Sunday, December 17, 2017

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.

2 comments:

  1. It thrills me to read of all the wonderful things happening in Liberia! Thanks for your service and excellence in the faith. Much love, Diane Carter

    ReplyDelete

Mission President’s Reflections - 2018

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