Caught in the middle of a brutal civil war, eight Liberian missionaries in Monrovia fled the widespread violence of their native country. Their destination: Freetown, Sierra Leone. With the help of local church leader Phillip Abubakar (Henry Adofo), the missionaries made the difficult journey, only to have their troubles compounded by a rebel fighter bent on killing one of their own. This past year, a movie, based on true events, FREETOWN was produced and is an inspiring story of hope and survival.
One of the eight missionaries was Elder Joseph Suko Myers, who was a zone leader. His daughter, Josephine, is one of our MTC missionaries and has been with us for the past month learning to speak French.
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| Sister Myers is in the MTC learning to speak French. She will serve in Ivory Coast |
She was raised in the Church, but was very familiar with her dad's story. Elder Myers joined the Church in Liberia while in high school and immediately prepared to serve a mission. While serving in Liberia, the war broke out and he and five other elders escaped to Sierra Leone. When his daughter Josephine was growing up, he and his wife took the children to the apartment where from which he escaped.
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| Sister Myer's Father is second from right on back row |
Here is their story as written on April 25, 2013 by Elizabeth Maki:
The LDS Church was
still in its infancy in Liberia when civil war erupted in the West African
nation, threatening members and branches and devastating an entire country.
When the war broke out
in late 1989, eight native Liberian missionaries were serving in the country.
By July 1990, conditions were so bad that those missionaries were shuttered
inside their homes, unable to preach the gospel and forced to risk possible
death just to meet with members. There was little food to eat, and it was
difficult and very costly to obtain fuel for cars.
With their work grinding nearly to a complete halt, Elders
Marcus Menti and Joseph Myers, zone leaders in Monrovia, determined to go
wherever they had to in order to complete their missions and serve as they had
been called to do. That meant leaving Liberia, so together with the other four
missionaries serving in Monrovia—Taylor Selli, Joseph Forkpah, Roverto Chanipo,
and Dave Gonquoi—they devised a plan. With the help of Philip Abubakar, a
counselor in the local branch presidency and the missionaries' driver, the
elders planned to travel north to Sierra Leone, cross the border, then continue
on to Freetown, where their mission presidency—not being
native Liberians—had already been compelled to flee.
With gasoline scarce
and dozens of checkpoints between Monrovia and the border, the plan seemed like
a long shot.
“Our driver himself was not really convinced we would make it,”
Menti remembered. “He almost at the time said ‘We can’t make it.’ We encouraged
and soften his heart over and over again and he finally realized that we are
missionaries and that we were inspired to do what we had prayed and fasted
about. We again recited 1 Ne. 3:7 and were convinced afterwards that we could
make our journey.”
Before they could
leave, however, there was a crucial order of business to attend to: Find and
bring in the last set of elders in Liberia, Elders John Gaye and Prince
Nyanforh, who were serving just outside Monrovia, in Paynesville.
Delivered from Death
The Liberian Civil War that erupted in late 1989 was fueled by a
desire to oust a president whose preferential treatment of his own tribe, the
Krahns, had fueled ethnic tensions and prompted unrest in the country. The rebels thus targeted members of the Krahn
tribe and regularly killed civilians belonging to that group.
"When I get out there and I die then you will let the ward know that this missionary will die for this cause." (Prince Nyanforh, Liberian Missionary)
For Elder John Gaye, a
Krahn, the threat was a very real one. He and Nyanforh were trapped in their
home for some time when rebels descended on Paynesville, and Gaye didn't dare
leave, instead coaxing Nyanforh out to find food.
“They were killing
people, so I ask him, I say, ‘When I get out there and I die then you will let
the ward know that this missionary die for this cause,’” Nyanforh later said.
He managed to get the missionaries some sustenance and return home safely—but
only just.
“I told him that I would not go out there again because they
killed two or three men, and I’m afraid to go out so I can die,” he said.
“Rebels were walking around, and people were in doom.”
After several days,
the missionaries' neighbors planned their exodus. They called for the elders to
join them, and Gaye and Nyanforh did. But as the group was making its way out
of the area, they were apprehended by the rebels.
“They came interrogating us—to know where we’re from,” Nyanforh
said.
Gaye remembered that
the rebels appeared “as fierce as famished wolves” as they interrogated each
person to determine their ethnic origin and other information. But before they
had made it to the missionaries, darkness had fallen and the rebels decided to
wait until daylight to continue their investigation.
“All night long I had
been in communion with my Heavenly Father,” Gaye later wrote. “Though I was in
an inextricable plight, I was confident of the Lord’s help.”
When morning came, the
soldiers resumed their questioning. With just one more person to question
before it would be Gaye's turn, the missionary remembered he “nodded [his] head
and began to imagine paradise.”
With his companion
urging him to “trust God,” Gaye waited for his fate. But before he was
questioned, a familiar face arrived.
“It was a Saint who
the Lord has sent to rescue me and my companion,” Gaye remembered. “He is a
member of the church who is fighting for the rebels. He knew that I was one of
those been sought for, but he concealed my identity to his colleagues.”
Nyanforh said the rebel soldier was a clerk in their branch and
recognized the missionaries. The LDS rebel told the soldiers that the men were
brethren in his church, and without further question, the missionaries were
released.
The elders were taken
to a refugee camp thirteen miles from Monrovia, and it was during their brief
stay there that the other missionaries in Monrovia were planning their escape.
The elders sent someone in search of Gaye and Nyanforh, but by the time the
searchers made it to Paynesville, the missionaries were already gone.
Fleeing Monrovia
The six missionaries
and their driver began searching for gasoline to make their journey and
eventually traded half a bag of rice for four gallons—all the while knowing it
would not be sufficient for the 370-mile journey on bad roads.
On July 15, 1990, the
seven men prepared for their journey. They held a sacrament meeting first thing
in the morning, then planned to leave for Freetown. But small delays kept
pushing back the start of their journey.
It was after noon
before they made it to the mission home to inform their acting mission
president of their plans and bid farewell, and it was 2 p.m. before they left
the mission home for Freetown. The timing turned out to be fortuitous.
“As soon as we were on our way down from the upstairs at the
mission home we met our two missing elders on the steps,” Abubakar remembered.
After a week in the refugee camp, Gaye and Nyanforh—after many
days of fasting and prayer—had felt prompted that morning to leave for
Monrovia. After eight hours on foot, they arrived at the mission home just in
time to join their fellow missionaries in their escape to Sierra Leone.
With nothing but a
five-seat Toyota Corolla—which Abubakar had preserved from theft by removing
the wheels and battery during the fighting—the eight missionaries and their
driver set off on their journey. With the addition of the four gallons of
gasoline they had bargained for, the tank held a total of five and a half
gallons as they began their trip.
Menti recalled that
most everyone—including their acting mission president—expressed reservations
about the missionaries setting off with so little fuel and such dismal
prospects of getting more along the way.
“Some said we would
end up pushing the car many miles toward the border,” he wrote. “We did
acknowledge their concerns and quoted 1 Ne. 3:7 and all of them were
reasonable.”
It was less than a hundred miles to the border, but with nine
adult men in a small sedan and more than fifty checkpoints at which they would
be stopped along the way, the odds were solidly against them. However, they set
off believing that “God [would] provide for His saints.”
“En route,” Menti recalled, “brother Philip our driver observed
with amazement the gas gauge making no change at all after having travelled
14-18 miles. He was very much astonished. We were not for we knew the Lord
would provide a way."
The missionaries made
it to Sierra Leone that evening with gasoline to spare, and were able to buy
five more gallons at the border at the much-reduced price of $25 (Liberian) per
gallon; the going rate then was $85 (Liberian) per gallon, when any gasoline
could be found.
"He was very much astonished. We were not for we knew the Lord would provide a way." (Marcus Menti, Liberian Missionary)
When they arrived at
the border, the immigration checkpoint had already shut down for the night, so
the missionaries spent the night taking turns sleeping in the car. The
following morning, yet another obstacle arose.
Of the nine men in the Corolla, only three had passports. Of the
remaining six, only two had national ID cards that would enable them to cross
the border. After initially being told they would have to return to the embassy
in Monrovia, they were later called in and told the immigration officers would
help them, because they were missionaries.
Once across the
border, the journey in some ways became more difficult, as the roads in Sierra
Leone were far inferior to those in Liberia. At one checkpoint, the men were
told that the next 14 miles of road were so bad that many cars had wrecked and
were stranded along the way. At some points, there were gaps in the road that
the car had to be pushed across or lifted over.
“In some places where
the road is very bad I will order the elders to get down and run after me while
I drive through the rough part of the road,” Abubakar wrote. “I was very
careful with the exhaust pipe and the tyres.”
Menti recalled having
to run after the car for stretches as long as two miles. Along the way, they
passed several cars stuck on the road, including several models much more
expensive than their Toyota. Thanks to Abubakar's care, the missionaries made
it through without getting stuck. Later, as the faster, less-loaded cars freed
themselves and passed the elders, they expressed their amazement.
“When the road got smoother later they passed by us at a certain
checkpoint,” Menti said. “We think they were amazed to see a Toyota sedan going
through the bad roads when the Mercedes could not. They then told us ‘you have
a good driver' and they clapped for him.”11
Late that night, after
thirty-four hours on the road, the eight missionaries and Abubakar arrived at
the home of mission president Miles Cunningham in Freetown.
“After feeding the starved,
dirty, tired corps of Liberian elders, they were taken to sleep their first
safe, peaceful night in well over two months,” wrote Walter Stewart, a senior
missionary from the United States who was also living in the Freetown mission
home.
For the missionaries,
the move was a monumental one. Most had never left Liberia before, but the
desire to continue their work where they could was a powerful one. A month
later, it was evident why: With the missionaries assigned to the three branches
in Sierra Leone, the rate of baptisms rose and the number of branches quickly
doubled.
“All that was
seriously needed to open the branches was more priesthood,” recalled Stewart,
who also credited the missionaries with being better able to communicate with
the locals than the American couples had been, as well as better equipped to
relate to members and investigators.
They “brought a powerful spirit of faith and devotion to this
part of the mission, certainly bred out of the agonizing they have suffered in
their beloved homeland,” Stewart said. “They are first to recognize the hand of
the Lord in this modern miraculous exodus.”
“We know that the Lord [had] more work for us here in Sierra
Leone,” Menti said. “Many areas have been opened to the preaching of the
gospel. Our journey, though as difficult as it was, the Lord provided a way.”
"The Lord Provided A Way" - https://history.lds.org/article/pioneers-in-every-land-liberia-missionaries-escape?lang=eng
