‘What therefore God hath joined together”

On our last mission in Ghana, I occasionally visited or helped out in the Accra Temple, located on the same grounds with the Area Offices.  Whenever I saw the mission presidents from the Accra or Accra West Missions sitting in deep contemplation in the Celestial Room, I knew it was probably missionary transfer time and I recall feeling sorry for them and the burden they carried.  These days I am just jealous that they had ready access to a  temple where they could slip in,  step away from the distractions of the world and just listen to the spirit.

The missionary transfer process is like a recurrent logistical puzzle that needs to be assembled the Lord's way.  Every six weeks, the MTC sends out a batch of new missionaries needing to be assigned to a proselyting area and a trainer, while other missionaries are finishing their missions and need to be replaced, and between those extremes is a plethora of companionships needing to be updated and rotated.  All that the mission president has to do is to get every single missionary assigned to the specific area and the specific companion where the Lord wants them to be.  With 45 companionships (6 with sisters and 39 for elders - no mixing allowed) at present in Liberia, the number of possible combinations is probably a really big number with a bunch of commas.

The Mission President’s Handbook provides some basic guidelines for transfers, an admonition to always seek for and follow the spirit and a reminder that this is a responsibility that cannot be delegated.  It is generally good to avoid having missionaries repeat serving in an area, or with the same companion. There are numerous variables to consider with relative experience and skill levels, temperament, leadership responsibilities, language and cultural backgrounds among different missionaries. You don’t want to park someone in an area or zone for too long, nor hopscotch people around every transfer or two.  It is good to avoid “whitewashing” an area (sending in two new missionaries to start fresh), especially in Liberia where there is no such thing as a physical address or street maps and the “roads” are often just byzantine trails meandering through various yards and compounds. It’s really hard to start from scratch.

When I showed up in July, the mission had a big magnetic transfer board, just like the one I remember from my days 40 years ago in Brazil, with little “baseball cards” for each missionary, with their photo, arrival and departure dates and companion history, to juggle and shuffle around.  However the Church now has an electronic version that allows you to access all the detail info and create and save various online scenarios.  I haven’t really touched the magnetic board since I arrived. 

With all that, the missionary transfer process requires a blend of preparation, analytics, foresight (you have to position people where you will need potential trainers and leaders one or two transfers down the road), all guided and confirmed throughout a healthy dose of inspiration, rather than intuition.  That is consistent with the Lord’s admonition to “study it out in your mind” before seeking His confirmation.  The other inevitable input comes from missionaries who are more than willing to share their views as to where or with whom they should serve.  I tell them that is fine, since it isn’t me, but the Lord who ultimately makes the choice.  I am just trying to get where He needs me to be.  I go through the process with good input from the Assistants, but (for me) it takes several iterations over several days interspersed with a lot of prayer and pondering before I can honestly say that it is what the Lord intended.

It doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally I get missionaries who inform me that the assignment they just received is flat wrong.  That was hard at first, because although I was trying my best to do what the Lord wants, I know I am fallible and it was easy to second-guess and sympathize with their logic.  But I have learned to lean not to my own understanding, put my faith in the Lord and invite them to do the same.  And to date, I have not had a single instance where the missionary hasn’t told me within a week or two that they can see the hand of the Lord and they know they are where they should be.  Sometimes they can see that they are there to benefit an investigator, a member, another missionary.  Other times it is to help them them learn something critical about themselves they otherwise would have missed.  That confirmation comes as they are willing to humbly look for the hand of the Lord.  And the Lord always comes through. We have really good missionaries, I should add.

A fascinating experience I had a while back came with two missionaries with completely different personalities and backgrounds who had been together less than two weeks when they concluded they had irreconcilable differences and to avoid the confrontations, had simply stopped talking to each other.  They were doing the work but they were just going through the motions.  And it showed as they grew more despondent.  They are both great missionaries, but they seemed trapped and the spirit had become a casualty somewhere along the way. 

When I discovered the situation, I immediately called and told them I would come to their  apartment at nine the next morning to do companion study and talk with them then go out proselyting.  I spent a sleepless night, pleading with the Lord and conjuring up several scenarios where I could make one or two immediate transfers that would put them each in an environment where they could recapture their zeal and love for the work.

As I sat down with them that morning, we prayed and started discussing the seemingly intractable situation.  I took a deep breath... and my mind went completely blank.  I honestly couldn’t remember any of my rationales or  my quick-fix scenarios from the night before.  What did come into my mind, completely unbidden, was Matthew 19:6 - “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”  The Lord was gently telling me to stop trying to “fix” His plan.  That simply wasn’t my place, or my prerogative.

I swallowed hard, and shared my impressions with them.  We had a wonderful discussion and the spirit came flooding into the room.  They each committed to trust the Lord, put aside their differences and make their companionship work.  They finished out that transfer and one more and it worked. They both told me it wasn’t easy, but it was a wonderful learning experience for them.  They immediately saw a huge difference in how every aspect of the work started going, with their investigators, their ward, in their apartment and in their personal lives. 

They will probably never become fast friends, but they did something together and they both recognized they were doing the Lord’s will in the Lord’s way. It’s more than just going where He wants you to go.  It's becoming what He wants you to be.

The kids are doing great!

This really happened!

For five days last week, we had Elder Vinson, the Africa West Area President and Elder Koranteng, an Area Seventy here in Liberia to organize two new stakes.  On Thursday and Friday they interviewed more than fifty local brethren and many of their wives to discern whom the Lord had chosen to lead these two new stakes.  Those two stake presidents then each selected two counselors, high councils and bishops to preside over the twelve wards formed from the existing branches.  In the process, I lost three of the four members of my Mission Presidency, two as stake presidency counselors and one as a bishop.  Elder Vinson asked me if that was a concern and I told him that I assumed that my role here was to train future leaders of the Church and those three were all prepped and ready to go.

One of the many sweet moments occurred Thursday night, when a newly-called stake president that I have been mentoring since I got here was agonizing that he couldn’t get confirmation on whom to recommend as his other counselor and he was at the deadline to provide final names to Elder Vinson.  I had excused myself from the process to attend a dinner for some of our departing missionaries.  The new stake president sent me an anguished text seeking counsel, but my phone was on silent in the next room.  In the middle of a conversation with the missionaries, I got the unmistakable prompting to go find my phone and check it.  I found it, read the text that had just arrived and called him up.  “What can I possibly do?” he anguished.  I asked him if he had considered my counselor in the mission presidency as an option.  He gasped that he didn’t think that was someone he was even allowed to consider.  I told him to follow the spirit and he melted into tears of relief.

In early November I participated in the conference of an existing stake where very few people arrived on time, including speakers and choirs and the Saturday meetings had abysmal attendance. So I had been drilling both district presidents on getting a clear, consistent message out to their members on the importance of showing the general authorities that they were, in fact, ready to become stakes.  I was thrilled when we arrived an hour before the first meeting on Saturday, a priesthood leadership meeting, to find the chapel nearly packed. We had over 300 in attendance and the adult session later that afternoon had over 500 saints packed into the building.

While driving to the meetings that morning, I asked Elder Vinson if he had anything specific he wanted me to cover in my talk, assuming he would be fine with any missionary-related theme.  He replied that I should take 25 minutes helping the stake presidents and bishops understand the specifics of their new callings.  So glad I asked…  Actually, the one thing I have learned since arriving here is to stop worrying about what I should say, just try to gauge what the key message should be and then follow the promptings.  Both of the meetings went really well.  It is a thrill to watch Liberian saints sit in rapt attention, trying to soak in every essence of the messages and the spirit in those meetings.  Elder Vinson’s messages lifted everyone, he has been in Africa for close to five years and he truly understands and loves the people and is greatly revered and loved in return.  And they love his endearing Aussie accent.

For the Sunday morning general session, we rented Liberia’s Centennial Pavilion in downtown Monrovia, which looks a bit like a small Mormon Tabernacle with a balcony surrounding the main floor. It has fixed seating for only 500, but lots of open “standing room” space so we brought in another 2,000 chairs and packed every seat that morning.  The pavilion was seriously festive, all decked out with red, white and blue bunting, awaiting the inauguration of Liberia’s new president, scheduled for mid-January.  That gala inauguration event had been starting to look more and more like wishful thinking because of several lawsuits alleging ballot rigging in the first round that had shut down the presidential election just before the runoff, which was supposed to be completed in mid-November.

The deliberations had dragged on for weeks, bouncing between the election commission and the supreme court, while the UN and various governments issued dire warnings that Liberia’s razor thin veneer of democracy and social order was skating close to a constitutional crisis and a possible melt-down into another civil war.  So, the prior Sunday, December 2 we asked our 11,000 saints across Liberia to join in fasting and prayer for a peaceful resolution and transfer of power, something that Liberia hasn’t had since 1948.  Those prayers were answered the following Thursday when the supreme court declared the first election round results were valid and the runoff should proceed before the end of the year.

The Sunday conference meeting was amazing. The members all arrived early, dressed to the nines like no one else in the whole world does.  Church still matters in Africa, and they worship in their Sunday finest.  They were ecstatic to sustain their new leaders, and were over the top to hear Elder Vinson’s messages of love, mixed in with guidance that the Lord requires strict personal integrity and moral cleanliness, issues that need constant vigilance in this war-torn, impoverished land.

My main role on Sunday was to bid farewell to the 5,000 saints in those two new stakes for whom I had been serving as their stake president since arriving here.  I told them how much I loved them and was so incredibly proud with everything they had done to reach this point.

I then directed my remarks to the visiting Liberian dignitaries, including a congressman and executives from different government agencies. I told them how the Church in Liberia had expanded exponentially of late, going from no stakes, meaning that all member issues were under the direct guidance of the mission to where we are today, 13 months later with four stakes including the two created today and more than 90% of our 11,000 members under control of local leaders.  Ten percent of that total figure had joined the Church in the past year. I assured the officials that our members are peace-loving, loyal citizens and that they had united in fasting and prayer the prior Sunday to ask the Lord to enable peaceful elections and transfer of power.  I told them that it was my firm belief that this faith had influenced the events of the past week.  The government officials beamed with approval over that.  Liberians at all levels are God-fearing people.

Greeting government officials with Elder Vinson

I referred them to the scripture printed on the program from 2nd Nephi, 25:26, telling them it describes our people very well - “we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ… that our children may know to what source they should look for a remission of their sins.”  We are committed to following the Savior, we emphasize strong families and the power of Christ’s atonement.  I finished by relating that Michelle and I have raised five wonderful children, whom we dearly love, but as they have grown and moved on with their own lives, as referenced in 3 John 1:4, my greatest satisfaction comes from knowing that my children walk in truth.

Similarly, I shared how I felt that same measure of joy in seeing how the saints in Liberia have grown in the gospel and today were setting a model for the rest of their country, going forward with a well-deserved peaceful transition of responsibility from the mission to local leaders as they had become self-reliant, organized stakes.

"Let's Roll!"

This little mission president calling has become a non-stop blur of activities, leaving virtually no time or energy to record them.  

October 2017 Africa West Area Mission President Seminar, Accra, Ghana

In late October, we returned to Ghana to attend the dedication of the new Ghana MTC with Elder Bednar, followed by a mission president seminar with him, the Area Presidency and the 15 other West Africa mission presidents and wives.  It was a fabulous week, and I came back energized with a blazing vision of what we needed to accomplish here and a frantic sense of how little time there is to get it done.  We took our first four months here to set a foundation and learn the ropes, but it is time to kick into gear and move the mission to the next phase.

Last month we participated in conferences for Liberia’s two existing stakes (created 6 months and one year ago) and I have been guiding our two remaining member districts in planning a joint conference scheduled for next weekend where they will also become stakes.  The Area President and another Seventy arrive on Wednesday and I have lined up two days of interviews for them to identify two stake presidents, get counselors, bishops and high councils selected and called.  We will have joint conference meetings on Saturday and Sunday including taking over Liberia’s official inaugural center for our Sunday combined meetings.

We have no competition for the inaugural hall since the presidential elections, held every six years, which were to be completed in October, are stuck in political limbo over allegations of fraud and tampering.  With luck, the courts will make a final ruling this week, and they can squeeze in the campaigning, runoff election and validation of the results before the end of the first week of January.  That is the date the old government is out of power by constitutional mandate.  I personally think it would be bad to have no functioning government.  We have drawn up contingency plans for our missionaries, but organized a countrywide fast this weekend for Liberia’s first peaceful transfer of power since 1944.

Once the two new stakes are formed, it will clear my slate of a ton of responsibilities for the 5,000 members and 16 branches in those two districts. At that point, my responsibility in the four stakes across Monrovia, the capitol city, will be reduced to preaching the gospel and baptizing converts. This, incidentally, is what mission presidents across the rest of the world do with their time. 

90% of our missionaries will be working in those stakes, but I still have direct oversight of three mission branches and 1,000 members in Harbel and Kakata, both an hour outside Monrovia and the only areas where the Church is organized outside the capital. The gospel started up in both of those cities ten years ago and I sense that it’s time to shake up the status quo. So, for two straight Sundays, we started taking the gospel and the missionary work out to the hinterlands. 

While the quality of Liberia’s “roads” generally fluctuates between abysmal, gridlocked, or non-existent, the Chinese government made some recent infrastructure improvements around the country in a “charitable” exchange for the rights to much of the Liberia’s natural resources (e.g., lumber, water, fish, minerals, oil, arable land).  The silver lining to that future geopolitical storm cloud is some new and very navigable intercity roads that connect Monrovia with a nice coastal city a couple of hours down the coast and some mid-sized cities in the northeast sector of the country for the first time ever.    

Another key part of the current equation is that the recent Ebola crisis and the civil wars created a temporary diaspora, as Liberians all across the country fled to surrounding countries to escape the violence, famine and disease.  While there, many of them joined the Church, then returned home, only to discover that the Church presence is limited to Monrovia.  With no money for transportation, they are currently scattered across the country, often sending us letters asking when their Church will be coming to their area. 

With the new roads and the new-found freedom from four stakes being created in Monrovia during the past year, the answer is "NOW!"

On November 12, we took one of our senior couples, loaded a pickup with 50 chairs, sacrament trays, hymnals and Gospel Principles manuals and drove just over two hours northeast to Totata, a town of 10,000, located an hour beyond Kakata, the nearest branch and started a new member group in a large thatched shed.  We have two returned missionaries in their mid-30s living in Totata, one married with two kids, who form the nucleus.  Seven members attended the meeting, along with 25 visitors, mainly families who know and respect our members and came looking for information. 

November 12, 2017. The new Totata member group leader, answers questions from visitors following 

the first-ever  LDS Sunday Services in Totota, Bong County Liberia

I called the two returned missionaries living there as the group leader and assistant, and we held a brief sacrament meeting and Sunday School class for 90 minutes, covering the essentials of the gospel and the restoration.  At the end, all the visitors remained for nearly an hour asking questions about Church doctrines, the Book of Mormon and expressing their hope that a local branch would be created so they could formally join the Church and help support it financially instead of just being “hearers of the word.” 

The next Sunday we repeated the process in Buchanan, a coastal port city of 60,000 two hours southeast of Monrovia.  In Buchanan, we were aware of a former Monrovia district president who recently moved there and another member in his mid-thirties. We took a pair of senior missionary couples along, a visiting member of the Seventy and my assistants with our standard load of chairs and equipment and held a meeting in a vacant house with 13 members and 29 visitors present.  Several families came as guests of local members, but most of the visitors accepted invitations from the assistants, who spent 10-15 minutes just before we started inviting people living nearby to come. They hurriedly dressed up and walked into our new chapel as families, anxious to hear the word of the Lord.

November 19, 2017. Members and guests are all smiles following the first ever LDS Sunday Services in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County in Liberia.

Just like the prior week, we had great talks covering the fundamentals of the restored gospel, a wonderful spirit and great excitement that the missionaries will be arriving soon to teach the gospel.  

November 19, 2017. Five baptisms near Harbel, Margibi County

We capped the day off by stopping at the branch in Harbel on our drive back from Buchanan just long enough to witness five baptisms taking place in a scenic creek just down the road from the chapel, because the baptismal font was broken again.  I personally suspect the missionaries.

Meetings in Buchanan and Totata are in now their third and fourth weeks.  We located fifteen more members in those towns just by word of mouth, secured a missionary apartment in Buchanan and put a pair of missionaries there last week.  Today they told me that have scheduled five baptisms for later this month.  In the much smaller Totota, we are scrambling to locate a more suitable chapel and a missionary apartment, but the plan is to move missionaries up there next month.

I now have the real estate team scrambling to locate possible rental chapels and apartments and 90 elders champing at the bit for a shot to open a city where the gospel has never been before.  I am also beginning to grasp the logistical challenges of assisting and supporting two groups of members and missionaries, both located over two hours away in different directions.  

In the meantime, I am exploring dividing some of the existing mission branches and possibly creating new member districts.  I am also trying to figure out what just happened to the relative calm I was anticipating would come in December when we unloaded all the existing member districts. 

This is a seriously crazy way to spend your retirement.

“It’s good to hear your voice again!”

Earlier this week I woke up before four a.m. feeling completely overwhelmed.  It had been a crazy week - medical problems exploding all over the mission, transfers messed up by cancelled flights for incoming missionaries, sobering family news to convey to blissfully unaware missionaries, elders in shock over an apartment break-in and robbery, and too many foundering members and leaders I am counseling with who have been avoiding my calls.  I lay tossing for a few hours, trying to sort out how I could face the day, feeling completely inadequate to deal with even a subset of the challenges.

Eventually, Michelle rolled over and asked me what the problem was. I gave her a core dump, concluding, “I can’t do this!”.  She agreed (all too quickly), and asked why it took me so long to figure that out.  She then got up, announced she was getting dressed to go exercise and leaving me to have a sincere talk with my Heavenly Father. “Do it out loud, you really need a good talk with Him.” And she closed the door and was gone.

I have learned through the years to listen and harken to my better half, particularly when she uses that tone.  So I knelt down and started vocally talking with my Father.  I used to begin serious prayers, blessings or ordinations by quickly laying out a mental map of what I should cover or address before starting out.  I have since learned that the best approach is to mentally pick up a broom and quickly sweep away all vestiges of my own thoughts and desires, then dive in. I use this mental exercise as a crutch to suppress my own agenda, which opens me much better to His thoughts.

So I just started talking, trying to let the spirit lead my words. I poured out my heart, expressing my gratitude for all the help I had received over the years and particularly in this doozy of a calling - from inspired leaders, the scriptures, conference talks, my wife and spiritual promptings.  I then launched into how frustrated I felt at trying to juggle so many balls at once, often dealing with people who all needed my undivided time all at once, and trying to guide and lead others when it seemed that some of them have radically different priorities. As I pleaded for help, I heard, or rather felt a voice or impression in my mind: “It’s good to hear your voice again.  I really like talking with you.  I have many of my children who are ready and hoping to talk with you right now.  Why don’t you get up, grab your phone and start calling them?”

I glanced at the clock, I had only been on my knees about 10 minutes and it was not quite 7am.  A bit early to call most people, but who am I to argue?  So for the next 45 minutes I launched into a series of calls, connecting with every single person on my worry list, including several who hadn’t answered calls, emails or texts for over a week.  None of the calls took more than five minutes.  With those brief calls, I cleared out virtually everything on my “anguish punch-list” from the night before.  And everyone I talked to told me how much they needed to hear from me, and how much they all appreciated me calling them at that moment.

Like the Savior telling his apostles to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and they were immediately filled despite the fact that they had labored throughout the night with no results, the Lord is directing this work and He knows when and how and to reach each of His children.

Ask, seek and knock.  Pretty simple.

“Strengthen Thy Stakes and Enlarge Thy Borders”

The final chapter in the Book of Mormon, chapter 10 of Moroni contains several wonderful missionary scriptures.  Verses 3-5 promise readers that they can know the truth of the book by pondering and asking God with a sincere heart and real intent and verse 32 contains a great description of our purpose as missionaries, with Moroni’s invitation for all to “come unto Christ and be perfected in him.”

But just before that verse, the Lord lays out His framework for taking His gospel unto the world. In verse 31, He admonishes: “And awake, and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion; and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders forever... that the covenants of the Eternal Father which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel, may be fulfilled.”

Reading this verse last week, I realized it perfectly describes the Church at this very moment in Liberia.

• Jerusalem, the House of Israel and Zion all refer to the the Lord’s people, or His Church.  
• The “covenants of the Eternal Father” are the blessings that enable His people to achieve His greatest gift - exaltation, which is available the through the ordinances of His holy temples.  
• The priesthood keys needed to enter His temples and to administer those saving ordinances reside within each stake of Zion. 

One year ago, Liberia had no stakes.  The Bushrod Island Stake was created last November and the Monrovia Stake in May of this year.  We received notice this week that on December 9, the Caldwell and Paynesville Stakes will be created, making four brand-new Liberia stakes in the Monrovia metro area, all created in a period of just 13 months.  Over 90 percent of the members in Liberia will now be living in fully-organized stakes of Zion led by local leaders, which is nothing short of amazing.

We also just received approval to begin to “enlarge the borders” of the Church in Liberia, which is currently concentrated almost exclusively in Monrovia, the capital city.  This month, the Area Presidency approved our request to open Buchanan for the preaching of the gospel.  Next month, we will send missionaries to begin proselyting in that coastal city, the third largest in Liberia, located two-and-a-half hours southeast from us.  We hope to soon create a branch there, the first one organized outside of Monrovia in ten years.

These two events mark a pivotal point in the maturity and growth of the Church in Liberia. They also clearly witness Elder Bednar's message that our call to Liberia was to serve at the focal point of the Restoration at this point in history and that we were sent to extend the marvelous spread of the gospel here and to build a foundation for future generations of saints and missionaries who will, in turn, bless the entire Church through their pure, uncluttered application of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We're livin' the dream!

“Tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you”

In our late-August mission tour with Elder Marcus Nash of the Area Presidency, for my presentation I used the admonition from Joshua 3:5 to, “Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you,” illustrated with a picture of the Israelite priests bravely marching into the Jordan River carrying the Ark of the Covenant as an illustration of the faith and spiritual preparation the Lord requires of his people in order to receive His blessings. Little did I guess how literally I would see that promise fulfilled this past week.

For months, we have been preparing for Elder Ben Davis of the Seventy to attend the Caldwell District Conference this weekend.  We just discovered that the conference was the same weekend as two huge political rallies that would gridlock the city both Friday and Saturday. And because that wouldn't create enough of a challenge, “the rains came down and the floods came up” and on Friday, a kilometer-long stretch of the road to airport was suddenly under water.

Swimming through the kilometer-long, one-plus-foot deep
low-water crossing on the road to Monrovia's airport

Friday was the day one of our elders went home and that Elder Davis of the Seventy flew in from Ghana. So the Barkers, one of our intrepid senior couples headed out early to drop off the elder and test the congested and flooded roads.  They reported that it was slow, quite exciting but passable, so Michelle and I took off and when we got to the water’s edge, we exercised our faith and drove straight into the temporary river, which was over a foot deep.  A few passenger cars were going through, but when they opened their doors on the other side, water gushed out.  We made it through, retrieved Elder Davis, gave him an exciting ride back through the water and the crowds, getting him to his hotel late that evening.

On Saturday, we braved a torrential downpour throughout the day, but had wonderful conference meetings in Caldwell, though we were gridlocked for 90 minutes in midst of a political rally in Sinkor while coming home.  As we sat there in the rain, two of our sister missionaries who live and work in that vicinity waved as they walked past us, and were safely home long before we moved fifty feet.

Clarks, Elder Davis & Caldwell District President Kofa

On Sunday, the rain cleared out, the district members filled the building and we had a beautiful conference with stirring music and inspired messages.  The choir sang “How Firm a Foundation” in the soaring manner that only Liberian choirs can achieve.  I love the way they do that whole song and especially the seventh verse, described so vividly in Elder Donald Hallstrom's April 2016 General Conference talk following his visit that year to Liberia with Elder Bednar.

As shown in the video clip below from our conference today, the Caldwell District Choir rendition of that final verse was stunning.

However, this time the lyrics of the fourth verse also caught my attention - “When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not thee o’erflow.”   Elder Davis had a ticket on the last flight out on Sunday, which departed three hours from the end of the conference.  On a really good day, it takes 2 hours to get from Caldwell to the airport. That is if the road is open.  In case it wasn’t, the Barkers did a test run Saturday night on the next-best route from Caldwell to the airport using a Byzantine series of muddy and rutted little back roads out to the Kakata highway, leading to the alternate route to the airport through the massive Firestone Rubber Plantation to see how long our back-up plan would take. Bad news: over three hours. Not an option.

Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges of Liberia's monsoon season and the fever-pitched gridlock that is a hallmark of their presidential political season, we still had the upper hand - the faith and prayers of the Liberian saints.  In prayer after inspired prayer, we were assured that the Lord is watching over his servants and that He could and in fact would make all things possible.  So we borrowed one our senior couple's 4WD truck for higher clearance and had yet another of our senior couples do a reconnaissance run to the flooded area at 11am.  They reported that the water had risen to more than two feet over the road, but that a few 4WD vehicles were slowly getting through.  As soon as the conference ended at noon, we grabbed Elder Davis and made a mad dash to the airport.

In a series of events that can only be described as miraculous, or “wonders among us”, the roads along the entire route were nearly empty, the traffic lights aligned, we had no trucks randomly breaking down in the middle of the road, or taxis making dead stops right in front of us and we made it to the flooded area near the airport in less than 90 minutes.  After waiting our turn, we plunged in again and the truck slowly ground its way through our local version of the Jordan River, we delivered a dry Elder Davis to the airport in under two hours and got him checked in just in time.  On our way back out through the flooded road, we were pulling out just as the police showed up with traffic cones to close the road.  And the road back home from the airport had the normal congestion and the fascinating traffic antics that make driving in Liberia simultaneously endearing and maddening.

To me, the whole experience is just a small, but very tangible indication of the miracles both Elder Nash and Elder Bednar have very recently assured me the Lord has in store for His work in this wonderful country.

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...