Mission President’s Reflections - 2018

Note: As part of our mission's annual history, I was asked to summarize the year with a "Mission President's Reflections."  This was our 2018 in Liberia.

“For Zion must increase in beauty, and in holiness; her borders must be enlarged; her stakes must be strengthened; yea, verily I say unto you, Zion must arise and put on her beautiful garments.”     

Doctrine and Covenants 82:14

My Kingdom Shall Roll Forth

For the Liberia Monrovia Mission, 2017 was the year of preparation, which enabled a tremendous expansion during 2018.  On December 10, 2017, we created the Caldwell and Paynesville Stakes in Monrovia, capping a 13-month period during which the country was transformed from having three member districts under the direction of the mission, to having four fully-organized, functioning stakes in capitol city, each led by faithful local members.  

Outside Monrovia, we started the year with two mission branches in Kakata, one in Harbel, a few other scattered members and an entire country with no real exposure to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  With the firm foundation of our partner Monrovia stakes in place, carefully built by numerous pioneers over many years and through the agonizing struggles that dominated Liberia’s recent history, it was now time to take the gospel much further across the country.  And we did.

Buchanan Branch

• In January, we created the Buchanan Branch in the capitol of Grand Bassa County, a port city two hours southeast down the coast from Monrovia.  Isaac Garbleah, a returned missionary, former branch president and district president who had moved from Monrovia to Buchanan several years earlier to establish a farm there was called as the branch president.  Under President Garbleah’s guidance, the branch flourished, leading all other wards and branches in Liberia with convert baptisms.  The branch currently meets in a rented facility with a newly-constructed pavilion for their sacrament meeting. The pavilion holds 100 attendees, but we have been regularly hitting close to or over that figure and we are now authorized to locate property and begin construction of a full-sized chapel. 

• In March, we traveled nine hours down the coast from Monrovia to visit a small member group

  

  Greenville Home Group

  in Greenville.  The group had been set up as dependent branch to a unit in Monrovia about 15 years ago, but everything fell apart when Liberia’s civil war intervened, and the group went dormant for more than a decade.  The group was restarted in early 2017 with Joseph Dwehgbaye leading, but had no place to meet and struggled until Hyrum Mennoh, a returned missionary, well-respected former branch president from Monrovia was appointed to serve as the Greenville’s Magistrate Justice.  We rounded up the members, leased a building for them and got the Greenville Member Group operational again. With a meetinghouse and the combined leadership of “Brothers Joseph and Hyrum,” the group has met each week, averaging 35 attendees.   As 2018 closed, I received authorization to open Greenville to missionary work and create a branch there.  That will be an exciting leap, particularly since all but two hours of the trip is unpaved and frequently impassable during much of the rainy season.

Totota Branch

• In April, we created the Totota Branch in Bong County.  Umunna Ezechinyere (Prince) Enyi-Ineh was called as the branch president.  President Ineh is a returned missionary, born in Nigeria who operates a trading business in Totota, a small community two hours from Monrovia and an hour beyond Kakata.  For the past several years, he paid to transport his family one hour each way by motorbike to attend church services in Kakata.  From a humble start of six members, meeting in a dilapidated shed with walls made of woven mats, the Totota Branch had 34 convert baptisms in 2018 and finished the year with 40 members, including four new Melchizedek Priesthood holders serving in the branch leadership.

• In June, we created the Kakata 3rd Branch in Margibi County and combined it with the two existing Kakata branches to create the Kakata District, the first member district located outside of Monrovia.  President Joseph Harmon, the pioneer of the Church in Kakata, who served first

  

  Kakata 3rd Branch & Kakata District Creation

  as the Kakata Home Group leader more than 17 years ago and had served for ten years as the Kakata 1st Branch President, was called as the district president, with Elder Brad Baird and Aaron Toure as his counselors. Eddie Amara was newly called as the branch president of the Kakata 1st Branch, Obeto Gonlar continued as the Kakata 2nd Branch President and Nathan Sumo was called as the Kakata 3rd Branch President.  In the June 10 meeting creating the new branch and the district, held in the Kakata City Hall with 450 people attending, nine local brethren were called as members of the district presidency, clerk, district high councilors and branch presidents.  Over half of those brethren had attended the Ghana Temple trip the preceding November with their wives, where they received their endowments and were sealed to their families.  It was a marvelous manifestation of the power of the temple to transform lives and prepare the saints to receive the Lord’s blessings.

• In November, we moved the Church into Liberia’s heartland by creating the Gbarnga Member

  

  Gbarnga Member Group

  Group in the capitol city of Bong County, three hours northeast of Monrovia.  Many of the saints in Monrovia trace their ancestral roots to Liberia’s central city and I had long felt that the Lord wanted the Church organized there.  The problem was that Gbarnga was an hour from our nearest branch (Totota) and we did not have any active priesthood holders living there.  That all changed the last day of September.  At the end of a member devotional I attended in the Paynesville Stake, Roland Kabedeh came up and introduced himself as a former branch president and commander in the Liberia National Police who had just been transferred to Gbarnga and was aware of other priesthood holders who were also in the process of moving there and were seeking a place to meet.  I immediately dispatched our facilities team to locate a meetinghouse and missionary apartment.  I told them I had additional missionaries arriving in four weeks and I wanted to use that opportunity to open Gbarnga to missionary work and the gospel.  With a lot of effort, prayers and faith, the team moved miracles and we moved the missionaries there on October 29 and held our first services there the following Sunday, November 4.  It was nip and tuck signing leases while securing Area Presidency approval for the move with their absence during October General Conference and personnel reassignments, but we pulled it off.  At our inaugural sacrament meeting, we had 64 people in attendance in a hastily renovated building, complete with 70 chairs, hymnals, manuals, sacrament materials and table, pulpit and a white board, and four newly assigned missionaries.  Roland Kabedeh was called as the group leader and there were six other known members, including two other returned missionaries. By the end of the year, we had identified 16 local members, convert baptisms and received authorization to create a branch.

Harbel Branch

• In December, we closed out the year by creating the Cotton Tree Branch in Margibi County, by dividing the Harbel Branch, which had been formed ten years earlier.  Samuel Singbeh, the former Harbel Branch President was called to lead the Cotton Tree Branch, and Austin Darius was newly called as the Harbel Branch President.  

Kingsville Member Group

• That same day, we created the Kingsville Member Group from the original Harbel Branch, with Samuel Koenig as the group leader.  By creating this new branch and member group, we were able to move the meeting locations closer to where the members lived.  At present, the Kingsville group is still meeting under a tree, but the members and their friends are thrilled that they can walk to church instead of paying to travel by motorbike across the entire Firestone Plantation to worship the Lord.  

As a testament to the enthusiasm of these changes and the benefits of making it easier for members to attend services, the combined sacrament meeting attendance of the original branch, the new branch and the member group immediately jumped by more than 100 people from what the original branch was averaging and it continues climbing. 

The recurring theme with all these new units is the importance of endowed, returned missionaries who come back from serving the Lord with a solid understanding of and commitment to the gospel.  As they marry, start families and careers, they continue to serve and grow in the gospel and are prepared and anxious to serve as the anchors for these new branches as they spread out seeking opportunity across this fertile country.  I am so grateful for the men they became while serving the Lord and the way they continue to apply the principles they learned while in His service.  They are Liberia’s blessed, honored pioneers.

The Missionaries and the Support Team

One of my biggest misconceptions about the call Michelle and I received to lead this mission had to do with defining our primary responsibility.  I initially assumed that we were responsible for carrying out missionary work in Liberia and that the missionaries were a significant input variable to accomplish that task.  However, in training with the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve and the Area Presidency, I came to realize that the missionaries assigned to our mission are not an input to help achieve an objective, they are the objective.  Specifically, we are responsible to help each of our missionaries become firmly converted to the Gospel, or the Doctrine of Christ. As several of the apostles have stated, the measure of success we achieve in this calling will only be fully determined in about forty years, when the grandchildren of our missionaries are entering the temple to make their own sacred covenants.  We are building Zion, however Zion is not a geographic location but those we are helping to become “the pure in heart.” That said, one of logical outcomes of that building effort is the further establishment of the gospel within and throughout the boundaries of the mission. 

To accomplish that purpose, our 2018 training, interviews and zone conferences focused on strengthening our missionaries’ understanding and personal application of eternal truth, law, agency and integrity, personal applications of faith and repentance for true conversion, understanding how the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement apply in their own lives, in addition to strengthening their skills in contacting, teaching, time management and working with local leaders.

We are still decades away from any mission grandchildren, but we are seeing wonderful spiritual growth among the missionaries and some great milestone indicators.  Many of our missionaries come from backgrounds with meager financial resources and seemingly bleak opportunities following their missions.  This creates a temptation to misuse the funds given to them to support their missionary labors, such as purchasing personal items or keeping funds for post-mission use. A few anecdotal, but representative evidences that these messages are taking hold include the following:

• One of our missionaries brought me $600, telling me he had been saving it over the course of his mission. He said the spirit whispered to him that the funds belonged to the Lord, not him and he wanted to set his life right and trust the Lord.  That experience, in varying manifestations, has become a regular occurrence as the spirit continues to work among these faithful, good men and women.
• An elder who served here wrote: “You encouraged me to trust in my plan to develop my faith and follow it. Well, I did. I arrived home with a clean hand and heart knowing that I obeyed the Lord and you. No clothes, shoes, phone, extra garments, pocket money etc. for the life ahead of me. I trusted the Lord and He remembered our covenants. I believe that being on the Lord's mission blessed my family. I'm glad that I did what I did. I trusted the Lord, kept His funds sacred and He continues to bless me. I'm glad that I served Him."
• Several returned missionaries from Nigeria and Ghana send updates on reunions they are already holding, traveling hundreds of miles to gather at the temples in Aba and Accra.
• A sister who served here wrote that although she would often “keep quiet and pretend I'm not interested” during zone conferences, “honestly I listen[ed] wholeheartedly and they helped me improve.” She said that she and a fellow returned Liberian missionary keep in touch, regularly reminding each other to remain “Faithful and True.” 

Liberia Monrovia Mission - December 2018

We started 2018 with 90 missionaries, the authorized level since the mission was reopened in late 2015 following the Ebola closure.  Because of the sudden ramp-up from that closure, nearly all the missionaries who were here when we arrived in mid-2017 were completing their missions and we had a massive turnover and replacement in late 2017 and early 2018.  To smooth out the turnover pattern and meet the growth needs of the mission, I asked for and received permission to expand the mission by 24 missionaries during the second half of 2018 and 14 more during the first half of 2019.  This led to a situation from spring through autumn where virtually every elder here was training, being trained or a zone leader. 

This rapid force increase required locating and preparing many new missionary apartments, in addition to the logistics involved with creating and overseeing the new mission branches, meetinghouses and training the new leaders.  As the saying goes in Liberia, it is “no small thing” to find, refurnish and equip that many new secure facilities in appropriate locations in one of the world’s poorest and least-developed countries. Samuel Sayon, our mission facilities manager, and Felix Tuanpoh, the meetinghouse facilities manager performed miracles in 2018.  We opened thirteen new missionary apartments this year, including a new senior couple apartment out in Kakata.  Twelve new wards and branches were created across Liberia during 2018, a whopping 34 percent increase in a single year.  The biggest challenge in all of this was the tremendous geographic expansion.  In January 2018, all but three of Liberia’s congregations were located in the Monrovia area. During the year, we created new congregations in seven cities across four counties outside the capitol, along with locating, furnishing and equipping the necessary supporting meetinghouses, missionaries and missionary apartments.

I would be completely remiss if I did not mention our reliance on the senior couples who served here this year.  These amazing “green berets” came to an unknown, often frightening part of the world, lacking most of the amenities they have taken for granted throughout their lives.  They lost themselves, fell in love with the people, taught them fundamentals of gospel living, and came away from the experience profoundly changed.  They covered most of the logistics required for managing and caring for 100+ young adults living in a third-world country and provided nurturing shadow-leadership for the fledgling branch leaders and members. We started the year with but bid farewell to Tom and Nicole Degomez (MLS), Steve and Kim Barker (MLS) and Steve and Karen Teerlink (Humanitarian Services).  Mark and Peggy Philbrick capably anchored the office, finances, phones and photography throughout the entire year and were joined by Brad and LaWynn Baird (MLS) who took the big leap from a Monrovia high-rise apartment to live in a little cottage we created from converted garage an hour away in Kakata.  During the year, we also added Dale and Susan Christiansen (Humanitarian Services) and Ron and Karen Kimball (MLS, back for their THIRD tour of duty in Liberia).  We could not have asked for a more capable, dedicated and cheerful team.

And everything we have accomplished, whether in the mission or with and through the missionaries
has been enabled and enhanced by my amazing companion.  Michelle completely loves and is equally loved by each of the missionaries: their mom away from home.  She fearlessly plunges into street markets, shrewdly bargaining for vast arrays of apartment furnishings. She has ‘gone native’ with her driving prowess, deftly navigating congested, narrow streets, dodging missing manhole covers, gaping potholes and byzantine swarms of taxis, motorbikes and ke-kehs.  She joyously teaches pure doctrine, lovingly invites Helaman’s army back into their scriptures and firmly but gently keeps them healthy and cared for in a country where hygiene and healthcare often seem like foreign concepts.  And she constantly keeps me grounded, focused on my purpose, and remembering the important things in life.  She restoreth my soul.

As the mission has grown, we have also had a great increase in diversity among our missionaries.  We finished 2018 with missionaries from twenty different nations.  They are amazing men and women of faith from across all of Africa, the United States and several Polynesian nations.  In June of this year, the Church marked the 40th Anniversary of the revelation expanding the priesthood and temple blessings to all our Heavenly Father’s children, which also marked the opening of the Church into Africa. The theme of the Church’s celebration was “Be One” and we have invited all our missionaries to take that attitude in working across different cultural, national and language backgrounds.  

The Master

This is Lord’s Church.  I constantly see that profound truth in my work with both the members and the missionaries.  Two recent experiences illustrate how this mission really operates.

For one branch creation, I received clear insight from the Lord on whom He had called as the new branch president. I love the many opportunities I have had to issue these callings and hear the sweet acceptance and confirmation from those the Lord has prepared to lead. However, on this occasion, I met with the brother and his wife on the Saturday before the scheduled branch creation, issued the call and he politely, but firmly told me he could not accept; he had too many other responsibilities and challenges at that point in his life. We discussed the matter for a while, but he steadfastly refused to accept. There was another man in the branch whom I felt was worthy and capable but had not been chosen at that time for this calling. That brother was not available on Saturday, so I called him that night and arranged to meet with him an hour before the service began the next day. 

That evening I desperately prayed to know what I should do. The answer came back clearly: "Go forward, trust Me. This is My work, not yours." I still didn't get a lot of sleep that night. The next morning, as Michelle and I were driving to the branch, I was about 30 minutes away when I got a phone call from the brother who had turned down the calling the day before. He told me that he had also had a sleepless night, had been roundly chastened by the Lord, and if the Lord would still have him, he would gratefully accept the calling. We discussed and he recommended names for his counselors and other leaders over the phone, including the brother who was already waiting to meet me. I phoned ahead and asked the remaining brethren to come in early, met with each of them, issued the necessary callings, packaged everything and started the meeting on time. The new branch president has since told me how the Lord has magnified his capabilities to serve and the branch is doing great.

That same week, I was striving to help two good missionaries who were nevertheless caught up in a bitter companionship dispute, I counseled with them individually and together, but their hearts had hardened, and their differences seemed insurmountable as our meetings ended. Michelle and I continued with calls and texts that evening and pleaded with the Lord for them. I despaired and told Michelle that I felt completely inadequate to this calling to minister to the missionaries entrusted to us. She reminded me we all are inadequate, but this is the Lord’s work. Within ten minutes, a text arrived from the missionary who had previously refused any further attempts at reconciliation. The spirit had been working in the background, and the text said that the two of them had just completed a wonderful companionship meeting with huge progress and they were both resolved to work out their differences.

I woke up at 3am the next morning with the phrase from Moroni 6:4, that Christ is “the author and the finisher of our faith” on my mind, which one of our missionaries had referenced in a meeting the day before. I had always thought of ‘finishing touches’ as the final one-percent polish-up to cap off a masterpiece. In that moment, I realized what the Savior had accomplished despite the limits of my bumbling one-percent completion with struggling missionaries and a hesitant leader.  My own efforts are inevitably clumsy and unpolished but offered in faith. The master then adds His ‘finishing touches’ to make up the gaping deficit in my own work. That is what grace, the enabling power of His atonement, can do.  

As I watch the stone, cut without hands, rolling forth across Liberia, I see those miracles every day.  This is His work.  We are just privileged to be instruments in the hands of the great Jehovah.

President Doug Clark

A Father's Sacrifice

This story was narrated by Sister Jeanne Ingabire, a current Liberia Monrovia missionary from Rwanda,  She  describes the sacrifice her father made for his family and her mother's forgiving heart.  Sister Ingabire is an amazing young woman with an amazing legacy.  She is a good example of the caliber of the 114 missionaries from 20 different countries who are currently serving in our mission.

Portions of this story were related by Elder Terrence M. Vinson of the Presidency of the Seventy during the First Presidency Christmas Devotional Broadcast on December 2, 2018.  The full story was published in the Africa West Area Local Pages in the January 2019 edition of Liahona, the international magazine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

My father’s name is Jean de Dieu Nsanzurwimimo.  He was born in 1961 in Rwanda’s Western Province.  He married my mom, Emmeline Mukamusonera, in 1981, after they met in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city.

My parents came from very different backgrounds; my father was a member of Rwanda’s majority ruling Hutu tribe and my mother is from the Tutsi tribe.  In Rwanda when they were growing up, there was an extended civil war and a long-simmering conflict between the two tribes.  This animosity led extremist groups of Hutus to promote the ideology that all the Tutsi people living in Rwanda should be killed.

I was born on January 1, 1994, just four months before a series of events led to a catastrophic genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsi population, led by Hutu extremists who took over the government.  During a 100-day period from April 7 until mid-July, nearly one million Rwandans were brutally killed, including as many as 70% of the Tutsi population.

Even before the 1994 Tutsi genocide, many leaders of the Hutu tribe taught that a Hutu man married to a Tutsi woman should be required to kill her and all her family to show his allegiance to his tribe.  Because of those teachings, and to better protect his family, my father moved his wife and children to a small village near Cyangugu, in the far southwestern corner of Rwanda.  Even in that small village, the majority Hutu villagers spurned and rejected my mother because she was a Tutsi.  But my father continued to protect us.  In 1993, when the tension and genocide ideology increased, she was pregnant with me and caring for my three older sisters.  Because it was known that she was a Tutsi, our family didn’t have many friends and it was dangerous every time she had to fetch water or go to the market. It was a very difficult time for her, but always my father was on her side, protecting her and taking care of his family.

During this time, there were constant meetings in the community where the locals were given machetes and guns and trained how to kill the Tutsis.  Every week they had a community meeting.  In March 1994, my father attended a town meeting where it was announced that Hutu men married to a Tutsi woman would be required to kill her and all their children.  It was a hard time for them.  Some of the men and some of the women who were Hutus did kill their children.

In a meeting in early April, my father was ordered to kill my mother and his four daughters.  At the time I was only four months old and my three sisters were twelve, seven and two.  When he came home from the meeting around 6:00pm, it was very dark because there were no street lights at the time.  He immediately took us to a small island, located in the southern part of Lac Kivu, a large lake dividing Rwanda and Congo.  He told my mom that the villagers had determined that we were supposed to die, so we should hide in that place; he was going back home to find a safe place for us.  He told her that if she saw any boats, she should ask them if they would carry us over to Congo where we would be safe from the Rwandan genocide. She was able to find someone willing to take us across to Congo, where we spent the next five months, until the peace was restored in Rwanda and it was safe to return.

All the while in Congo, and after we came home, we didn’t know what had happened to my father.  When we came back we didn’t see anything; they didn’t allow us to enter the house where we had lived, and we were told everything that belonged to my father had been sold. It was a very hard time for my mom.  We didn’t have a house to stay in. We didn’t have anything to eat.  We went to the Seventh-Day Adventist chapel, where we slept for a whole week.  After that my mother carried all of us to town where she learned we could get small help from the new government.

In 2003, nine years after the violence ended, the government created a reconciliation program called ‘gacaca’ to help resolve the hard feelings from the killings.  As part of the process, people who had killed others during the genocide confessed and asked for forgiveness. Through gacaca, we came to know that that my father’s family members, after they looked everywhere for us and could not find us, had killed him.  My mother and my eldest sister attended the hearing where my father’s family members asked for our forgiveness and they forgave them.  They told my mother that they had thrown his body into the river after killing him, so we were never able to locate his body.  Because I was so young at the time he saved us, I have no recollections of my father; I don’t know his face.

When I met with the missionaries it was hard for them to tell me how God loves me and that he is my Father in Heaven.  I did come to understand that because of the Plan of Salvation, I will meet my father once more.  Because of my faith in the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement of Jesus Christ, I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2013.

My mother continued to struggle to raise the four of us herself.  She had many health and stomach problems and for much of the time she suffered, she was not able to go to the hospital because she was a Tutsi. She finally passed away on 16 June 2016 from what was discovered to be cancer. She knew I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ.   She believed that I had become part of a big family. She blessed me and said I was doing the right thing.  She always taught me and my sisters to love one another and to serve one another.  She said our father suffered himself to allow us to live. She said we should always work hard; it would make our father happy.

I know this gospel is true.   I know I will see my family again.  I know my father sacrificed his life to allow me to have this life today and I am very anxious to meet him once more and thank him for his wonderful sacrifice.

I was thrilled to receive the privilege to serve as a missionary, starting in August 2017.  My mission allows me to teach the joy of the gospel to families around me. One of the greatest blessings the Lord has given me since I have been on my mission is that two of my sisters have joined the Church. One of my greatest ambitions after I complete my mission is to do the temple work for my parents so that our family can be sealed for eternity.

The Plan of Salvation can bring happiness in this life and eternal joy in the life hereafter.  I know this to be true in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

On to Gbarnga!

Liberia's newest member group, November 4, 2018
Gbarnga, Bong County

For over a year, I have strongly felt that the Lord wanted us to take the gospel to Gbarnga (pronunciation: BARN-GA, silent G).  Opening that city to missionaries, or creating a member group there requires approval from the Area Presidency, whose constant counsel is to build from centers of strength.  Gbarnga is three hours from Monrovia and an hour beyond our furthest current outpost, so some might view it as a bit of a stretch.  But Gbarnga is one of the largest cities outside Monrovia, many Liberians refer to it as the country’s heart, quite a few members in Monrovia trace their ancestral roots back there and many have told me they believe we have several good members currently living there.  I could never get real specifics, particularly any experienced leaders to use as an anchor and with so many other priorities, Gbarnga seemed destined to remain an unfulfilled dream.

Greeting and inviting Gbarnga residents

From June through October we added 24 missionaries, but nearly all of them were needed to cover all the new wards and branches being created within the existing stakes and the district.  By late September, I still had one uncommitted slot for missionaries arriving in four weeks, but I was fast running out of time to locate and lock down a new apartment.

On Sunday, September 30, I was attending a member devotional in the Paynesville Stake with the visiting Temple President and Matron from Ghana.  At the end of the meeting, a Brother Kabedeh came up, introduced himself as a former Paynesville  branch president and a police commander who was being transferred to Gbarnga on November 1 and asked how soon the Church would be coming there.  I told him we needed to talk.

Inviting people to attend the creation of the Gbarnga member group

We had a good chat and the following Saturday I shuffled my schedule and Michelle and I toured Gbarnga for the first time.  The town and the timing felt right.  I put together a proposal and had it waiting for the Area Presidency’s October 16 meeting, following their return from General Conference. In the meantime, I asked Sayon, our facilities employee, to see if he could locate a missionary apartment in Gbarnga that could be ready for occupancy by our October 29 transfer and a chapel to use the following Sunday.  This process typically takes several months and he gets REALLY nervous when I send him into scramble mode, which has happened a bunch lately.  With the growth of the mission, we have added ten new missionary apartments this summer and I already have him working to secure four more, even before stretching him with a remote locale like Gbarnga.

Creating the Gbarnga Group

Sayon raced to Gbarnga and found a great apartment that needed several weeks remodeling to get into shape. We cut a deal with the landlord that it had to be ready by the end of the month or we could break the contract.

By this time we were in the middle of zone conferences and everything was happening fast.  The right answer would be that the Area Presidency’s approval came just before I signed the first check and the lease, so we will probably leave it at that. The next weekend we found a great building on the main road to use as a chapel, signed a lease on that and I let Sayon work his magic.

Gbarnga elders teaching the gospel in the new chapel.

We actually had to double-park the two elders that I assigned to Gbarnga for two nights in Totota while their apartment was getting finished up and their furniture delivered, but this morning, we created the Gbarnga member group with 64 people in attendance, including Brother Kabedeh and two other solid returned missionaries who just moved there.  In the meantime, the Philbricks, our ace office staff, procured, packaged and delivered hymnals, manuals, sacrament materials and table, a pulpit, 70 chairs, a whiteboard and new bikes for the missionaries.  And shot some very sweet photos to memorialize the day.

This may all sound routine in most areas of the world, but pulling off anything like this in a remote town in Liberia is a concept about six miles down the road from absurd. Until you remember that the Lord is in charge and this is His work.

PS - I LOVE this calling.

'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.