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.