'Be One' - My Own Story

Yesterday, Michelle and I watched a replay (time zone issues) of the Church’s Friday night 'Be One'  forty-year commemoration of the revelation extending priesthood and temple blessings to all of God’s children, regardless of race. It brought back a flood of memories and emotions.

President Oaks started the program commenting how certain dates are etched in our memories; we will always remember where we were when we heard about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, or when JFK was assassinated.  He shared his own vivid memories of working at a remote cabin that day 40 years ago and sitting down to weep tears of joy when he received the news on the priesthood announcement.

On June 1, 1978, I heard the news on a radio while sitting in barbershop in Ogden, Utah, where I was working that summer.  I had been home almost exactly two years from serving a mission in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and my immediate thought was, "I just missed it!" and speculating how thrilling it would be to return to Brazil and do missionary service there following this announcement.  I felt at that moment, the unmistakable sense that the message of the restoration of Christ’s gospel would explode across that country in a way that had never been experienced and that few could comprehend or envision.

In northern Brazil where I had served, a large part of the population has ancestral ties going back to Africa.  During my mission (1974-1976), we did not actively proselyte those of African ancestry because of priesthood limitations related to them. Still, many approached us out of curiosity and with what I sensed was an innate interest in our message. We simply invited them to attend church meetings. If they came and specifically requested, we taught them the gospel and explained what we knew about the current status of priesthood and temple blessings. A small number chose to be baptized despite those limitations.

One of most stalwart Church members I met in Brazil was a man of African ancestry named Helvicio Martins, who was referenced several times in the Church’s commemoration. Helvicio was a brilliant, motivated senior executive for Brazil’s national oil company. On Sundays, he was a faithful member of the Tijuca Ward in Rio de Janeiro, the first area I served.  I marveled how this dynamo of a man in the eyes of the world, humbly and faithfully accepted God’s will in his own life.  I was not at all surprised years later when Elder Martins became the first General Authority of African descent.

When I left Brazil in 1976, there were 45,000 church members in that country.  In the years following the historic priesthood revelation, that number exploded, surpassing 200,000 in 1985, and one million in 2010.

I had a wonderful mission, worked with fabulous people and had great experiences and successes in sharing the gospel. In hindsight, my time there was like working for NASA’s predecessor in the years before the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957.  America’s aeronautical engineers were doing some amazing things in the early 50's, but nothing close the breathtaking excitement and explosive technology leaps that followed the October 1957 announcement that the Soviets had launched an unmanned, sub-orbital satellite.  The Sputnik announcement ushered in the era of space exploration and a moon landing, but the priesthood announcement on June 1, 1978 literally changed the trajectory of God’s kingdom on earth.  For years, I couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like to have been in Brazil at the “ground zero” moment.

Flash forward 37 years: at the beginning of June 2015, Michelle and I opened a letter from President Thomas S. Monson calling us to serve a mission in Ghana for 18 months.  One of my first thoughts was, “Ground Zero, baby!”  Michelle’s parents had served two missions in Nigeria, and they constantly told us of the amazing faith and dedication of the African saints.

On that mission, we traveled across five different nations, meeting and fell in love with the faithful saints of West Africa.  Our primary role was training priesthood leaders to help them better serve in their callings.  It was good stuff, but the highlight was the weekends where we taught temple preparation classes in several wards and branches around Accra.  Every two months, we were privileged to bring our "graduates" to the Accra Temple to witness their wonder and bliss as they entered that sacred house of God to receive His most wonderful blessings.

And now?  I'm living the dream that I just missed in Brazil.  I get to be the mission president for Liberia where the gospel is still in the really early stages.  The Church exploded in Brazil, Ghana and Nigeria following the 1978 announcement, but it took another ten years before missionaries came to Liberia, and the work was shut down across the country for 24 of the next 30 years because of civil war and Ebola.

We currently have 90 missionaries (jumping to 114 over the next five months) who teach all day long, bringing the joy of gospel to throngs of people hungering and thirsting for truth following decades of experiencing the tragic side of life.  We have over 12,000 members in the country, and in the past 11 months, I have been able to organize new branches in cities and counties where the Church has never been and watch as they fill their new chapels to overflowing within weeks.  Last December, we created the third and fourth stakes in a country where none existed thirteen months before.  Next week, we will create another new branch and the first district ever outside of Monrovia.

I don't pretend to understand the nuances of the Lord's timing on this matter, but I am thrilled that all of His children now have the full blessings of the gospel. I also trust that each of His children who ever lived on this earth will have the opportunity to receive all of His blessings.  I will say that in this calling, the phrase "the last shall be first" is taking on a new meaning for me.

The theme of the 'Be One' commemoration was to put aside differences and unite as God's children.  As I watch the unease, mistrust and ill-will that seems to predominate the news across the world, I am loving our little oasis where all that rancor is a non-issue.  The message we share and which resonates very well in Liberia is being one with the Savior.  That is what His atonement (at-one-ment) is all about.  It is an exciting message to be sharing in one of the choicest spots in the vineyard.

Faith Renewed

It has been almost three months since I wrote on this blog.  The gap stems largely from the sheer emotional and time strain of this assignment, which leaves virtually no downtime for introspection.  But there has been something else nagging at me as well.

Three months ago I wrote my last entry, "Faith, Hope and Charity" about how a team of people sprang into action to give hope to an amazing, resilient young woman and her family.  Faith was a 21-year-old burn victim languishing on death's door in a dilapidated care facility here in Monrovia until we arranged for a significantly better hospital, a great surgeon and first-world wound treatments.  For four weeks she rallied and she and her family radiated.

Four weeks later, on March 2, Faith suddenly passed away, much to the surprise of everyone who had invested so much time and love into helping her.  The infections stemming from the horrific burn injuries she received in early January and which had festered with minimal treatment for weeks, simply caught up with her.

I consoled myself, knowing that we had made a good decision to intervene.  Her family had seen the light of hope in her eyes. She was no longer suffering.  In the grand plan of happiness, her small moment of suffering was simply the passageway into a better world.  Faith had been faithful and she had now returned to the arms of a loving Heavenly Father.

But somehow I had the nagging feeling that something was unfinished.  I couldn't put my finger on it, but I had not found the peace I was seeking.  That changed last night.

Each Monday night is my "Mission Home Evening."  That is the night I dedicate several hours to reading the weekly emailed letters from our ninety missionaries, responding where I can to resolve problems, answer questions, encourage, strengthen, praise, offer gentle correction or try to give hope.  More often, it is the missionaries who give me hope.  It was 10:30 last night, the missionary witching hour, and I was closing up my laptop, when something in my head said, "Read one more letter."

It was a letter from one of my zone leaders, serving in the ward adjacent to Faith's.  He described the baptism last weekend of Saba, Faith's mother and her four remaining children, nine weeks after Faith passed away.

He told me that, unbeknownst to anyone, Faith's final words to her mother, just before she passed away, was her witness of the truth of the restored gospel and a plea to her mother to seek for her own testimony and to invite the rest of the family to do the same.

Several days after the burial service, Saba had agreed to take the missionary lessons, but it was not until last month, when they encouraged her to pray to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet, that she replied that God had already witnessed this to her.  She told the missionaries that following Faith’s moving final testimony of the gospel, she had begun praying to gain her own witness if these things were true.  She had told them she had received a powerful testimony and she and her family were ready and prepared to make their own covenants.

I called the two missionaries this morning.  They told me they are scheduled to meet with Saba's family today to begin helping them to understand the blessings of the temple and to prepare and look forward to the day when they will be able to attend the temple and continue on the covenant path, both for themselves as well as to perform those sacred saving ordinances for their beloved daughter and sister.

It was Faith’s witness that gave her family the hope and the desire to enter in through the gate of baptism.  It is my prayer that next year her family will be able to make further covenants in the temple, including making those covenants available to their beloved sister, Faith.

The gospel is true, and beautiful.

Faith, Hope and Charity

With the four stakes in Liberia, all created in the past 14 months, led by local members, we still are working along the leadership learning curve. There is an Area Seventy assigned to train  the stake presidents, but he lives two countries away in Ghana.  I have told each of them that I while I am now their partner to assist with missionary work and have no oversight responsibility, if they have a quick question or an emergency, I am happy to pitch in and help.

Last Saturday night, a brand new stake president sent me an urgent email pleading for help.  A bishop had just told him they had a ward member in the hospital covered with severe third-degree burns, the hospital bills had mounted way beyond the capacity of her family and the bishop was asking him what to do.  The stake president had visited the sister that evening with his wife who is a nurse and they came away extremely shaken.

Faith, a 21-year old member had been caught last month in a flash fire in her housing compound which killed the three other occupants in the room and left her horribly burned on her head, both arms and legs.  The stake president sent me a few gruesome photos that showed her horribly charred, unbandaged limbs and face as she lay in a makeshift hospital room.  He was gravely concerned that her condition was well beyond the treatment capabilities of the local hospital and beyond his authorization levels for medical assistance. “President, she is going to die. What do I do?”

I fired off the photos and a review of the situation to the Area Welfare Manager, the Area Seventy and Area Medical Adviser in Accra that night asking them to engage immediately.  The team swung into action early Sunday morning and I spent that morning and afternoon juggling travel and Church meetings with a blizzard of calls, emails and texts between the hospital, the stake president, the Area Medical adviser, a burn center physician in Ghana and the Area Presidency.  Before noon, we had authorization to engage whatever help was needed. The preliminary analysis was that the extensive remaining circumferential burned tissue needed to be excised immediately to prevent septic shock, properly bandaged, followed by a series of extensive grafts and physical therapy.  That treatment, clearly not possible in the hospital where she lay, likely needed to be done in a burn center, of which Liberia has zero, the nearest being in Accra, Ghana.  It wasn’t clear if Faith would be able to make that trip, even in a Medevac plane.  Also, that plan would take her away from her family, who had been providing round-the-clock support at the local hospital.

I asked for 24 hours to get a independent onsite analysis of the patient to confirm the preliminary views and a suggested path forward.  I called Dr. Seton, an American surgeon based at a local Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital in Monrovia who has been a wonderful resource for our mission.  She manages to fit our missionaries into her crazy schedule to personally handle a myriad of diagnostics and minor surgeries.  She told me that with an invitation from the hospital, she would try to find time to accompany me to visit Faith and give her assessment.  We got the invitation from the hospital on Sunday night and Monday afternoon Dr. Seton squeezed out a time slot, so Michelle and I picked her up and took her and her 3-year old adopted son over to visit Faith.  Michelle stayed with her son at our nearby chapel while Dr. Seton and I accompanied the stake president to the hospital to examine Faith.  As we made our way into the shared room, her family parted and she gave us a weak pained smile, but winced and grimaced as Dr. Seton gently inspected each of her limbs.

Dr. Seton confirmed much of the previous diagnosis, but determined that the extent of the burn area was more in the range of 20-30%, not the feared 40-50%, which indicated much more healthy skin available for grafting.  More importantly, she indicated that Faith’s condition was very similar to one she had successfully treated last year and she was confident that she could handle the necessary grafts and treatment at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital closer to downtown Monrovia, if we could arrange to ship in some specialized bandages and burn treatment materials, and if the family would agree to continue support, including with the physical therapy.  Her estimate of the overall cost of the local treatment was a tiny sliver of the transport to and treatment cost at the Ghana burn center and would allow the family to stay engaged in support. They all enthusiastically agreed to do whatever was needed.

We confirmed the path forward with Accra, arranged for local transport for Faith on Tuesday to start treatment, the shipments of the medical supplies and left Faith and her family glowing with the promise of a future.

Four days later, the stake president sent the team a photo of Faith, newly bandaged up and beaming, noting that her “health, appearance, posture, speech and movement” were greatly improved, and her “testimony of and love for her Heavenly father has grown as he has spared her life for a cause that she will pursue after her recovery.”

Last Monday night when we got home, I messaged my kids, “I think we did something good in the world today. It feels good.”  Their query back, “Well, what did you do?”

“We gave Faith hope.”

‘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.