Black and White in South Africa: By Elder Wells

We returned Saturday p.m. from a quick trip to Mozambique—zone conference, some counseling with missionaries, and consulting with the mission president and his sweetheart,   Loren and Tina Spendlove, from St. George via Laverkin, Shanghai, and Mozambique.  They are a wonderful younger couple (52 and 50) who served as CES missionaries in Mozambique just 13 months before.

My missive for today sounds like I’m speaking of racism—which I am just a little—but mostly about the incredible saints of the latter day.  When we were last in Mozambique (January), we met an albino elder in Beira.  Albinos suffer a great deal of persecution in Africa and this young convert to the Church was no exception.  However, his pain and humiliation among his people served to give him an intense desire to know God.  A humble, quiet young man, he is more thoroughly acquainted with the scriptures and prayer than many of us who have been taught from “Jesus wants me for a SUNBEAM!” to “Ye Elders of Israel.”  In the last “transfer meeting,” which occurs every six weeks, President Spendlove surprised everyone by announcing that this elder was to take a place as a zone leader.  Transfer meetings are a highlight in missionaries’ lives, lots of guessing about who will go where, with whom, and who will be called to lead.  When this elder was called, he was absolutely stunned, and the zone erupted into magnificent, loving applause and backslapping.  He cried a little and then every 15 minutes or so throughout the remainder of the meeting giggled quietly to himself in unbelief and joy.  It makes me cry a little too, but that won’t surprise you.

The hot season is just beginning in Mozambique—humidity is high, no wind and the malaria mosquitos are beginning to proliferate.  When we arrived at the chapel—a four-story downtown building with a large room for a chapel, district presidency offices, and the mission distribution office—we discovered that the president had left the plug converter at the mission home.  So Sister Spendlove and Sister Wells raced back to retrieve it, because this entire meeting was to be broadcast via Skype to the rest of the mission.  Without his Power Point presentation of the transfers and the ability to communicate via Skype, the president was in fear of being lynched by his missionaries in Beira and north.  While we waited in 90 degree sauna “comfort,” the president asked that a missionary lead us in singing some hymns.  Mozambique is a Portuguese-speaking mission, 101 missionaries strong with elders from Canada to Rexburg to Brazil to Cape Verde.  So, there I am trying intently to look like I’m enjoying being a steamed vegetable when suddenly the missionaries begin booming “Far Far Away on Judea’s Plain"   I was overcome.  Here we were, most of us several thousands of miles from home, black, white, and in between in thundering unison singing glory to God.  Once again I was so forcefully reminded that this is the greatest work in all the world.  And to top it off, the song was written by a St. George pioneer, at a discouraging time in the colonization of Dixie.  Like most of us he would never see Judea’s plains and couldn’t possibly imagine how many voices in how many languages would praise God through his inspired words.

We flew back to Johannesburg on Saturday p.m., grateful for a balmy afternoon and a few sprinkles of rain.  This morning we were off to the Tembisa ward again, a black ward in the Tembisa township about 40 minutes away.  Part of my “assignment” there is to help out as occasion requires with the Young Single Adults.  Sister Mosala is our teacher, a registered nurse and relatively “old” convert, having been in the Church for nearly 20 years now.  Our lesson was about “Every Member a Missionary,” as I expect yours was too.  Sister Mosala is a strong Zulu woman who usually ends her statements with “Ne?,” meaning, “Are you with me?”  She said it was hard in the beginning being in a Church where they only spoke English.  As we talked about the need for having a friend in the Church, she talked about the first year or two she was a new member in the Kempton Park ward, while Apartheid was still in force.  More than once white members told her that she didn’t belong in this Church, that there were churches for black people elsewhere.  As blacks joined the Church, whites left it.  In fact, when the ward was divided, most of the black members were naturally part of the new ward and were to attend the new building the next Sunday.  During the week it was discovered that the building wouldn’t be ready on time and they were to return to Kempton Park.  She said it was a great surprise and disappointment to the white members returning from inactivity to find the black members still coming to Kempton Park that Sunday.

But I digress.  Sister Mosala talked about her friends in the Church, Bishop and Sister Fourie, a white couple who saved her spiritually.  Sister Fourie would ask every week how she was doing, was there anything she could do?  The bishop loved all the members, black and white.  He was known as the Black Bishop because he loved the black saints so much.  He persuaded Sister Mosala to give her first talk.  Because it had to be in English, she practiced it for days, over and over again in the front of the mirror.  She prayed with humility for the help of the Lord—and she opines now that it may have been the best talk she’s ever given.  Bishop Fourie was so visibly pleased and moved by her message that she knew she belonged to the right church.  Now 20 years later, Bishop Fourie’s wife is the stake Relief Society President, and Bishop Fourie, later President Fourie, is the stake patriarch.  He serves in the temple whenever he can, and Sister Fourie is usually to be seen in the 7 a.m. session of the temple on Saturday mornings.

When Sister Mosala finished her story, she tried to describe how the Church has changed her life.  As a young wife she sent her husband off one day to work, and he didn’t return.  It was a very dangerous time for black men, not only because of racial tensions but because of crime in the CBD (central business district) where he worked.  As days continued without finding him, she began searching in city morgues.  Finally, after he had been gone fourteen days, she asked her home teachers for help.  They went to the temple.  When they returned, they told her that it had been made known to them that she should go back to the first morgue she had visited, that she would find him there.  She did (and she bore testimony of her gratitude to the Lord for the blessing of finding her husband).  Several years later she met and married Brother Mosala, our High Priest Group Leader now.  Then she looked over our little group of YSAs, pointing out the now young adults she had taught as Primary children, now tall and strong in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  They know they have a friend in the Church, Ne?

Another one of my heroes here is Brother Tyson, a silver-haired stocky little white man who has served the Church here for forty plus years from convert to bishop to stake presidency.  He is now a sealer in the temple, serves as a high counselor in the Tembisa ward, and somehow is having to be sort of an interim elders’ quorum president in the ward for a period of time.  He is quietly giving his whole life to the Church, always smiling, always anxious to build, whether in the temple or in this ward every Sunday now.  He is so supportive of the ward, but he is blunt enough that he is building—with love and a twinkle in his smile—some discipline in the quorum.  The brethren now know that when he teaches the lesson, they had better have read it, because he is going to ask them to stand up and talk about what they read.  And I know from personal experience that he is as willing to be blunt with me as he is with the other brethren.   We are brethren.  Being a white senior missionary doesn’t (and shouldn’t) cut me any slack.

Black and White in Africa, children of God growing and learning to be brothers and sisters in His Family.  I am grateful to be here.