This is Part 2 of “The Real Elder Price and the Mormon Boys.” Read Part 1.
Disclaimer: Obviously, The Book of Mormon Musical is intended to entertain, not to serve as a primer on Mormonism. This series of essays is offered simply as a view of what missionary life is actually like for Mormon missionaries in Africa, not as a direct response to the musical—though there are a few responses.
“Total time from the wheels leaving the runway in Salt Lake City to touchdown in Douala, Cameroon: 23 hours 15 minutes and 9 seconds. Not too bad, but definitely tiring.”
Thus wrote Elder Brandon Price of his flight to Africa. “The arrival in Douala was the biggest shock of my life,” he continued. “When I walked out of the plane, I was drenched with pure humidity. It is really hot.”
Since he arrived on Thanksgiving Day, the senior couple (the Bakers) had prepared a Thanksgiving feast for him and the other missionaries, and so he had a pleasant culinary welcome. Such was not the case for other missionaries. Elder Jared Wigginton described some of his early meals vividly:
The food is hard on my stomach and literally hard to swallow. If you refuse food or do not finish, it is rude, since they are often not going to eat because they do feed you. I have tried to be a good sport, but I could not swallow the cow skin. I was, however, able to swallow monkey and its skin yesterday, and now I am sick with fever and a pounding stomach ache. My first day here, I accidently put a chicken head on my plate. Needless to say, it is a delicacy and it would have looked really bad if I did not eat it. Fortunately, Elder Anderson, whose praises will be sung by my posterity for generations to come, switched his chicken neck with my head without anyone seeing. As he bit through the skull, brain juices flooded down his mouth, I shuddered and sang for joy at the same time.
Yet, being deprived of American food for so long and being hungry from the hours and hours of marching in the blazing heat, I actually have not turned down a meal. Strangely, fish heads in peanut sauce with rice is not so bad; couscous with gumbo is appealing; and manioc with green-mushy-i-do-not-know-what-you-are-made-of is delicious. If the fact that I can eat this food is not evidence of the Lord’s blessings, I do not know what is.
Regardless of what the missionaries ate for their first meals in Africa, the work expected of them was the same: They would walk, talk to potential converts and LDS members, do service projects, and teach.
In the heat and humidity to which the Anglo missionaries are so unaccustomed, the reality of missionary work can be overwhelming. They learn quickly that they have lived in luxury for all of their lives, and things they take for granted (carpeting, dependable electricity, clean water) are rare in Africa. Spiders as big as a toddler’s hand periodically scramble up the walls, and the missionaries’ beds are surrounded by nets to protect them from malaria-bearing mosquitoes.
The whole experience can bring even an Eagle Scout to his knees.
Elder Kendell Coburn, who arrived in Africa three months after Elder Price, found himself praying in the apartment’s little kitchen early in his mission:
I was thousands of miles away from home, homesick, unable to express myself in French, starving (I didn’t dare eat anything), stressed. I decided to pray. In the tiny kitchen I said my prayer and all doubt left. An overwhelming peace replaced it. It was reaffirmed to me that the gospel was true and that I needed to stay, that I would cherish my mission, influence very many people, and would one day miss it.
Elder Price’s first week as a missionary in Africa was typical:
There aren’t addresses or roads in the slums where we teach, just narrow dirt paths and open sewers. I’ve forgotten all the French I learned and I am a little shell-shocked. And I walked. A lot. I had to have walked at least thirty miles this past week. My calves are looking killer. And really, really white.
Besides all the walking, Elder Price arrived in Yaounde, Cameroon in time to help with a demanding service project: cleaning and refurbishing an orphanage. Missionary labor is often simply labor.
There would be other service projects as well: cleaning a prison, painting a school, and working on wells.
Elder Price’s first companion in Africa was a Canadian named Andrew Kay. Missionaries, as The Book of Mormon Musical recognizes in a song, go out “two by two.” They are to protect and support one another. They also begin acting as ordained ministers—baptizing, preaching, and using “the laying on of hands” to heal or bless.
The lay priesthood is a distinguishing attribute of the LDS religion. Nearly every active Mormon boy is ordained to the Aaronic priesthood at age twelve, which is comparable to a Jewish boy’s Bar Mitzvah. The family celebrations in Mormonism are not as festive as those surrounding a Bar Mitzvah, but the newly ordained young man will begin serving in priestly duties, including administering the sacrament. When he is ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood, prior to his mission, he is, in many ways, an initiate into Mormon manhood. Shortly before to his departure, he will be “set apart” by a Church leader. All of his time and energy will be dedicated to God for the next two years. He is tithing his life. He will pack up and put away the emblems of his youth: ipods, skateboards, computer games.[i] His life has been ordained, or put in order, for a particular service and a designated time.
Elder Price was asked to anoint a sick person with consecrated olive oil the day after he arrived in Africa. It was his first time to do this ordinance, and he did it in French.
Within a few months of settling into his new life in Cameroon, he performed his first baptisms.
In The Book of Mormon Musical, Elder Cunningham sings “I’m going to baptize you!” as he prepares to immerse a beautiful Ugandan woman, Nabulungi. The song is rich with sexual innuendo.
There was no such innuendo when the real Elder Price had his first experience baptizing a convert. He baptized two women on that day, both much older than he: Louise and Sidonie.
Louise was late for the service, having just discovered that her purse had been stolen. Without the purse, she had no money, not even for a taxi. So she walked three miles to get to the church.
Elder Price baptized Sidonie first. He descended with her into the font. As he said the words, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” and then immersed her, his MTC companion stood at the font’s side, witnessing.
“The weather for the baptism was perfect,” wrote Elder Price, “but as we started to say the closing prayer, there was a HUGE downpour. It was one of my first tastes of what the rain can do in Africa.”
Just as he was learning about baptism (a ritual he would perform many times in his twenty-two months in Cameroon), he was also learning his first lessons about rain—African style. He would become an expert, as would all of the missionaries.
Elder Wigginton wrote this in a cyber café, as torrents of rain bulleted into the dirt roads outside:
Wow, I just saw a huge bolt of lightning. It must have been close because a loud crack, and rumbling thunder immediately followed. We really get thrashed out here after the rain. The mud is sticky, and red. The other day, I honestly carried about three pounds of mud between my shoes. The funny part is that as I walked up and down the quartier, the foliage and trash I could not avoid stepping on would cling to the mud. I would have plastic bags and long pieces of grass dragging behind me. Fortunately, many of our investigators’ family members wash our shoes off for us while we teach. There is a lot of love that we receive between the insults (which I am starting to understand better).
Yes, they would learn about rain —and about poverty, and love, and friendship.
Elder Price would not meet his future friend, Elder Wigginton, for several months, since “Wiggs” had been transferred to Pointe Noire, along with his new companion from Zambia, Elder Chiloba Chirwa (known as “Chills” outside of his mission life).
It was Elder Wigginton who first wrote to me from his mission, letting me know that, given the undependable mail system, missionaries were permitted to email friends as well as family. Thus began my adventure of sharing the missions of several young men we had known in our MTC branch. Soon, I included their companions on my list. Ultimately, I wrote to twenty.
Elder Wigginton introduced me to Elder Chirwa via email. I assumed that this African missionary was a Francophone, and so asked “Wiggs” to translate a message to his companion. I also assumed Elder Chirwa knew nothing about the world outside of Africa, that his English was elementary, and that his reading skills were poor.
As it turned out, Elder Chirwa’s father was pursuing a PhD in literature and had been named the Best Actor in Zambia in 1999. Chiloba himself had spent much of his childhood in England, and had an English accent. His sister, a doctor, still lived in England, as did his mother. Chiloba himself was planning on pursuing a degree in architecture. And he loved good books, especially those by Tolkien.
Chiloba “Chills” Chirwa would become dear to me, the African son I never met. He would also become a treasured friend to Elder Price. Both of them began their missions at the same time, and in fact communicated with each other before entering their separate Missionary Training Centers—Price’s in Utah, and Chirwa’s in Ghana.
Chiloba Chirwa wrote this to Elder Price on Sept. 3, 2008:
Hello there Elder Price-
I’m Elder Chirwa… I will be going into the Ghana MTC on the 19 of September and will be heading to the DR Congo mission. I have been surfing the net just trying to find out more about the mission!! You are the only one I have found that I will be serving with!!! Good luck with your preparations…see you in the field!!!
Elder Chiloba Anthony Chirwa
Brandon Price replied:
Hey Elder Chirwa! You have no idea how much it made my day when I read your email! I too have been surfing the net trying to figure out some stuff on the mission. I’m very excited, and a little nervous. Good luck in your preparations! I’m sure we’ll see each other at least once in the next two years!
In fact, they would see a lot of each other and sometimes proselytize together.
All of the missionaries in the DR-Kinshasa mission—and I—would learn precious and heart-wrenching lessons about love, sickness, death, faith, and compassion because of Chiloba Chirwa.
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[1] Women (age twenty-one and older) also serve missions, and they function in priestly ways in Mormon temples. However, because of some dangers, they do not serve in most of the African continent. The only sister missionaries in the DR-Congo mission are Congolese.