“The Lord has taken care of me for the last three decades and I have no doubt he will continue as I keep my end of the promise.”
When Liphapang Monesa from Maseru, Lesotho joined the church as a child, his choice to enter the waters of baptism came largely as a desire to follow the example of his parents. “I was only nine years old at the time, so I was following my parents more than a clear reliance on a new-found testimony,” he said.
As Brother Monesa became a teenager, he began to question many of the tenets of his faith. “The real question is not what made me join the church, but what made me stay in the church,” he said. The answer, largely, was a personal testimony borne of scripture study.
“Through seminary, the scriptures came alive for me and I eventually had a serious study of the Book of Mormon,” he said. As Brother Monesa found that “the word [was] good,” and that it began to “to enlarge [his] soul … and become delicious to [him], so his desire to share the gospel with others took root in his soul.
“My testimony of The Book of Mormon solidified my resolve to serve a mission,” he said.
He was called to serve in the Harare Zimbabwe mission between 2005 and 2007.
The experience was a sort of fast-tracked course in life lessons.
“They say the growth you experience can only be apparent when you finally return home,” he said. “I believe this is very true. In the two years I spent on mission I believe I gained the experience of life it would take me a lot of years to have through other avenues of life.”
Serving his mission set the tone for his future in terms of leadership, hard work and ambition to succeed both spiritually and temporally.
“I learnt that leadership is not a question of a position, but the ability to influence others through integrity, consistency and a display of genuine care for other people,” said Brother Monesa. His ability to lead and support others has been amplified since his two years in the field. The growth he experienced was a game-changer, he said.
And perhaps most importantly, those two years of full-time service created a foundation for a commitment to the Lord for the rest of his life.
“My commitment to serve the Lord has been resolute since I served a mission,” he said. “I live by the code that ‘As you take care of the Lord’s business, he takes care of yours’. I have seen the Lord take care of ‘my business’ for the past almost three decades and I have no doubt He will continue to do so as I keep my end of the promise,” he said.
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