need a better means to reach them on a regular basis before we can consider a branch in that city or sent out missionaries.

I told the Area Presidency that if they are serious about us moving to the next gear with missionary work expansion, they need to clear my plate and push the leadership of Liberia public affairs to one of the local stake presidents.  It was reassigned within the hour.

In that same vein, I created and submitted a proposal to group sixteen branches in our member districts to create two new stakes.  We are hoping this will be approved and implemented by a visiting General Authority in the next couple of months to form the third and fourth stakes in Liberia, all created in the past twelve months. 

Within the mission, Michelle has shouldered the task of ensuring the safety and health for about 100 teenagers embedded in the least developed country in the world. Try that one out sometime.  We average a weekly emergency medical hospital run, including a nasty malaria case, a nearly-severed finger, a massive infection from unsanitary food and water (go figure!), a broken retainer, along with an endless stream (pun semi-intended) of runny-tummy, rashes, constipation and assorted female issues.  And she learned the importance of over-communicating after one of our native elders swallowed his suppository pill.

She is also our chief navigator and learned to expertly transit the unlabeled patchwork system of “roads” across the area, satisfied the voracious appetite of 16 members of our Mission Leadership Council from several nations, and put together and hosted two missionary farewell dinners at the mission home.

We had our first missionary transfer this week, with 32 of our 44 companionships impacted.  To execute the transfer, we used seven of our eight mission vehicles (6 4WD trucks and our SUV) on a byzantine round-robin transit that took most of the day.  The only vehicle we didn’t use was the 12-passenger van because it has low clearance and can’t make it in to most of the missionary apartments.  Public transportation is not an option because it really doesn’t exist here.  So, it’s all hands on deck for our senior missionaries.

Prior to the transfer, I received input from several of them on where they should or shouldn't go or whom they should or shouldn't serve with.  I did warn them that they are entitled to revelation on who should be their companion exactly once in their lives and that does not occur on their mission. Even then, it needs to be a reciprocal revelation...  

Most of them told me to just “put me wherever the Lord needs me, President,” but I did get three calls after the announcement from distraught missionaries convinced that I had just horribly ruined their lives.  The assistants told me that number is a bit low.  Still, I was gratified but not terribly surprised when each of the three wrote me two days later to say that they were already seeing the hand of the Lord in these changes and they are excited for the privilege to have this new opportunity.  

For the most part, I understand that this pattern of activities repeats every six weeks...

"Faithful and True"

It has been said that the most important word in the scriptures could be “remember.”  That was the purpose of Captain Moroni’s Title of Liberty; to give a visual image to remind and inspire his army of the cause that united them: “In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children.” 

For our mission, I wanted something tangible to help our missionaries remember why we are here and inspire them to stay focused on the greater cause.  Many missions use phrases like Return with Honor, Choose the Right, The Armor of God, etc., but I was looking for something unique to our mission.  

In a Sunday School class this spring, a few months before our mission, someone commented that the words “obedient” and “faithful” are essentially interchangeable.  Pondering on that, it struck me that obedient focuses on what we should do (obey commandments or rules), while faithful (full of faith) addresses why we obey.  If we are filled with faith in Jesus Christ, we love and want to follow Him, and keeping His commandments becomes a natural result of that faith, rather than a burden to be endured.  We then moved into priesthood opening exercises, where we sang “True to the Faith”, and the chorus line “faithful and true we will ever stand,” struck a chord with me.  That is the spirit I wanted in our mission.  I wanted our missionaries to be faithful to the Lord and His true gospel.  In my mind, faithful and true work together like the iron rod in the vision of the Tree of Life.  The iron rod is true because it is the pathway leading to the Tree of Life, representing the eternal joy, manifest through the love of God.  However, to reach the tree, we must each be faithful, clinging steadfastly to the rod.  Michelle designed our mission logo, with the Faithful and True emblem and we were excited, but not sure how we were going to tie it in to anything specific with our mission. 

In my early mission days in Brazil, we had a unique mission song (in Portuguese) that I still fondly remember, over 40 years later.  So, I starting thinking about a Liberia Mission song based on Faithful and True.  That phrase is used in both the hymn True to the Faith (254), as well as Up, Awake Ye Defenders of Zion (248), which has the refrain “and we’ll always be faithful and true” in the chorus.  I liked the upbeat tempo in the latter hymn, using themes the Missionary Department encouraged us to stress (The Missionary Handbook, Preach My Gospel and our missionary purpose – Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.  So, I noodled (aka pondered) on developing our own lyrics for the song for a couple of months, but made zero progress and was ready to abandon the effort. 

Then, in mid-June, just a week before leaving for the MTC, I took one more shot, and to my delight and surprise, everything clicked and in less than a day I had four verses of lyrics that seemed to flow reasonably well and communicated the different messages I had been pondering.  Over the couple of days I got some input from my wife and daughters to finesse a couple of words and the meter, and on the morning before we entered the MTC, my brother-in-law helped me blend the new lyrics with the original sheet music for a printed copy.

We arrived in Liberia on Friday evening June 30, with instructions go out during our first week and meet with all the missionaries to let them get to know us, help them understand that we love them and communicate our commitment to the priorities we had just received from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve in our training the week before.  The assistants had set up five two-hour zone meetings, on Tuesday through Thursday and we decided that Michelle would introduce us and our family and I would take the balance of the time communicating priorities.  

On Monday, I sat down in the office and tried to figure out how to communicate my vision to our missionaries.  As I scanned over the completed song, it occurred to me that there was a unique, progressive theme in each verse.  It also occurred to me that to communicate the key messages in the lyrics, I should tie them to a doctrinal source, either from the scriptures or the Missionary Handbook.  I came up with the following in about two hours:

Verse/Theme and Lyrics (adapted from Hymn 248)	Doctrinal Points
1.       We are faithful and true to our callings We’ve been called by the Lord to Liberia.  He called us to gather His sheep; We will search out the contrite and humble And bring them safely into His keep. Remember each wand’ring soul is priceless Christ’s atonement extends to them, too. When the challenges seem overwhelming, Stand firm and be faithful and true!	Missionary Handbook, p. 3, 1st paragraph, 1st sentence (non-italicized) Luke 15:4-7 D&C 18:10-11 Alma 26: 27
2.       We follow the example of our Faithful and True Savior We will follow the rules of the mission, For we know they will shield us from harm. Like the armor of God, they protect us; We obey and earn strength from His arm! We will strive to be worthy of His spirit In our thoughts, in our words and what we do. By His spirit, we’ll preach the Lord’s gospel For we know He is Faithful and True.	Missionary Handbook, page 3, last paragraph and page 4 Ephesians 6:13-17 Mosiah 4:30 D&C 50:13-14, 42:14 Revelations 19:11
3.       We invite others to be faithful and true We invite all to come to the Savior Through His gospel, which has been restored Planting seeds in the hearts of His children We invite them to feast on His word. And this seed, planted in the fertile soil, And through covenants made and renewed, Shall bear fruit everlasting to His people, And they’ll stand ever faithful and true.	Missionary Handbook p. 3, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence Alma 32:28, 33:23 Alma 26: 5-6
4.       We will remain faithful and true throughout our lives We’ll be true to the faith of our fathers, We will labor with all our heart and might In this land, well-prepared for the gospel, We’re enlisted to fight the good fight! And like Helaman’s warriors, we’ll not falter, We are strong though our numbers may be few. And then when we return to our homelands We will always stay faithful and true.	D&C 4 Alma 53:20-21 2 Timothy 4:6-7 Alma 17: 2-3 Preach My Gospel, Chapter 6

Starting the next morning, we did our five zone meetings, where Michelle introduced us and covered some key insights we received in the Mission President Seminar, including the need to follow the guidance of the spirit in our work. I then described my own experience with the spirit in striving to know what I should share in this meeting to help us each remember our purpose in Liberia.  Then, as a group we reviewed and discussed each of the listed scriptures, tied them to the lyrics and to their own mission experiences and finished with a rousing rendition of our new mission song.  

As expected, in our discussions each set of missionaries came up with some wonderful insights that I had not considered, which deepened my understanding of our missionary role and deepened my appreciation and love for them as servants of the Lord. 

It was a truly wonderful experience and a witness to me that the Lord is watching over and helping us carry out our assignment here.

Arrivals and Departures

On Friday, June 30, President and Sister Clark arrived at Roberts International Airport in Monrovia, Liberia, welcomed by President and Sister Carlson, who have served here wonderfully for the past two years.

The Carlsons arrived here at the end of June 2015, just as the country's borders were re-opened following the Ebola crisis.  They have done an outstanding pioneering job, working with the local staff to get apartments readied with all the supporting infrastructure for missionaries, who began arriving during the 4th quarter of 2015.  With these young missionaries, they have cultivated a wonderful spirit across the mission, which has now grown to include over 90 young missionaries and four dedicated senior couples.  The mission is not only fully functional and extremely well-run, but Liberia is now one of the fastest growing missions in the Church.

Additionally, over the past six months, under the Carlson's leadership, 12 of the 31 congregations here have been organized into stakes, meaning that local members are now administering all aspects of Church operations.

In addition, they left us under the care of Elders Gyansah and Olaoluwa, two extremely competent Assistants to help us navigate both the byzantine roads across Monrovia and its suburbs, and the myriad of challenges that come with running a mission, particularly one in this part of the world.

We greatly appreciate the Carlson's selfless labors, and are honored to begin to build on the shoulders of the spiritual giants who proceeded us, and to work alongside the wonderful and committed missionaries laboring here.

We are excited and very grateful to be here!