* C'est la Vie: A Wonderful Weekend and Beyond

Early Monday we joined Elder Holland, the Claytons, and the Renlunds, on a 14-seater chartered plane to fly to Bangui, Central African Republic to dedicate the land for the preaching of the gospel.

We've been planning this for months but couldn't say anything about it for security reasons. The two security men, the Area Director of Temporal Affairs, and the director of the Kinshasa service center joined us.

The weather had look menacing all morning and it started to pouring just as we left to pick up the leaders. Since I hate to fly, even in the best weather, I was pretty nervous. By the time we got to the hotel, it was a deluge. I could stand the pouring ran no longer and I yelled, literally yelled out loud, "STOP RAIN!" And it did! Almost immediately the heavy rain stopped and before the plane took off the skies were clear and it was calm, beautiful for the flight.

Now, it's not unusual in Africa for weather to suddenly change dramatically and some would say it was a coincidence, but I believe that it was a tender mercy just for me that the ran stopped.

Everybody needed to stretch a little now and then. It was a bit of a long trip in a tiny plane
for this group who had already had a very busy weekend.

We flew out of Kinshasa over the long and infamous Lamumba Boulevard, the road to the airport. Below us was the sprawling Masina area of the city filled with tiny shops and homes and thousands and thousands of people. If you look closely you can see a very

"large and spacious" white building, which is actually one of our chapels. It really stands out against the city surrounding it. We're not sure how it was chosen to be built there. It sure doesn't "fit the neighborhood."
But we enjoyed seeing it from the air.

Then we flew, following the Congo River, for three and a half hours to Bangui. The trip on a commercial airline takes only an hour and a half, but to do that you have to cross the Congo in a little boat, stay the night in Brazzaville, then fly to Bangui. Having done so, you can only fly back every four days. So it's an extended stay operation.
It would never work to have an apostle spend four days Bangui, but the dedication was an important ordinance, only be done by an Apostle.So, the charter plane was the solution to all of that.

Once in Bangui, we were met by the branch president, Pres. Langue, who is a member of CAR's president's cabinet. He worked with the public affairs director to make all the arrange. He had arrange for us to be in the diplomatic VIP lounge while they did the arrival "formalities." It's the nicest place in the Bangui airport.

He also had five cars waiting to take us to the hotel. This hotel is new and very remarkable. It was acclaimed by many as one of the nicest hotel in the Africa SE Area. It was built by Muhammar Ghadafi. Interesting!? Nobody was sure if it's plan was to be a family vacation spot or a hotel, but it's quite amazing. It's definitely a "large and spacious building" that doesn't fit into the neighborhood, as you can see by these pictures. But we enjoyed it just the same.

Amazingly, it's less expensive than the less-than-glorious hotel we stayed in our first trip to Bangui. So we'll be seeing a lot more of it now that Bangui will be on our regular travel route.

We had just a minute in the hotel to settled in and renew acquaintances with the branch President,

Faustin and his wife. He's a counselor in the branch presidency.He was our right-hand-man on our first visit to CAR. and Ferdinand LaGuerre, my "Ferdinand the Bull" (a character from children's literature )was also there. He's a wonderful, gentle giant of a man, who served as the first ever CAR missionary and served with us in the Kinshasa mission. He's now serving as the branch clerk.