“Tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you”

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

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

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

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

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

Clarks, Elder Davis & Caldwell District President Kofa

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

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

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

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

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

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