We have been called to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
We are serving in the Little Rock, Arkansas mission and reported to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on Monday, November 14th, 2022. We have been called to be the Coordinators of an Infant Mortality Reduction initiative in partnership with the NAACP in Memphis, Tennessee. The project is called MyBaby4Me…therefore the title of our blog of our experiences. This is the first project of its kind for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints. Missionaries serve on a voluntary basis and pay all of their own expenses. It is expected we will serve in Memphis for 18 months.
Here is a copy of the final brochure for MyBaby4Me:
You may wonder “Why?” Simply stated, we believe that every baby is a miraculous gift, and that pregnant and parenting women and their partners deserve all the support that can be provided to have a healthy, term pregnancy and a baby whose growth and development is nurtured. Every baby deserves a first birthday! If we can help do that with this project, we are all in.
Our call to this particular mission and work has been a spiritual one, and we have seen the Lord’s hand in our lives at every step. Our past professional backgrounds, our parenting experiences with our own 6 children and grandparenting experience with our 16 grandchildren, our recent retirements allowing time to devote to this cause, and the many steps that aligned to allow us to leave quickly. Our formal mission call was received on October 25th, just 3 weeks before our reporting date. Timing was important, because the launch of the first group of MyBaby4Me participants was November 29th.
So many of you have asked for a way to be able to follow us and this work while we are on our mission, so we are creating this blog to document our experiences. We hope to publish at least once each month during the 18 months of our mission.
Our week at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, UT was an amazing experience; we would highly recommend it! There were 11 senior couples in our cohort, and they were called to serve all over the globe....Ghana, Spain, Australia, England, Thailand, Texas, Florida....the needs for those willing to serve are all over the world. The senior missionaries eat and attend MTC functions with the younger missionaries (some 1,500 of them were there with us), but their instruction time is with their cohort. Besides being instructed in the Preach My Gospel principles, we attended devotionals and received some very practical advice about getting along with your companion and about security concerns specific to the areas we were each called to.
Following a week at the MTC for training, we began our drive to the Arkansas Little Rock mission offices. We arrived in Little Rock on Sunday evening, November 20th. We met office staff serving in the mission office on Tuesday and then had dinner with our Mission President and his wife (President and Sister Cahoon) and our advisor for this project and his wife (Dr. Beheshtie). Wednesday we headed out on the 160 mile trip to Memphis and to settle into our apartment.
Our mission's housing coordinator and his wife did an amazing job of getting a nice apartment ready for us. We found a brand-new couch, a brand-new King-sized bed with new sheets, a washer and dryer IN our apartment, food in the fridge and pantry, and all kinds of essentials (laundry detergent, toilet paper, cleaners, a vacuum, etc). It was great to feel so welcomed after a couple of weeks on the road.
We were also greeted by another missionary couple living in our apartment complex....who promptly invited us to their large extended family Thanksgiving dinner the next day. This senior missionary couple, the Wrights from the Phoenix, AZ area, serve 35 stakes in this region as Self-Reliance missionaries.
The NAACP office in Memphis is about a 30-minute drive for us; that is where the MyBaby4Me classes are held. We have been welcomed to the NAACP office with southern hospitality by the director and her 2 staff. Our days since then have been preparing to teach whoever might show up on a scheduled MyBaby4Me class day and doing outreach to promote the program. We have canvassed the 38126 zip-code and delivered brochures to churches, health care offices, public health partners and community centers, connected with others in the community that have interest in the project, participated in meetings with public health staff and others, and created an e-mail specific to the project. We have reached consensus with others on the consent form and working with a Med. School student on a survey tool to gather data on participants for evaluation purposes. We are working with church communication staff on a Facebook page for MyBaby4Me, There have been public service announcements airing on media outlets about MyBaby4Me and a request for a TV interview is moving ahead. We feel like seeds are being planted for future success.
Because it is the holiday season, we have been invited to attend and serve at several events to provide resources to those who have little. Two of these events were co-hosted by health system partners and focused on the homeless population. A third and much larger event was at the Citadel United Church of God in Christ where a large group of volunteers distributed an entire semi-load of food, including 500 turkeys as well as gifts for all the children of families who attended. It has been a joy to serve! We have been so impressed with the many faithful and religious people in the South who share our values of serving as the Savior served. It has been humbling and oh so good for us to be included in these projects and also getting more exposure for our MyBaby4Me efforts and introductions to additional partners for our work.
We have taken an evening or two to attend a drive through live nativity at a local church building, attend/helped with 2 different ward Christmas parties, and drive through a large light display complete with music that is a fund-raiser for a non-profit organization outside of Memphis that promotes open space and parks.
We had the opportunity to meet a young woman this past week; she was hurt in a violent relationship and is in a local shelter with her 18 month old daughter. She left school at age 14 and her daughter was her 4th pregnancy...and the only one she has carried to term. As we talked with her, she shared that she has no relationships with family and longs to be a part of a family with people to love and people who love her. Although she and her daughter don't qualify for what we are doing (she is not currently pregnant and it has been more than a year since her little girl was born), we sense a special spirit about her and are trying to connect her to programs that will help her find housing and pursue her education. She has so little and is so young but is brave and hopeful and has set long-term goals for the life she wants to create for her and her child. We are inspired by her resilience and the love she has for her little girl.
We have just passed the one-month mark for our mission, and we believe the best is yet to come. We have a Zone Conference tomorrow and will be with about 150 other missionaries and hear from our Mission President. We have a small nativity set and lights on our kitchen counter and are inspired by beautiful Christmas music filling our apartment. It will be a different Christmas for us, but we are happy to be where we are and serving, with the support of our family members. Thank you all for your good wishes and prayers.
May the Spirit of "Christ"mas touch your hearts and give you many reasons to be grateful for a Savior born at this season.
Lynn and Joell Archibald
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