Every week, Church Headquarters publishes a list of missionaries around the world who have been reassigned to a new mission by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. These reassignments can happen for several reasons. Sometimes a missionary transfers to or from a service mission. Other times, a missionary who was sent home due to a belated confession or for serious misconduct, has completed the repentance process and has been reinstated by an Apostle. Another reason is for a visa denial requiring a new assignment. 

It’s also important to understand what this weekly list does not include. Two major categories fall outside of it:

1. Temporary assignments while waiting on a visa. Missionaries who serve somewhere temporarily until their visa is approved and they can move to their permanent mission are not on the list.
2. Medical or mental health reinstatements. When missionaries return home for health reasons and, after being cleared by a doctor, are approved to return to the field as teaching missionaries, those reassignment notices are handled separately.

Both of these situations are processed through separate channels, which is why the weekly reassignment list doesn’t tell the whole story. The list usually comes out on Thursday evenings (our time), and on a typical week I’ll see two to five missionaries whose reassignment requires me to contact priesthood leaders and arrange travel. And then there are the exceptions…

Last week, was one of those exceptions. I received an email directly from the Prefield team in Salt Lake City with the names of 14 missionaries who had been reassigned to new permanent missions after being denied visas to Nigeria. For some reason, it is difficult for missionaries from East Africa (Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda) to get a Nigerian visa. Since these missionaries were already in the field serving in temporary missions, it became the responsibility of the In-Field Representative (IFR – that’s me) to notify priesthood leaders and arrange all the travel. In addition, we needed to make sure they had the needed paperwork to travel to their new missions. Their new missions were in Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia. Needless to say, it was a busy week!

To give a better idea of the steps required to complete a reassignment, here they are:

1. Go into Missionary INQUIRY and create what we call a “stack” of related approvals and notes. In these cases, the stack consists of three separate documents. 1) The actual reassignment based on the email with the request from Salt Lake. (I also cut and pasted the line in the spreadsheet showing the change associated with that particular missionary.) 2) A copy of the email sent to the sending Mission President, the receiving Mission President, the home Stake President, and notifying travel to check their documents. I also include the Mission secretaries in these emails. 3) A copy of the itinerary.
2. I then send the email mentioned in item 2 above. I always ask the receiving mission president when they want to receive to receive the reassigned missionary. Permanent mission leaders always dictate the timing of the transfer, otherwise there is even more chaos.
3. Once the receiving mission president provides the date, I request the itinerary from travel. Generally the passport is already in the system, so I will download it and send a copy to travel to make it easier for them to have the correct name for the flight.
4. Once the itinerary is booked and sent to all who were on the original note, I check it first and then take a copy of it and put it in the stack as well.
5. I then go into the system and generate a “new assignment change” showing the missionary moving from the temporary mission to the permanent mission on the date specified. This is not always straightforward and is often a two step process. I won’t go into the details, but needless to say it will generally take about 10-15 minutes to do what it takes to finalize the reassignment.

Now, multiply those 5 steps by 14 missionaries. Sometimes the itineraries may not be correct, and with these 14 missionaries, two of them had the wrong date and had to be reissued. For those heading to Ghana, things get even more complex: missionaries must arrive in Accra a day early to complete Ghana Card registration and medical checks for their residency visa. In addition, I send a separate request to the Africa West travel team (who know us well) to book the final leg from Accra to Takoradi, Kumasi, or Cape Coast. To make that work, I gather all the Ghana itineraries, build a spreadsheet with the missionaries’ names and new assignments, and send it along to the Africa West Travel team.

I started this process on Saturday and finished by Wednesday morning. While it wasn’t the only work I had this past week, it definitely dominated each day. I told the Manager of the Prefield team afterwards, “Let’s hope we don’t have to do that again anytime soon!”

On Wednesday, August 13th, we joined abut 14 other senior missionaries to sort school uniforms for members of the Church who attend a particular school. Apparently it was the school itself that donated the clothing, but it needed to be sorted and then repacked in plastic bags. We spent just over an hour working together with the other senior missionaries to complete the project. Apparently last year they had young missionaries helping and it took 4 hours and 20 young missionaries. Just another evidence that age and experience matter! 😊. Below are pictures of the bags and the pizza lunch. Thanks to Elder and Sister Nielsen for organizing this fun activity.

On Friday afternoon, I had a meeting with Elder Silva (1C in Area Presidency), Thabo Lebethoa (Director of Temporal Affairs – DTA), Nomfundo Radebe (Travel Manager) and Nomfundo’s manager, Emily Seholo, (Manager Area Support Services). The focus of the meeting was how can we reduce the number of missionaries arriving in missions off-transfer. This was a problem for us in Kumasi, and it is certainly a much bigger problem here. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer.

We currently have over 400 temporary assignments in the Central and South Areas. I mention both areas because missionaries are often in a temp assignment in one area but their permanent assignment is in the other. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, it is the permanent mission that determines the arrival date. This is because the missionary went into the MTC based on the permanent mission’s transfer arrival date. This is further complicated with MTC’s in the Philippines, Provo, and New Zealand. Coupled with the three African MTCs (Ghana, DR Congo, South Africa) almost every missionary that comes to Africa goes through one of these six MTCs. Because of the distance and the “in-MTC” time requirement, the missionaries from Provo, New Zealand, and The Philippines rarely arrive on the transfer day of the mission. We will probably not be able to change this (although efforts have been made). The only way we can reduce the overall problem is to reduce the number of temporary missionaries and the only way that happens is if we get documents earlier to apply for visas earlier so when they leave from the MTC they can go directly to their permanent mission. There are a number of ways we can do this, right now the plan is to have the missionary coordinators in the Coordinating Councils and Stakes help the missionaries gather their paperwork the moment the call is submitted to Salt Lake. This should help. In the meantime, there is opportunity for the Travel teams to work more closely with the missions who can often help the missionaries get the missing documents in a more timely manner. More work to do here.

I don’t often have meetings with members of the Area Presidencies, but on Friday, I was back to back. I left the meeting with Elder Silva a few minutes early and rushed back to my office to join a Zoom call with the Africa Central Area Presidency and the new mission leaders that just arrived in June. The purpose was for the Area Presidency and DTA to provide the new Mission Leaders information on Area contacts and organizations that can help them with challenges they are facing. There was also time to answer a few questions that they had. The meeting lasted for just over an hour. There was a ton of good information that I certainly appreciated. At times I wish we could fly to Nairobi every quarter and spend a month there at the Central Area Office. Proximity does have its benefits! In attendance was the entire Area Presidency (Elder Mutombo, Elder Pieper, Elder Giraud-Carrier), the Executive Secretary (Elder Bruce Basset), the Director of Temporal Affairs (DTA) (Francis Kazeh-Anfo) and a senior couple over English Connect, Elder and Sister Wetherbee. The mission Leaders present were President and Sister Muhemedy (DRC Lubumbashi), President Koranteng (Rwanda), President and Sister Chivunga (Kenya Nairobi West), and President and Sister Malonga (DRC Mbuji-Mayi). President and Sister Bell (Uganda) were unable to attend. The Wetherbee’s were there to talk about English Connect. This is a real focus in Africa Central where we have so many French and Portuguese speaking missionaries. The Church really wants them to learn English while on their missions as it will bless the rest of their lives when they do.

Since my last post, I written down and followed up on 37 new cases. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, more than half of these were reassignments. We have had a number of medical issues, including an amazing young missionary who was severely emotionally and physically abused by a relative as a young child who we managed to get into a mental health facility for a couple of weeks to help him get his feet firmly beneath him. Thanks to some excellent help from our Family Services Manager, we found him a bed in a good hospital and then quickly had to move to get him there. Everyone who meets this elder falls in love with him. We just need him to love himself more. We have also dealt with infield surgeries for appendix complications and an ovarian cyst; medical treatment for vasovagal syncope; dog bites with a concern for rabies; missionaries with anger issues; a concussion from an inadvertent hit to an overhead obstacle; and missionaries with emotional challenges resulting in transfers to service missions or simply a transfer back home. There is something new everyday that comes my way. I find it interesting and challenging as we battle against the world and darkness to establish Zion in Africa. By the way, we ARE winning!

On Saturday, August 2nd, we did something fun. Saturday is our preparation day, although we usually have work for at least a portion of the day. On that particular Saturday we purchased tickets for the South African version of the play, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”. It was showing at the Monte Cristo Casino Theater. All of the other senior couples who went to the show did so a week later. We opted to go the matinee showing and good seats were only available on August 2nd. While the theater is relatively small, the Casino itself is HUGE. In fact, LaDawn made a comment about the “Big and Spacious Building”. We really enjoyed the play and the opportunity to do something entirely different.

Have you ever wondered just how big Africa is? I am always amazed how long it takes for someone to fly from the Ghana MTC to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, or Madagascar. I found this picture on the web that I think is worth a thousand words. Needless to say, Africa is HUGE!

On August 5th, many of the senior missionary men met again at BRG for a hamburger lunch. They really make a good burger (in fact it is all they do). It is always fun to rub shoulders with these good men.

On August 11th, all of the senior missionaries gathered for a quarterly devotional with a member of the Area Presidency. In this case, it was Elder and Sister Falabella who spoke to us. While they are not technically members of the presidency, Elder Falabella is an emeritus General Authority. We love the Falabella’s and really enjoyed their messages of being kind (Sister Falabella) and being quick to “observe and then serve” (Elder Falabella). Elder Falabella gave some great examples from his own experience as a General Authority of trying to help makes things better even though it wasn’t his direct line of responsibility. The catered lunch was outstanding. This is a meeting everyone looks forward to each quarter.

Today after Church we were able to witness the baptism of two older sisters and a primary child. It was held after the second hour and nearly everyone stayed to support these two wonderful convert Sisters. Sister Mavis and Sister Bulewa. Elder Sanders from Cape Town performed the baptisms. He just received a new missionary to train, Elder Egan from Sandy, Utah. These are some excellent missionaries. We couldn’t help but be impressed by the testimonies these two sister shared after they were confirmed. We love to see how the gospel of Jesus Christ changes people for the better. This afternoon we were able to watch one of our missionaries from Kumasi speak in sacrament meeting and report on his mission. Elder Melessa. Just remembering this young man when he came to the mission and seeing him now is the same level of evidence as seeing these two sisters enter the waters of baptism. The gospel changes us if are obedient and faithful to our Lord God and to the covenants we make which bind us to him.

I will add one more fun tidbit. As I have mentioned before, each Friday there are four of us who go and golf 9 holes at the Killarney Golf Course. This last Friday I experienced a first. I made an “eagle” on the 15th hole. For the non-golfers reading this, an eagle is two strokes below par. This hole is a par 5. My first hit cut the corner and landed perfectly in the fairway about 180 yards away from the hole. My second shot was not great and landed 20 feet short of the green. I was thinking maybe I could make a good chip shot and then take one putt to put it in for a birdie. Instead, by some incredible luck, I chipped it in. 3 strokes on a par 5. Something I have never done before. That was worth whooping and hollering about! Elder Johnson suggested we needed to take a picture, so here it is. That will keep me going back for a while longer.

The work here has a steady rhythm. Weekends are less busy, but still require attention to some details. Following up, documenting, reminding are all part of the work that both LaDawn and I do. She will be taking over all of the missionary applications in about 6 weeks when the Johnson’s leave. She is doing a great job and really has a good feel for helping these priesthood leaders who submit these applications get them right the first time (or at least the second time). We love being engaged in this work. We testify of its truthfulness and the preparation underway to soon welcome the Savior back to the earth. Time is of the essence. May we all put our “Shoulder to the Wheel” and “Push Along”. We are grateful to be serving in South Africa during this amazing chapter of Church and world history.