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I Am Free, Indeed
As told to Diane Nelson, an Africa West Area church history missionary
When my husband died in 2010, I bore my testimony that he was the one who trained me to be self-reliant. Looking back, I learned that he was preparing me, so I could do things on my own, because he would not always be around. He wanted me to be free. He helped prepare me to accept the gospel and to love the principles of self-reliance.
My mother and father were farmers. They sent me to different schools, and we moved around. When I was in 11th grade, I did not have anyone to support me. I was living in a tent.
One day, I was on my way to live at my auntie’s whose husband died. She was a pepper trader in the market and did not have much. That is when I met my husband for the first time. He would joke with me and soon he admired me. He was much older than me. He said, “I will help you and then you will achieve more.” He looked around and said, “Your garden is dead, and you do not have a job. I can help you.” And so, I went with him to live in another village.
He helped me to work with my hands. My husband was from Zimbabwe and was a professor. He said, “You will plant. You will plant okra and greens.” We raised ducks, chickens, and pigs.
We did it so we could be self-reliant and eat. “You can go to the garden when we need food. We do not need to buy,” he would say. He had his money from his job, but he taught me to plant, plant, plant everything that we would have bought at the market, so we could be as self-reliant as possible and not spend our money on things we could grow.
My family was critical of my new life with my husband. They thought he was working me too hard. “You are not treating her good,” they would say. “You are making her work too hard. Why aren’t you buying her clothes?” We resisted them until they got tired because I was happy.
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I enrolled in night school. I worked hard and had another child and my husband sent me to college where I earned my associates degree in animal husbandry. This made a way for me to teach at the Booker T. Washington Institute. I taught there from 1986 to 1990. I was teaching students how to raise goats, chickens, and sheep. After the war years, I was chosen to teach agricultural skills to the ex-combatants to help reintegrate them into society. It was very hard and dangerous. But I was grateful for the job.
By then my parents realized I was doing the right thing for myself and for my family. I was working and earning my own money. They could see I was doing something better for the future.
My husband and I raised our children the hard way, but we taught them the value of education and work. During the war years in Liberia my husband protected us. He was wise, and through his fierce determination, we stayed in one place and miraculously we, and all of our children, survived.
Now our three children are all college graduates.
After my husband died, the missionaries came into my life. I resisted the gospel message at first. I had become very independent. But one day they said to me, “Sister Ncube, you know, we are not looking for members. What we are after is your soul. We are pursuing you for your soul.” That went deep in my heart. I sat down and said, “I agree. I will be baptized.” For the first time in my life, I learned what true freedom was. When I was baptized my soul was set free.
The gospel has taught me to be a strong Latter-day Saint woman. I am happy because the gospel and the Church give me the opportunity to live in a better way. I love teaching the women in my branch and community how to live the teachings of the gospel for the betterment of everybody.
I strive to live the Savior’s teachings when He said, “And I give unto you a commandment that you shall teach one another the doctrine of the kingdom.
“Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:77–78).
I was baptized on Liberia’s Independence Day, but for me it was the day I would declare, “Now, I know the truth. I know I am free. I am free indeed.”