Je deteste les mutations.!

Another transfer happened last week. I HATE TRANSFERS! In an ordinary mission when you lose an elder from one city, you will see him again in another. With the division of the mission coming, we know that if an elder goes to Kinshasa now, we will not see him again. This time there were six elders who left us. It's always a sad day. It's pretty hard for us all. We hate to see them go! We have grown to love them!

These six elders are some of the best and we will miss them.

Elders Kapele is one of two brothers in the mission. He started his mission the same day as us. Elder Buzangu, who speaks great English had planned to go with us to Kolwezi as my translator. Elder Banza was the Likasi District Leader. Elder Mbayo Papy is from Kolwezi. We know his Dad, who looks just like him. Elder Kambele stayed with us on his way to the MTC and then returned as a "greeny," and Elder Tshmungu has been with us since our arrival. We will miss them all so much!

Since there were 8 of us and all their belongings to transport, we decided that, even in Africa, this wouldn't work. So, we determined that we would need two cars, so I would drive too. You rarely see a woman driving in the Congo, so it was a bit of a challenge for me. The road to the apartment is a bad one and the police make me nervous, but we had no choice. When I drove up to the apartment to pick up the elders and they saw me behind the wheel of the truck, they were shocked. Most of them don't even drive. They gathered around like something from outer space had just landed in front of their barrier. They laughed and had a great time teasing me about driving, but I think they might have been impressed. I told them that I didn't like the rough roads. They called it the "dance of the road" and told me to enjoy "the dance!" We have so much fun with these great young men. With several more trips to the airport, we picked up 14 new missionaries. We are growing quickly into a real mission. We are up to 48 missionaries in our area. This transfer, we got the first sisters to ever serve in Lubumbashi. It will be so fun to have this new dimension in our mission area.

Sisters Keta, Mesenga, Kalonji and Matondo

Then the next week we held zone conference with all the zones. It's a good time to get acquainted and we love them already!

Zone Likasi

Zone Katuba

Zone Lubumbashi

There is just one more transfer before the mission is divided and then all the missionaries here will be ours to keep in the........... Mission Lubumbashi.