A new grandchild in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo

We've been on the move again. We spent three days traveling in Republic of Congo and visited our two cities there. Brent had interviews with elders, while I did a little teaching in Brazzaville.  Then in Pointe Noire I did auxiliary training I  for two hours. All of this was IN FRENCH.  I also translated for the senior sister there who helped with training.  It is truly a gift of tongues that Heavenly Father has given me to be able to communicate in French.  I have translated for a person or two as we listened to a talk, but this was my first time to translate for a speaker to a group who was listening.  It was pretty scary and it wasn't beautiful French, but we made it and I'm quite sure that they understood our message and that's all I ask.
The stress of it all was magnified by the fact that at the exact time of the meeting Stacy went into the hospital to be induced with the birth of our 23 grandchild.  Immediately after the meeting I went back to the Wheatley's house to see if we could get on skype with Stacy and Derek at the hospital. It worked like a charm for over an hour before the power went out.  The power outage lasted just a few minutes and then, to my relief, we got back on skype.
Meanwhile, Brent ended up being at the church for over six hours.  Whenever we go to a city where there's a branch there are interviews for temple recommends, priesthood ordinations, etc.waiting for him. This time he was told that he'd have six so he went to the church two hours before the priesthood leadership training meetings that he was doing. It turned out that he had 22 people waiting for him.  So, he interviewed for two hours, then did his 2 hour training and then did two more hours of interviews with people who by then had been waiting two or three hours.  These people were not a bit annoyed or upset to wait all that time for their interviews.  It was amazing. Time is not a relevant thing in Africa like it is in the US.
He arrived home in time to spend some time on skype with Stacy and Derek and Derek's parents in the delivery room before the baby's birth and  we got to "be there" for the arrival of little Carter Jameson Allen.

We teased them that it was about to pass midnight in Africa when he was born and then he'd have two birthdays-Aug. 22 in the US and Aug. 23 in Africa. But he was born at 3:59 pm Arizona time(that would be 11:59 pm Africa time.) It was wonderful that skype worked and we felt like we were there, almost!  It was pretty hard not to be able to hold that sweet, new bundle, but we felt blessed to have been there through technology. Skype dropped our call just at the moment of his birth and when we got it back about three minutes later, the first thing we heard was the sweet, little cry of Baby Carter. It was such a tender mercy that we could be "there" with them for his arrival.   He will always be our little Congolese grandson.