Anxiously Engaged

In 2006 Hans Adolf Marcell Noble had been serving as the president of the Windhoek Branch for four eventful years. Shortly after his call, the meetinghouse in Windhoek had been destroyed by an arsonist’s fire in the classroom section. Marcell oversaw a difficult period in the branch as the meetinghouse was rebuilt. One night a short time later, Marcell dreamed that he was walking in a desert with the wind blowing sand all around him. Suddenly the wind stopped. In front of him, he saw a blue book in the sand. It was the Book of Mormon.

The next morning, he shared the dream with his wife, Dorothy. Unsure what the dream meant, Dorothy and Marcell knelt and prayed together. They had been considering a move for some time and felt impressed that the dream was directing them to move to Swakopmund, a coastal city 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Windhoek that was famous for being surrounded by the sand dunes of the Namib Desert.

There was a problem: no branch of the Church had been organized in Swakopmund. Before they moved, Marcell met with the mission president, who authorized the Noble family to hold sacrament meetings in their home.

Shortly after their move, Dorothy and Marcell contacted three member families that they had learned were living in the Swakopmund area and invited them to attend meetings in their home. The distance from members in Windhoek, however, made them feel isolated. Living the gospel without the support of other members came with challenges. “Sometimes, it’s not easy,” Dorothy said.

Noble family outside the Church meetinghouse in Swakopmund, July 2012.

Although they made weekly trips to Windhoek to attend Church meetings, they had become frustrated that Church leaders did not come to Swakopmund often and felt neglected. When they prayed for help, the answer came for them to “get [their] own house in order.” As a family, they began an intensive study of the gospel. Each morning, they gathered as a family to read the scriptures. To assist with this, they downloaded the Book of Mormon or Doctrine and Covenants audiobooks and listened often. Over the next several years, they read or listened to both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants in their entirety.

“Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause,” they read as they studied one morning, “and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:27). With the help of other local members and missionaries, the Noble family worked diligently to build up the Church in Swakopmund. The small group began to grow steadily. On March 8, 2015, a branch was organized in Swakopmund, with Marcell Noble as branch president. “I’m really grateful for the blessings that I do receive from my Heavenly Father,” Marcell said. “The scriptures are very true. … I love the scriptures.”