So What Is The Story Behind the Three Zimbabwe Missionaries?

 Left to Right:  Sister Detere, Elder Moyo and Elder Makuni

Sister Detere was number 10 of the 182 missionaries prepared for service by Reeve, CC, and Lolly - the three women golfers.  The first day there were 12 in attendance, the second day 60 and the number grew to 182.  She is from Harare.

She heard about the gospel through her mother's friend at age 16, had the lessons and was baptized.  Her mom joined the Church 6 months later.  Her 2 sisters also joined but she lost her Dad much earlier in 2002 due to illness.  Her mother is an importer.  She travels to Mozambique and purchases shoes and handbags and then together with her sisters, they sell them to all their friends.  She does not know how she would have been able to prepare financially, spiritually, and get the proper paperwork had it not been for the three women golfers.

Elder Moyo was born in Harare and baptized in April of 2012.  He is #33 out of the 182 missionaries prepared by the three lady golfers, Reeve, CC, and Lolly.  In 2003 when he was 9 years old, Elder Moyo's dad was attacked.  Two months later he died of injuries sustained in the attack.  One year later his mother died because she contracted cancer and was unable to get medicine.  (On October 22, 2014, Elder Moyo was able to be sealed to his parents in the Ghana Accra Temple.  Sister Dube represented his deceased mother and Elder Watson represented his late father.)

When he first heard about the Church, Elder Moyo was staying with his grandfather in Bulawayo, where he was attending school.  Unfortunately, all he heard about the Church was untrue rumors.  He even heard that the Church buildings were used as mortuaries.  After he had completed school, his grandfather said he needed to find something productive to do.  His brother had him come to Harare to stay with him but did not explain what they would be doing.  When he arrived at his brother's home, he was asked to dress up in his brother's church clothes and his brother would take him to Church.  He did not know his brother was LDS.  After Sacrament meeting he was told he was going to the investigator class.  He thought it meant "police."  After Church he was still afraid of the rumors, but did have a first lesson that afternoon.  Thereafter, he returned to Bulawayo and avoided the missionaries by making excuses.  So his 26 year old brother came a second time and asked him what was going on and why he ran away.  His brother told him he had his agency and could choose for himself.  He bore his testimony to Elder Moyo and told him about the prophet Joseph Smith.  During that testimony, something special happened.  Elder Moyo felt the Spirit and from that moment forward it was he, who asked for the missionaries and wanted them to teach him.

His brother is helping finance his mission. Both are engravers by trade.  They can put lettering onto granite stone.  However, had it not been for the three woman golfers assisting Elder Moyo in getting ready for his mission, he does not know how he would have been able to come.  Every Tuesday and Friday, they trained him.  They took him for police reports, immigration paperwork, eye exams and all other preparations needed to serve his mission.  They also equipped him with a suitcase of all the items required for his mission.

Elder Makuni is also from Harare.  He was #121 out of the 182 missionaries prepared by the three women golfers.  He was taught by the missionaries in 2008 and learned about the gospel first from his brother.  He was asked to pray and in that first prayer received his answer.  It was a still small voice giving him a peace that he had never felt before.  He was baptized at the age of 18 and is now 24.  His mother joined the Church in 2010 after he joined.  His father passed away in 2009.

He earned money selling telephone cards to the people in bus terminals but would not have been able to come on his mission without the assistance of the three lady golfers - Reeve, CC and Lolly.  He started studying with them back in January of this year.

Three More Missionaries Prepared by the Women Golfers Arrive in MTC

(Left to right:  President Robison, Elder Makuni, Sister Detere, and Elder Moyo)

Yesterday, we welcomed three more missionaries from Zimbabwe who were prepared to serve by three very high profile LDS professional golfers from the Ladies European Tour, Reeve Nield, Laurette Maritz and Cecilie Lundgreen who started a remarkable, nearly unprecedented project. Laurette is South Africa’s top women’s golfer, Cecilie is top-ranked from Norway and Reeve’s family has lived in Zimbabwe for several generations. 

 Left to Right:  Cecilie Lundgreen, Laurette Maritz and Reeve Nield

As related September 5, 2014 in Meridian Magazine, here is their story:  For some time Reeve had noticed how many fine young, missionary-age Latter-day Saints were in Zimbabwe who had no chance to go on missions no matter how keenly they desired it. The stumbling block was having the money to prepare themselves to go. 

They are street vendors who hawk their wares and live day by day, giving a chunk of funds to their families to help sustain them. They are unemployed in a nation that has fallen on very hard economic times. Their clothing is too worn to look like a missionary. Even if they begin to put a little nest egg aside toward a mission, usually the funds get absorbed when someone in their family needs medicine or their parents fall on particularly hard times. 

No getting around it. It is expensive to get medical and dental exams for mission papers, expensive to obtain a birth certificate in a nation where you weren’t given one at birth, expensive to get a passport, expensive to buy a suitcase, let alone fill it when you earn only two dollars a day. 

Reeve Nield

Reeve said the Spirit told her, “Go find those kids here in Zimbabwe who want to go on a mission and can’t,” so she set up a meeting last 16 December in the Harare Chapel and invited the mission-age Latter-day Saints in her area to come. She expected 15 or 20 to show up, but was amazed to see 92 at the meeting. 

“What a blessing it was,” she said “to feel their absolute joy, to feel that they might have a chance to go on a mission when they so badly wanted to be missionaries.”   With Cecilie and Laurette, Reeve met with the missionaries from that time forward every Tuesday and Friday for several months helping them to turn in their mission applications and prepare for their missions. The numbers swelled from 92 to more than 230 as the word spread that these faithful Latter-day Saints might be able to serve missions. 

It was a complicated process that they very carefully tracked. Things that might be simple someplace else were more complex here. For instance, many only had a hand-written birth certificate and for that to become an electronic one cost money. Then, for that to become an official ID cost more money. With 220 prospective missionaries attending their class, even $10 apiece was prohibitive. They needed electronic birth certificates and ID to apply for passports, which in turn were also expensive. Dollars mounted at every turn. 

Reeve and her friends had to be creative and they prayed hard for answers—and when things just seemed impossible they prayed again because they knew that God could give them answers and that he wanted these kids on missions.

For learning their blood types for the applications, the three golfers got an idea to have the youth volunteer to give blood at a local clinic. That way they could learn their blood type and get paid as well. 

A church member who was a nurse came into one of their meetings to help with medical exams. Reeve’s father went to the head commissioner of police to ask for help getting the youth the international clearance they needed for their applications. Normally this cost $12 a piece, an exorbitant amount when you multiply by 220. Reeve’s told the police commissioner why he should help, “These youth are righteous. They are virtuous. They are honest. They finish school. They want to go serve the Lord. How many youth are you going to find like that? If you leave them out on the street, what will become of them? Whereas if you help, they will become the leaders of Zimbabwe.” 

The police commissioner agreed to waive the fee and instead of taking the usual 10 days, they got their international clearances the next day.  Cecilie said, “These kids are just so diligent and true. They stand apart from all the other young people in Zimbabwe. One day one of the girls came to me in a panic because she had lost her ID and asked if she could borrow $10 to get another one. I gave it to her, and then about a week later she came back to return the $10 because she had found her ID. That kind of honesty is remarkable in a world where your family may be starving or at least destitute and every dollar matters. She could have just kept that money, and I would have never known. I love that about these kids. They are really bright lights.” 

“These are just outstanding youth,” she said. “It is just so fun.” None of the three professional golfers are married and have children of their own. “These are our kids,” Cecilie said.  In the months they worked with their first group of prospective missionaries, the kids sat rapt and attentive at each meeting. No talking or lack of attention. They were glued to everything they were learning, rapt faces glued on the teacher to learn. They worked their way through Preach My Gospel. Reeve’s mother came and gave an etiquette lesson, material that was entirely new to most of them. They learned about patriarchal blessings. They saw movies including President Monson’s On the Lord’s Errand. They taught them how to fill out their genealogy charts.

Lots of people donated church books to the cause and the kids learned about the temple.

By the time they finished with the first group, they had 238 ready for missions with applications filled out—and then calls came to them from other parts of Zimbabwe and also Mozambique. Help us get our kids ready for missions. 

This army of African missionaries will be the LDS army of leaders tomorrow. When we heard this story, we wanted to be a part of it—and what’s great is that we can. Because Reeve, Laurette and Cecilie are pro-golfers, they got another ingenious idea—ask their sponsors to provide the large shipping cartons that they would ship to Zimbabwe for free. Reeve said the Spirit told her to be bold and ask for 10 cartons and then she asked for them to be delivered to Salt Lake City, Utah for packing. Surprisingly, their sponsors agreed.

So, you can pack a suitcase for a missionary or you can donate money to the cause. If you want to help in this wonderful cause, check out their website on this link.

One of our West Indies Baptisms Enters Ghana MTC

In December of 2007, Kristen Prisca Olivarius and her sister were baptized in Martinque by Elder Brycen Beck and Elder Laytton Maihota.

Today she entered the MTC as Sister Olivarius, called to serve in Madagascar.

 

Such a sweet sister and what a great reunion to see her again.  We met her in early 2008.  (We were in Martinique quite a bit in December because two of our missionaries, Elder Tyson Gray and Elder Thomas Swain were lost on Mt Pele, an inactive volcano.  Miracles abound in December 2007.)

West Africa Mission Presidents and their Wives Tour Ghana MTC

The first stop included a brief overview of the MTC and review of the training program.

Sister Ojo meets Sister Igbineweka

Sister Holmes greets Elder Moyo from Zimbabwe.

President Guei welcomes new missionaries to Cote d'Ivoire.

Elder Joseph meets Sister Morin

President and Sister Kaku welcome new Nigeria Port Harcourt missionaries.

First Rwanda Citizen Baptized Enters MTC - Elder Paul

Meet Elders Paul and Nsengiyumva.  They are from Rwanda and entered the MTC today.

Elder Theodore Nsengiyumva (left) and Elder Hakizimana Dady Paul (right)

Elder Nsengiyumva was baptized a year ago and his parents are not members.  Elder Paul lost his parents when he was a baby.  They were killed in the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994 by the Hutu Tribe.  A soldier picked him up and dropped him off at an orphanage.  In 2006 a security worker at the American Embassy named Eric Hyde came to Elder Paul's orphanage and wanted to teach the children to play.  He invited Elder Paul to Church where he met with missionaries and was baptized in 2007.  Elder Hakizimana Dady Paul was the first Rwanda citizen to be baptized in Rwanda.

Here is a little bit about the history of the Rwandan tragedy:  

The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority. During the approximate 100-day period from April 7, 1994 to mid-July, an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed, constituting as much as 20% of the country's total population and 70% of the Tutsi then living in Rwanda. The genocide was planned by members of the core political elite known as the akazu, many of whom occupied positions at top levels of the national government. Perpetrators came from the ranks of the Rwandan army, the National Police (gendarmerie), government-backed militias including the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, and the Hutu civilian population.
The genocide took place in the context of the Rwanda Civil War, an ongoing conflict beginning in 1990 between the Hutu-led government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was largely composed of Tutsi refugees whose families had fled to Uganda following earlier waves of Hutu violence against the Tutsi.

How Can You Make An American Missionary Very Happy?

Elder Whitt's grandfather used to be the Area President of the Africa West Area.  Grandpa and grandma briefed Elder Whitt well on what to expect, how do get through customs and how wonderful the African Saints would be.  When Elder Whitt passed through immigration, the officer asked him 3 times if he knew what a mason was?  You see his first name is Mason.  When Elder Whitt finally understood the question after getting by the accent, he answered: "yes, a brick layer."  The immigration officer smiled and said "while you are in Africa you will be laying alot of bricks for Jesus."

Now, how do you make an American missionary studying French in the MTC very happy?  You find someone at General Conference who is going back to Africa and send with him a package of Oreo cookies.  As you can see, the entire district was very happy.

L to R are:  Elders Larson, Miller, Joseph, Hansen, Boateng, Archer, Legerski, and Whitt.

Ghana MTC Slideshow of 3 October 2014 Group