Leadership Training

  

After returning from South Africa, we jumped right back into life.  Transfers were the next day and then we held a special training for the young leaders of the mission to share important things that we'd learned at the Mission President's Seminar. The Assistants, Zone Leaders and  District leaders gathered  for a meeting. It was a good experience as we discussed new policies and taught them.

One of the things that we discussed was a new policy on marriage that will go into effect on  June 1, 2012.  Things are pretty simple in the US, either you're married or you're not.

Here things are not so simple. Each of our 6 countries has different laws. The church attorney in South Africa researched for some time to discover the laws in all 30+ countries in our mission  before the policy could be made. There are at least two to three different kinds of marriage in each country. Generally, there is traditional marriage, civil marriage and religious marriage.  Sadly, most depend on the payment of the dowry (bride price.)  It begins when the two families meet together to discuss the marriage. This include parents and aunts and uncles from both families.  An agreement on the dowry is made and both sides agree to the marriage. After this meeting, a traditional marriage, the couple can live together as man and wife, but it's not an acceptable marriage in the eyes of the law until it's registered. This takes the signature of a representative from both sides of the family. Often the family requires the full payment of the bride price before they will sign. This sometimes takes years to pay, thus the marriage is not recognized by the government, although it is by the people.  Now a marriage must be registered to be recognized by the church or the couple must have a civil marriage, which always requires payment of the full dowry. Only after registration of the traditional marriage or a civil marriage can people be baptized.   It's all very complicated and took a 3-page document just to outline the policy.  The missionaries seemed to understand it and were very receptive to our teachings. All the elders want to marry an American girl since we have no dowry in the US.  Th other pressing marriage question is, "How many wives do you currently have?" There is still the whole issue of polygamy. Questions about marriage open a whole can of worms here in Africa.

For the missionaries lunches we got chicken dinner from our new grocery store, ShopRite (yeah!.)
It was easy for the cook and the elders love chicken dinners. 

It was good to be with the leadership of the mission and to see them even having a little fun!

  Then, we sent them on their way to share with the rest of the missionaries the things we discussed .