It's Finally Official!

The announcement was made last Saturday of the division of the DRC Kinshasa Mission and the creation of the

DRC Lubumbashi Mission.

We are so excited! This has been our dream and our prayer since we got here, as has it been for all those wonderful people who came before us. We know that this will be a great blessing to the people of these areas. Lubumbashi, Likasi, Kolwezi, Mbuji Mayi, and Luputa and the areas around them will be in the Lubumbashi mission. Burundi, which is not yet open to the church, will also be in this mission when the time comes for it to be opened.

Gary Packer is the new mission president. They have spend most of the last few years in Johannesburg. So, they are seasoned African missionaries. We will remain here and Brent will continue to be the First Counselor in the mission presidency until further notice. Our job between now and then is to prepare for the new mission, help integrate 30-40 new missionaries who will come to prepare for the opening of the mission and to support the wonderful work here. Then we give a big sigh of relief and put things here in the this part of the Congo in the capable hands of the new mission president.

It's an exciting experience to see the church flourishing and people's lives changing for the better. We are grateful to serve here. We hope to have an office couple and maybe even a humanitarian couple join the mission president and us in Lubumbashi. We're thinking big and hoping that somebody somewhere is feeling the need to serve and putting in mission papers.