Mission Stories - Africa

I learnt so much about Africa and made a lot of friends from Africa on my mission. There are quite a lot of immigrants from Africa in Sweden, and being the wonderful, spiritual people that they are, they aren't afraid to talk to missionaries - especially since we speak such good English :P But there is something incredible about Africans. It's not really to do with race (since African Americans or Black Brits don't have it), but with background, culture and history. It makes them humble and proud at the same time (in good ways); trustworthy and completely unreliable at the same time; and wonderfully open for new things while still stuck to their old culture and traditions at the same time. :D They make Sweden a richer place, even if the mutual culture shock does sometimes cause friction.

On my mission I made friends with people from Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Liberia... Learnt me a quite a bit of geography too. Also a lot of history; the bloody history of that continent told as personal history. Powerful stuff. A young Sierra Leonian man in Sundsvall was describing the advancement of the crazed guerillas to us: we sat in his apartment, and he explained that you were hearing the noise and hearing the news that "now they are in Timrå," and "now they are in Birsta." He showed us a documentary about the war and made comments like "I knew that guy" or "I used to play there as a child."

It was in my first area that I properly met proper Africans for the first time. Most of the ones I met had immigrated to Sweden in search of asylum, or tillstånd as it's known. Some had got it, some were still waiting, and some had been given a negative and were in a pickle. As missionaries we got to walk straight through these invisible walls of society, from the homes of the Swedes to the "camps" as the asylum seekers call them (they are basically some kind of gatherings of apartments, whether in tall buildings or flat ones). They told us their stories, about life in the camps (you got to be smart and strong to make it through) and about life before. It was funny, it was tragic, it was life. Nothing we could do about it any more than we could do about the lives of "normal" Swedes: that is, we could help them change the way they see life itself, give a bigger picture, give means to cope - and help make social connections there on the side. It wasn't all "hear the gospel and all your worries will disappear". But I saw times when it worked (for someone still in the camps as well as for someone who'd just go through and out) and times when it didn't.

But. On to the wonderful friends. We worked a lot with a father of two teenage kids, he was a very spiritual man, liked to read the Bible and to preach out of it. The sister who left before me had a dream to see him preaching out of the Book of Mormon some day, and I got to see it happen :P One time (I can't remember how we got on his topic), he told me to go back to Finland and save my people. :P My companion asked if she should also go to Finland to save people, and he said no, she should just work here in Sweden until her time was done and then go back to America :P Amusingly, this happened much before I had decided to move back to Finland. The same man became much loved among the missionaries for the things he said, which we started to call Gapisms. Such as: "Everyone is unequal! We are equally unequal!"

Another time in that same area we were going to visit a girl from Africa in another town. So we drove up there to her apartment, where a very morose teenager told us that "everyone was at the party duh." We asked where, and she said "at the abef." We said "err, where's that" and she looked like we must be the thickest people ever and pointed and said to go over the bridge. We were still a little unsure, so we asked her how you spell the name of the place. And she said "like it sounds: abef." Turns out it was the local ABF, and that the "party" that we had thought would be a small family gathering to celebrate the birth of a baby was in fact a full-blown African party with music and disco lights, food and people going to get drunk. So we were very awkward as we were shown a table (our girl was the hostess so we hardly saw her), given a bottle of pop each to drink (a guy opened the caps with his bare hands for us) and told to eat! eat! So we ate as quickly as possible and made a quick and as graceful an exit as possible. :P Afterwards I teased my trainer about corrupting me by taking me to a party.

And my most favourite African memory is of K. who we were teaching. Right before I left the area she had us over and we put African music on the DVD player and we were dancing to it, and we had Swedish pancakes, and she finally told us that she's pregnant :) I changed a lightbulb for her, and I played with his son, threw him around and chased him and everything... XD What a send off <3

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There is still a little bit of a soft kind of racism going on in Sweden. I don't mean any kind of hate as such, that's pretty much similar to other places (so only a very small minority is actually properly racist and that is very much considered a bad thing by the general public), but many of the Swedes that I met do still have this "they are different from us" feel about immigrants. They use slightly awkward words, or behave a little strange, sometimes. :/

But missionaries aren't exempt from this soft thing either, of treating Africans differently. An illustrative example: one time in Zone Conference we practiced talking to people on the street, and the missionary playing the person said "I'm a young African guy" and the other missionary practicing contacting went up to him, pointed to his badge and said "Jesus. Can we have your phone number?" :P I definitely saw (and probably did it myself too) that we behaved differently with Africans. Of course in some ways it was appropriate: to Swedes somebody coming to visit unannounced is a big no-no; to Africans it's the way it's done. In fact they might not be home at the agreed time if you did make an appointment - this is part of the infamous flakiness that all the missionaries seem to think is essential to Africans. And I believe that is part of the reason why missionaries treat Africans different, there are some inherent expectations of how Africans think or act. :/

And - partly related to the flakiness - most missionaries have an African heartbreak story. Missionaries get so very attached to the people they teach (well, all the people around, actually) so there is bound to be some disappointments too (rejection, opposition, problems...) There is something about teaching people the gospel that just makes your heart stick to them like glue. The love I felt for every investigator and new or less-active member (and basically every person I met) was really intense and I just really badly wanted them all to be happy and successful in life. But it is true that there are a lot of African members of the Church who for some reason or another (usually not due to lack of faith or testimony) are not interested anymore - which can make the missionaries who worked with them feel like utter failures.

In my last area I saw one of the most wonderful things ever. We had these amazing young guys, who all called each other brothers (and so we started to call them the Brotherhood) and they just brought each other to church, one after another. When I got there, the third one of that group was getting baptised. When I left after five months there were five of them baptised and three or four coming along to everything. <3 I love those guys so much. It was like straight out of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynVgDWKWHtU

I have noticed that the trend all over the world is that missionaries teach people who are foreign. I was foreign when the missionaries taught me. And I believe it is no surprise, and in fact probably part of the plan. People who would not or could not hear of the gospel in their own home countries (China, Middle East, some of the African countries) can find it when they are abroad in countries where religion is free. And also considering the humility and willingness to learn and accept something very new that is needed to convert, it is much easier for someone who has already changed their entire life around to not be afraid of the missionaries. I know I wouldn't have accepted the gospel in my home country, I would not have been open minded enough.