Jen and Marvin's Big Day

Today is Jennifer and Marvin's wedding. What a great blessing this is! We are so thrilled for them.

We wish that there was a way to be in two places at one time so we could fully share this special day. Our whole family is there together to support them and we are so grateful and proud of the way they are pulling together to help! There are hard things about being gone on a mission. Having your daughter get married without you is really a hard one. But we have great support from our family and they have promised to take hundreds of pictures. Our hearts are comforted as we think about what a great blessing it is to have all our family together in the Mesa Temple to share this special day.

Christmas 2009 in the Congo

Our first Christmas in the Congo was very different. At home wealways start decorating everyinch of the house by Dec. 1 and don't take things down until after school starts in Jan. Every decoration has special meaning and seeing them each year is like having old friends come to visit. So, the first big difference was that here there are very few decorations and they only went up a few days before Christmas. Although the Congo is a Christian nation, they commemorate the birth of the Savior with very little fanfare.
We found a tiny tree and some blue plastic ornaments imported from China. We also found some blue ribbon left behind in our house, so we made it look pretty good. We put it on the dining room table where we could pass wherever we went.

We tried to find some Congolese traditions to incorporate into our celebration, but the only thing we found when we asked people about traditions was that they buy live chickens and have them for dinner.

Slaughtering a chicken just wasn't going to happen for us. However, live chickens in baskets were on women's heads all over town & people were walking home holding quirming, squawking chickens by their wings or feet.

The week before Christmas we went to Likasi to celebrate with 10 missionaries there.

They are a great group of elders and we had a fun party.

Then on the afternoon of Dec. 24 we had our 20 Lubumbashi elders in our home for a party and snacks. (They ate like a troop of boy scouts. How much can you get on a plate?) We played the "white elephant" game with them. It's the game were you can pick a wrapped gift from under the tree or steal a gift from somebody who's already opened their gift. We had to do it a little differently since they couldn't bring anything. We bought a new tie for each missionary. Each tie was different, so they were stealing ties that they liked from other elders. They really got into it and had fun. It was good to see them enjoy themselves. They are so serious most of the time. Then we played the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional that Scott had sent to us (in French). They listened so intently to every word. Then Brent shared a Christmas message. It started to rain really hard just as they were about to go. It rains hard every day now that we are in the rainy season. So, the elders stayed and visited and we just had a great time with them. When the rain had slowed to a drizzle, we sent them off so that they could get home before dark. Our hearts were full as we watched them walk down the street after leaving our home-our wonderful little army of elders in the Congo. We have developed deep feelings of love for each of these young sons. How can we let them go when transfer time comes?

On Christmas Eve we talked to several of our children and Ryan had us call and read the Nativity from the scriptures IN FRENCH while his children acted it out. It was a real treat.

We were able to talk on Skype with all our children. It was so fun to share a little Christmas with those we love most. They also sent videos and emails and it was delightful to share Christmas with them. What a blessing it is to have supportive children when you are serving as senior missionaries!

One of our favorite family traditions is Christmas caroling to our friends as we take goodies to them. We got to enjoy caroling as our family members, first the Jameson in Utah, and then the rest of the families all together in Arizona sang "Hark the Angles Sing" and "We wish you a Merry Christmas" to us on video.

We have sung these two songs to our friends and neighbors for 35 years. Now we were to have them sung to us. We also wanted to share something with others like we do when we give goodies to our friends, but we didn't have anybody to whom we could take goodies. So, we came up with an idea that turned out to be so much fun! We got 13 envelopes on which we wrote Joyeux Noel/ Then we put 2,000 cf in each. Two thousand Congolese Francs is about $2, but here it can buy a lot for somebody in need. (for example, you could buy 20 small baguettes of bread, or 10 apples or oranges, or a dozen eggs, or water). Then, we drove through town stopping to give envelopes to people who looked like they could use a lift. We could have given out 130 in twenty minutes. There are so many who would have been happy to have it. But we gave them to a young man shining shoes, to a man who was pushing a heavy chariot, to three

policeman whom we stopped, instead of having them stop us (that was really fun). We gave one to a young boy selling eggs on the street corner, to a mother with four little children, to a man dipping water from the gutter into a bidon, to an old man who was wheeling himself down the street in a wheelchair, to a mom and her little boy who were pulling a heavy suitcase down the street and to two charcoal sellers, who had been riding their bikes loaded with charcoal for miles.

At first, each one was somewhat hesitant to come to our car window. Then, as we held out the envelope and said, "Joyeux Noel," with curiosity, they took the envelopes. Then they looked inside and smiled broadly and replied "Merci ! Merci! Merci!" We wished that we had another 100 envelopes to give. We thought of those dear friends and neighbors at home to whom we would have taken goodies and we knew that they would have been glad to share with these sweet people. It was a great experience!

We had just prepared dinner, our traditional meal with a Congolese twist, when the power went out. It was out for the next six hours. But, the timing was good. We had visitied with family on the internet, and cooked our food. It was a great Christmas here in the Congo. We felt the joy of celebrating the birth of the Savior, of giving and of being with our eternal family. We could ask for nothing more!

***PS. We were even able to send gifts to our family thanks to our dear Utah friend, Beth Ann Hammer. She bought books for each family, wrapped them, printed out the letter we emailed to her and mailed it all to our kids for us. Thanks go to Beth Ann ! Having something under the tree for each family meant a great deal to us! Plus, conspiring with her and doing it as a surprise made it even more fun!

Home Sweet Home

Since we are currently "cameraless," I'm going to record a few things about our home.

First, just living in a house that has an address is somewhat unique in the Congo. Most of the recommendations for baptisms we get in the mission just say Lubumbashi, Congo or maybe have a commune name or number on them. Addresses are not common and harder still to find if you know them.

We live in the midst of great poverty. It is very difficult to see the living conditions of some of the people here. And even more amazing to see how they get along so well with so little. They are remarkable. Homes are small ,close together and most have no yards. They lack many modern conveniences that we would consider necessities-lights, indoor plumbing, flooring, furniture, appliances, etc. Many people live without running water and power every day. Everybody loses power and water for an hour or a day here and there. There are few paved roads and the paved roads are sometimes worse than the dirt roads.

We live like royalty in this land where so many live in such need. Our home is a wonderful place!

We, personally, think that they have kept this wonderful property because someday it would make a good mission home. We feel like having a mission here is the ultimate goal for this area. It would make a big difference in how the missionary work could progress and how the area could grow. With more support as a mission here good things would surely happen. It will happen someday. But, until that time, we live in a house that is far too nice for a senior couple anyplace in the world. But in the Congo, it's a luxurious home in one of the nicest parts of the city of Lubumbashi.

We really like this old house and it's potential!

It's a refuge for us from the world, just as we have always tried to make our home throughout our life. It is comfortable,safe and nice, although, like all of us old things, it has it's quirks.

This is the back door,patio and corner of the laundry house.

The house, like everything else here, is built of handmade red bricks that have been plastered over to make smooth walls.

For people who like antiques, it's a good place to live. It was built by the Belgians, probably sometime in the 40's or 50's and whoever built it did amazing work considering the time and place that it was built. It has not always been well cared for and shows many signs of abuse. During the copper boom the Chinese came in and rented big homes and put 20-30 workers in each house.

They were not well taken care of and there was a great deal of damage done. The Congolese do not speak kindly of this time with the Chinese. Many will still not rent to them. Interestingly they also don't like to rent to Congolese either. I'd love to just tear into this house and restore it to it's original glory, but that's not my job right now. However, there are many lovely things that remain from it's better days. It has amazing mill work in it.

The ceilings in the foyer, dining room and living room are beautiful.

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Hand carved door frames and beautiful hardware.

The metal front doors are very nice, although they've not been kindly treated.

And I love the poured terrazzo floors throughout most of the house, even though they have many stains and chips in them, the patterns and workmanship are really quite remarkable.

We have a foyer and a large dining room,

a big office where we spend half our time sitting across from each other at our computers

There two bedrooms, a bath room and a powder room.

It's not perfectly furnished but we have much more than any Congolese that we know. So we don't complain at all.

The kitchen is large and has plenty of storage, although the cabinets are not well made and the plastic handles fall off regulary. It also has a refrigerator, freezer and a stove. We are the only people we know of who have a stove. Most people cook on braisers with charcoal.

The front porch also has terrazzo floors and would be a good place to just sit and enjoy the yard, if we had time to do that and I wasn't terrified of mosquitoes. But the yard and it's story is for another chapter.

Behind the main house is a laundry house, guest house and boyerie. We use the guest house for people who come to stay here when they do church work in Lubumbashi. It is small, but very comfortable, except for the tiny kitchen in which you can hardly turn around. At one time there was a missionary couple in each house. This small house would make a great misison office someday.

Then there is the boyerie. It's a small brick house with two plain plastered rooms and an outside bathroom and shower. It was built as servants quarters. We use it for storage. It is a little creepy right now, but would be good storage for a mission someday.

Water is stored in three huge holding tanks and pumped by an electrical pump to the house. This is problematic because when the power goes out, so does the water. And that is often daily and sometimes for 12 hours or more. Not fun!!

So, this is a marvelous place to live. We are living in the best place that we have seen in all of the Lubumbashi. We feel very grateful and sometimes feel guilty that we live in such luxury (Congolese style) when so many others have so little.

We pray for the day when the this area is strong enough to be a mission and maybe this compound will serve that mission well as a mission home and office.. This old home is by far the most beautiful man-made thing we've seen in the Congo. What a great blessing it is to live here.

Way to Go Scott!

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, camera phones, twitter,and a great son who shared with us, we were able to see and chat in real time with him at his ASU graduation. We are thrilled for him and so happy to have shared his graduation from half way around the world in Africa.

It was really touching to know that we were in his heart today as he was in ours. Thanks for sharing your special day and

CONGRATULATIONS SCOTTY! Way to go!

Zone Conferences

We just finished a round of zone conferences. It seems like six weeks really comes around quickly. It's always a big project. Lunch, talks, workshops and interviews with all the Elders.

But, what a great experience it is to be with these young elders and see their enthusiasm and dedication. They are so fabulous. You can just tell by looking at them that they carry an amazing spirit with them.

We do stand out in a crowd, don't we!

We held a conference in Lubumbashi and in Likasi. Here's our little army of Elders marching off to their areas after a great conference.

We took our Zone Leaders with us to Likasi. I would think that it's a little strange for Elder Kirongozi to go there because that's where he's from, but he seems to do fine with it. I can't imagine going to my hometown while on my mission. We traveled for 2 hours on that bad road to Likasi. It was raining and in one place the road in the village was totally flooded.

This time it almost seemed like there were less potholes and less dirt road. Brent says that he's starting to know where the major, gigantic pot holes are and he serpentines all over and off the road, just like the transport drivers. We got stopped by the police 7 times. It's our record high for one day! Some of them even have gotten to know us and are quite nice to us. One policeman by

the bridge stops us every time and always wants pamphlets. Brent asks him if he'll read them and he always says yes. I think that Brent's getting good at talking his way out of things with the police too. This time two police officers didn't really look all that intent on stopping us, so Brent just waved and moved on. The elders loved it. But then we got stopped down the street and the first officers drove up in a truck. We think that they just commandeered it from some passing person so they could chase us down. We were pretty nervous. But Brent just told them that he was new in town and thought that they were just giving him a friendly wave, and they let us go. We couldn't believe how blessed we were. Seven stops and not a penny poorer. We also gave out two church pamphlets.

I'm just sure the officer by the bridge is going to be a member of the church someday. He just has a good look in his eyes and is very nice to us when he stops us.

We had a good conference in Likasi and then we celebrated Christmas with our elders there since we won't see them again before Christmas. We asked what traditions they had for Christmas and acted like they didn't know what we were talking about. They all said that they stay home with their families, but have no traditions. Some said they have a Christmas tree, but they don't do much. We decided to play the "white elephant gift game" with them--only we put new ties all wrapped up under the tree and they got to choose a package or take a tie from another elder. We weren't sure how it would go over because these are very serious young men, but they seemed to have fun.

Then while Brent did interviews with each elder, I played the audio of the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional for them from my laptop. Scott had downloaded it in French and sent it to us. We don't do well with downloads, so he broke it into pieces. I think that some of the elders had never seen a laptop before. They stood by it and took pictures of themselves. I also think that some of them had never heard Pres. Monson, Ucthdorph or Eyring's voices before. You could have heard a pin drop through the whole program. They concluded every talk with a hearty Amen. It was easy to see that this was something meaningful to them.

As usual, when we go to Likasi, people had heard about our coming somehow and just showed up at the church to talk about things. So Brent had a very busy and stressful time after our conference. He had the District President, a Branch President, a prospective missionary and another brother who needed an interview all there vying for his attention and time. We also feel the pressure to get on the road so that we can get home before dark. So it made for a great deal of pressure on Brent. I just hung out with the Elders and have fun while he stresses. But it was a good day in Likasi.

We will do the same party on Christmas Eve day with our elders in Lubumbashi. We are excited to have a party for our elders. We're doing it in our home. We made invitations for them and gave them money to take a transport here. It amounts to less than a dollar per elder, but without the extra transport money it would be hard for them to come. They get their support from the church and we are all very careful with the 'Widow's mite.' They will work in their areas as usual on Christmas day because the Congolese people are not working and are at home with families. So they say it's a good day to find people to listen to their message. It will be a different Christmas, but we hope, a special time for us all.

Cakes, cakes and more cakes

I had many thoughtful birthday wishes come to the Congo this year. Brent went way out of his way to invite Frere and Soeur Monga to surprise me at dinner in a restaurant. He even found a gift. In Africa that is not easy! Jenna did some wonderful pictures of Eva. Isaac and Trevor made birthday cards and scanned and emailed them and sent a birthday video. I got 42 birthday emails thanks to good friends and family (and Brent and Corinne and a little birthday advertising.)

But the most remarkable thing was done by a good friend, Alan Swensen. His exceptional kindness and service made this a birthday never to be forgotten. He wrote this note.

Then he took it, along with a birthday cake and candles to each of our 6 children's families. He even had a nephew in Utah take one to Ryan's family in Draper, UT.

Alan must have spent the whole day before my birthday driving from his house in Phoenix, in the pouring rain, to our children's homes all over the East Valley.

Here he is delivering the Webbs' cake to Jameson.

Early in the morning on my birthday the Webbs called and sang an adorable version of Happy Birthday and blew out the candles with me. Then they told me about "the cakes!"

Then the cake pictures started arriving by email.

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This was followed by wonderful versions of Happy Birthday and lots of candle blowing and cake eating done on Skype as most of our children's families "ate cake" with us throughout the day.

Then there were more pictures with cakes.

It was so much fun for us all!

This thoughtful act of service will be remembered forever in the Jameson family and will cause us to "pay it forward" and be more thoughtful and giving in the future. What an extraordinary gift from a good friend. Thank you, Bishop Swensen, for your cakes, notes, candles and especially for your great example!

The Rest of the Story...

For those of you who are old enough to know Paul Harvey, now I will tell you ....

"THE REST OF THE STORY."

(That's especially for Stacy who had to hear P. Harvey every day on the way to Jr. High Band!)

When our camera was stolen I was too disconsolate to do more than mourn the loss of so many interesting and unique things to capture in photos, so many wonderful people to remember and how much I would miss blogging. But I did tell Heavenly Father that I needed to have a camera! It was just one of the conditions of staying in the Congo, like the internet.
So.........

• What are the chances that our mission president and his wife would be in S. Africa right now? You can buy anything in S. Africa and at reasonable prices.
• What are the chances that our mission president's wife would be a camera buff?
• What are the chances that she likes to shop?
• What are the chances that Pres. Headlee is in Burundi and she has a little time in S. Africa that she's willing to spend helping us?
• What are the chances that she lived in S. Africa for a year before coming here and knows where to find things?
• What are the chances that they would be coming to Lubumbashi in two weeks? (This will be their first trip here in three months)
• What are the chances that we would have enough cash on hand to pay for a new camera?
• AND... What are the chances that we will be will be getting a new camera for Christmas?
• Very good!

I don't believe that all these stars have lined up at once by chance. HE is watching over His missionaries. I guess I'm staying in the Congo!

SAD DAY

IT'S A VERY SAD DAY IN THE CONGO. OUR CAMERA WAS STOLEN TODAY. WE WENT TO SEVERAL STORES IN PREPARATION FOR ZONE CONFERENCE. IT WAS IN MY PURSE WHEN WE LEFT HOME AND GONE WHEN WE GOT HOME. WE HOPE THERE IS SOMEPLACE HERE TO BUY A CAMERA. WE KNOW THEY WILL BE VERY EXPENSIVE IF WE CAN FIND ONE. SAD DAY! THEN TO TOP IT OFF, THE POWER WAS OFF FOR 13 HOURS.

NOT A GOOD DAY! TOMORROW HAD BETTER BE A BETTER!

Babies on Their Backs

There is an African phenomenon that fascinates us. We can't figure out how this works, but it does. There are some things that we just should import!

One of the traditional dress styles in the Congo has a big fabric wrap that goes around a dress or skirt and blouse. Women tie this big scarf around their waist when it's not being used and it's very fashionable. Sometimes it's made of the same material as the outfit. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it doesn't even match at all. But it's all OK because the wrap is the most practical thing in all of Africa.

You see women use it around their heads. We thought that maybe it was the answer to a bad hair day. But then we were told that wearing a head scarf is a sign of honor and you can only do it when you are a mother or are aged or in some other way have earned the honor of wearing it that way.

They use it to bundle things that they need to carry on their head or sling over their back.

They wrap up in it when they're cold, use it as a shade when they're hot, protect themselves when it rains or is windy and dusty. They use it to wipe off chairs before they sit down and clean children's messy faces with it.

BUT it's greatest purpose is for carrying their babies, who are too young to walk.

They have a most amazing way of carrying their children on their backs.

They just lean forward, put the child on their back, and throw the wrap around the baby. They tuck it in front at the top and then again at the bottom . They don't even tie it. Then they're set to go! We haven't figured out why the babies don't fall off when being wrapped, or how they stay tucked in and don't come unwrapped and fall out or squirm their way out while their Mothers are walking, but they don't. Actually, they just seem to be totally relaxed and are asleep most of the time.

This lady did a demonstration for me of how she wraps her baby and tucks in the fabric. I could not see why that baby didn't just tumble to the ground. But it was there all day.

Since African families are large, there are woman everywhere with babies on their backs. A family of 8-10 children is not at all uncommon. Sometimes I think that every woman of child bearing age either has a baby or is pregnant, or both. They walk around town with both arms full of things, something on their head, a child in each hand and one on their back. It's amazing!

Three little ones!

They work while carrying a child this way. The ladies at the toll booths who come to sell you things all have a child strapped to their back.

Even little girls carry their siblings on their backs.

It's just amazing, very practical and totally Congolese.