President's Message

Dear Madagascar Antananarivo Missionaries,

Wow!!  The last week is one that we will never forget!  I don’t think anyone ever thought the effects of COVID-19 would hit our mission so hard and so fast.  We are deeply grateful, however, that we were able to mobilize quickly to get nearly everyone home, before it was too late.  I am very proud of the way each of you managed this challenging experience. You were poised, obedient, and courageous. Thank you for enduring your stress-filled mission leaders during the final hours of the main evacuation.

Unfortunately, at this writing, we still have three missionaries (Elder Haami, Sister Tehetia, and Sister Urarii) waiting for flights in La Reunion.  Elder Lethezer also remains in Mauritius because his country’s borders and airport are closed to everyone. By the end of the day the three Tahitian missionaries should be on their way home.  Elder Lethezer will likely be temporarily reassigned directly to a new mission in the next couple of days. Let’s keep them and each other in our prayers continually as this whole experience moves ahead to the next steps in each of our lives, whatever those may be.

Two and a half years ago (October 2017), Elder Ronald A. Rasband, taught us that:  “Our lives are like a chessboard, and the Lord moves us from one place to another – if we are responsive to spiritual promptings. . . We can see such heavenly intervention when Nephi returns to get the plates from Laban.  He ‘was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things [that he] should do. (1 Nephi 4:6)’” And ever so importantly, “One day, we will stand as a witness of our whole-souled devotion to works of righteousness. No trial or calamity can derail God’s plan of happiness.”  Elder Rasband then quoted Psalm 30:5 which states something important for us all to remember at this difficult time of transition, “For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”  

This incredible event in our lives is likely to bring more than a few tears and a sense of discomfort for a brief period.  But we must never forget that Heavenly Father’s unique plan for each of us will not be frustrated. Our task now is to give our “whole-souled” devotion to the very specific plan He will lay before us.  As we do, our weeping will surely yield to the joy that “cometh in the morning.” One day we will see in these experiences the great wisdom and love God has for each of us.

We are saddened that our experience together either ended or was interrupted prematurely by this deadly virus.  We would have loved to spend so much more time with each of you before your departure. You were pulled from us abruptly, but we pray with all of our heart that you will forever know that our love and embrace has always been fully extended to you.  We also pray that you will never forget that “hard is good” on your pathway to Christ-centered discipleship and your efforts to strengthen your testimony of Him is the “most important thing happening of the face of the planet.”  

We will love you eternally!

President and Sister Duckworth,

Dear missionaries,

We love you! And we have not stopped thinking about and praying for you.

The last several days were a hustle and bustle as the evacuation from Madagascar, Reunion and Mauritius happened. A few things to remember as we contemplate this event.

Remember that we love each other, and that all of us have expressed that love in many ways. As we sat in zone conferences and shared gospel truths, as we bore our testimonies of the divinity of the Savior and His gospel. We expressed love as we served one other, and lifted one another in companionships. As we sang together, as we ate together, even as we posed for pictures together!

Thank you for these wonderful memories. Thank you for sharing your love with one another, and with all of us. We followed the Savior’s example, in John 13:35: “By this shall all ​men​ know that ye are my disciples, if ye have ​​​love​ one to another.”

We are grateful beyond words for the opportunity to have served alongside each of you in this wonderful Madagascar, Antananarivo mission! Thank you for all that you did to be amazing missionaries!

With love beyond words,

Sister Duckworth

From President and Sister Duckworth

Dear Madagascar Antananarivo Mission Parents:

Though the crisis is still very much with us, at least here in Madagascar the urgency of moving missionaries to either their families or to their new assignments has abated.  We still have three missionaries that are here in the mission with us.  The Bennetts, a senior couple from Canada, and Elder Lethezer from New Caledonia.  We continue to hope for opportunities to get them to their next destinations safely.  Your continuing prayers on their behalf will be greatly appreciated.

We have great hope that many of our missionaries will return to our mission in the months ahead.  We miss them all dearly and feel that our relationships were abruptly and prematurely interrupted without a proper farewell.  For that reason, I am writing you collectively today.  We wanted to have the opportunity to express our heartfelt love and appreciation to each of you for sending us your wonderful sons and daughters.  For an all-to-brief moment in time, they became a very important part of our lives and family. 

It’s an extraordinary experience to be Mission Leaders and observe these tender souls arrive with all of their energy, expectations, hopes, and uncertainties, then in such a short time see them blossom into incredible servants and disciples of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  And they do it all in the context of the Malagasy or French languages. 

Our mission was filled with extraordinary souls – we are certain they were among the best the Lord has upon the earth today.  They were indeed reserved for this very moment in time.  Like any of us, they aren’t perfect yet, but in our eyes and hearts they are moving strongly in that direction.  Their spirits and personalities will be forever etched upon the fleshy tablets of our heart.

You can be very proud of the service they rendered up to this point on their mission.  They have been obedient and very hard working.  They have learned to overcome their fears and disappointments.  They have grown through service to love the people, the members, their companions, and themselves in profound and eternally significant ways.  We are confident that the Lord is looking down upon them and exclaiming, “well done, good and faithful servants.”

As they move on to the next phases of their life and missions, we know you will now watch over them and encourage them.  Help them to remember that the Lord is always with them and will honor his promises to them and us all. He has said, “Keep all the commandments and covenants by which ye are bound; and I will cause the heavens to shake for your good, and Satan shall tremble and Zion shall rejoice upon the hills and flourish; And Israel shall be saved in mine own due time; and by the keys which I have given shall they be led, and no more be confounded at all.  Lift up your hearts and be glad, your redemption draweth nigh.  Fear not, little flock, the kingdom is yours until I come.  Behold, I come quickly.  Even so.  Amen.”  (D&C 35:24-27)

With profound love and gratitude,

President and Sister Duckworth

p.s. We are attaching the last letter we prepared for your missionaries.  We’re not certain whether they all received it or not, since the Missionary Portal was in such a disarray at that time.  Would you mind forwarding it on to them for us.  Thank you ever so much!

                                                                                 I'm Home!

Hey there everyone! This is Brother Johnson typing my last post. It has certainly been a ride and journey to remember; I don't believe that anyone else besides the people who were with me at the time could get such an experience as one of which we had. It all started out last week on Wednesday when I was still a missionary in Madagascar, getting ready for the day as usual with my companion. We used to have a house of four, but it went up to a house of 6, because 2 Elders from Fort Dauphin (ironically, they were the Elders in the Tanambao area, the area that I served in) had to bunk with us for a while since Fort Dauphin and Fianarantsoa both got evacuated due to COVID-19. The disease had not yet come to the island. We were talking with each other in our room, I can't be too sure what we were talking about, but at around 8:30 I felt a vibration coming from my shirt-pocket and I soon realized that the vibration was our phone, so I pulled out the phone (which is really small by the way) and I saw that the caller was Ampefiloha, the Elders that live with our Zone Leaders. To be honest, I was slightly confused about this call, but I answered it anyways, and when I said Hello, Elder Spencer Cottle, one of my Zone Leaders, told me, ''Get everyone in one room, we've got an announcement''. I got everyone in the room and put him on speaker. Now, leading up to this point, we all had thought that by this call we would be getting quarantined, because we speculated that because they had asked us to go to the store and buy 2 weeks worth of food (which we did), they wouldn't want us to waste $500 worth of non-perishable foods. What my zone leader said next shocked me: ''Madagascar is getting evacuated; Pack your bags and get to the mission office by 3 in the afternoon. Don't be late. Don't say good-bye to anyone, because this is something that the government is secretly allowing the church to do. The church had bought a chartered plane to get us out of here.'' My companion and I left our home at 1-ish and got to the mission office at around 2:30. The whole office was packed with Missionaries from all across the island. We had to re-organize all of our luggage, weigh our bags, and get them set for departure. Later that night, we had a final emergency mission conference about any questions that anyone had, about what to do, and more updates about the coronavirus. I had the privilege to play the piano for the last time at this historic meeting. Lots of tears of sorrow were shed and we were all pretty shaken by this turn of events. As for myself, I was sad that I was about to leave 9 valiant people behind who all had a baptismal date in the near future.

 The next day, we got our bags on the 3 buses that would take us to the airport. The airport was complete pandemonium; for a small airport, it was completely jam packed, people were literally in line to escape for their lives, to return home, and to escape Madagascar overall. It was really an interesting experience to hear the rumble and clacking of the wheels of the 80+ missionary's bags rolling on the pavement. The guards standing at the airport only let people get through once every 15 minutes or so, but all of the missionaries got through. I had to exchange my ariary money back into dollars, so I went and exchanged my money, and got some dollars and some euros in return. It was a miracle that all 80 missionaries got on that plane that day to escape the jaws of the malagasy government. The way that the mission president found out that we needed to go was because one of his assistants found out that the president of Madagascar was going to shut down all flights within those 72 hours. The mission president forwarded that information to the Quorum of the Twelve and at 5 in the morning on Wednesday, He got a text from the brethren saying that the Twelve had approved the evacuation of the Madagascar Antananarivo mission. Our flight left the airport 6 hours before the airport shut it's gates. It was sad to see Antananarivo dip from my view for the last time, but I knew that my life had been preserved according to the mercy and grace of God.

We left that airport at around 5 or 6 and got to the Seychelles islands at around 10 at night. We were only there for about an hour and a half or so, but it was really humid walking around outside in the Seychellian breeze. It  reminded me so much of Fort Dauphin, one of my previous areas that had beaches in it. At around 11:50 we took off in an Emirates 777 airplane bound for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was really neat to see all the commercial ads first in Arabic and then in English. Whenever there was a significant things happening in the plane, the flight attendant would first speak in Arabic and then in English. It was a huge blessing for me to go to Dubai since I learned a little bit of Arabic on my mission (I learned how to read and write and to speak just a little bit in Arabic). We got to Dubai at around 4:30 in the morning. It was spectacular to see the underwater hotels that everyone likes to look at on the internet in real life and from 5,000 feet up. I got off the plane and ate some McDonalds (which was also in Arabic). When I paid for my meal, the cashier gave me Arabic money as my change (which I loved). I got to practice some Arabic on some of the people in the airport which was really neat. When we were waiting to board our next flight, the sun was starting to come up on the middle eastern city and I saw the unmistakable form of the Burj Khalifa tower, which is the tallest building in the world. It looked tiny where we were from, though, so I took a picture of me pointing to it. I was so tired that I fell asleep in my chair, and the other missionaries had to shake my shoulder to wake me up and get on the next plane. The next plane I got on was an Airbus A380, which is one of the largest commercial airline aircraft. It was also an UAE plane, so everything was in Arabic and English again. It was the longest flight that I have ever been on...14 hours! I could barely stand it. I didn't sleep at all during that flight, just like the flight that I had from London to Johannesburg coming to my mission. We flew over Iran, Italy, France, and the Atlantic ocean.

 We took off at around 8 and got to New York's JKF at 2 in the afternoon. We had a 6 hour layover, so I was able to call my mom at that time and tell her what was going on. She had no idea what was happening, so I told her what happened and where I had been. I was so happy to hear her voice. At around 8 that night we took off from that airport and landed in Salt Lake City at around Midnight. All the missionaries that live in Utah got off there, but there were still a considerable amount of people who still had to go home outside of Utah (not including people who aren't Americans; they took another flight), so I was one of the few who stayed at the airport overnight until my last flight to Denver. I connect well with a man named Blake while I was waiting and I heard about the earthquake in Utah, which I was shocked about.

 The last flight from Salt Lake took less than 2 hours and it was beautiful! The mountains were covered in snow, and I was back to the pristine, stark Colorado/Wyoming terrain I had been itching to behold. We landed in Denver at around 10, and when I stepped off the plane, I just about froze my booty off. I wasn't in Madagascar anymore, Toto. And then I met my family at the baggage claim. It was a really tender moment for me, because I had envisioned in so many ways how it was going to play out. I was so happy to see them and to connect with them again. After that, we went back to Cheyenne, and my Stake President released me.

Reflecting on that once-in-a-lifetime experience, I noticed countless blessings and last minute miracles that took place. If I could list all the miracles that happened those days, I think this blog would crash. Seriously, Heavenly Father was behind all of this. He saw me through the moments I thought I couldn't go on. I am so grateful and I have had my testimony hardened in an unequivocal way. I know that God lives, and that Jesus Christ is the Savior of us all. I didn't feel that God loves me or anyone else less when I saw people praying to Allah in Dubai; If anything, I really wanted to connect with them and bring them closer to the truth. As Lehi says in his remarkable first vision in the Book of Mormon, ''Thy throne is high in the heavens, and thy power, and goodness, and mercy are over all the inhabitants of the earth; and because thou art merciful, thou wilt not suffer those who come unto thee that they shall perish!''

Lastly, I want to thank you. Each and every one of you. All of you. You have made a difference in my life and in countless others in return for your generosity in money, in prayers, in tears, and in diligence of fasting. From the deepest and most meaningful part of my heart, I thank you all for all that you have sacrificed on my behalf, and for responding to my emails. I did not have a lot of people on my emails, but a lot of you always responded. Thank you! May God bless you people in rich abundance for your charity and christ like character that you have shown.

God bless you all,

Brother David Ivan Johnson

Returned full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints