Things work out

Very often we are without power, which also means no water because our water is on an electric pump. We only have a few days a month when we have power all day. Sometimes it's off all day. However, we are fortunate because we are in one of the best areas in all of Lubumbashi for maintaining power. Some places only have it every other day, if that often. On Saturday it was off from 6am to 7pm. Thirteen hours is a long time without power and water. There are so many things you can't do without power or water. Actually, there are not many things you can do without power and water. These pictures may help you see why there are problems.

This is the transformer for our area.

Our house is in the middle of this picture.

The power line after it crosses the street.

One day they put up and new power pole on our street.

We are learning to adapt. We now have drinking water stored and a bidon and big pan in the bathroom for showering.

This week we bought a propane stove. No hot food is the worst thing, especially when we have company. We found the stove for a good price at a furniture store, so we bought it on the spot. Done, right? NO!!. Nothing is that simple in the Congo!

Our new stove

Side note: You may be wondering about the figurine in the background of this picture. Those are real feathers.

The shop owner saw our missionary tags he gave us a big discount and sent his worker to get us a "gift." We just didn't have the heart to turn him down. He was so kind. So we left the store with a stove and a figurine. There are nuns on our street who we think will find a nice home for the statue. As we left, he asked us to pray for him. It's good to live in a place where religion is respected.

The store that sold the propane stove didn't sell propane. (The paint store also doesn't sell paint brushes.) However, they did tell us where to get propane and even drew a map for us. The map sent us out of town, but we didn't find the place, so we asked some police for directions. They told us to just continue and we couldn't miss it. So, we continued for about 20 minutes but found no store. Finally, we stopped a very well dressed, clean cut young man and asked for directions. He said he would take us to the propane store. It was so nice of him. I must admit that I was pretty nervous when Brent invited him to get in the truck and we headed out. It turned out that he was a young doctor who was in that part of town for a consultation and was heading back to the clinic near the gas company. He knew a young Dr. in our ward and all the members of that family, so I felt much better. He took us on a long drive that, surprisingly, ended up at the gas company. However, at the gas company, although they had gas, they had no gas regulators. Yes, this is the Congo! They said they might be able to get one from Zambia by next week.

The Dr.waited for us and gave us a map to get home. After we dropped him at his clinic we followed his map and discovered that the gas company is about 5 minutes from our house. The original map had taken us in a huge circle around Lubumbashi.

Now we have a stove and we hope that sometime soon, it will work. We have visitors from South Africa coming in four days.

We have a sign in our office with a quote on it sent to us by Barry Anderson. It's our motto nowadays.

We're trying!