Interviews-every 12 weeks

Every 12 weeks, Brent has interviews with all the missionaries  They alternate with zone conferences, so we see the missionaries every 6 weeks.  This time, he did those interviews with the elders in the outlying cities by Skype. It's not his favorite way to do them, but we're grateful that there's technology to do so when the need arises. Because the couples there have computers and are willing to  help our elders Skype, he was able to interview all 26  elders in Pointe Noire, Republic of  Congo, and Cameroon while we were in Johannesburg.
This week we started on Monday doing interviews with the Kinshasa missionaries every day from 9am-1pm.  They come by zones to a central building where we meet with them. This means that we're out in the city and it's always interesting. The first meeting was in the Kinshasa stake center. It's the site that was chosen for the new temple and is a very nice place. Things went mostly as usual.  It turned out that there was no power in the stake center, thus no lights or air conditioning.  Last Sunday in that same chapel there was no power. So, we sat in the dark, in the very hot chapel and I'm guessing most of the people couldn't hear much the speakers said, but they all sat reverently and without even a mention of the powerless facility.  Nobody even skips a beat when there's no power. But we opted to meet in the Seminary and Institute building, which is right next door and had both the luxuries of light and air conditioning.  Go figure how two buildings can sit 20 yards from each other and one have power and one not have it. ?????

Rain does often stop things in the Congo and it was raining hard on Tuesday. We wondered if the missionaries would come, but they were all there, a little soggy, but undaunted!

While Brent has interviews, I teach them a little lesson on some subject that we decide would help them. It's a fun time for me to teach. This time I prepared a sheet with their picture and their mission information on it. I asked them to write the history of their conversion and their testimony. It took them a minute to think how they could do it, but then they worked hard on them. This will be a precious historical collection for us. Then we discussed integrity and how doing what we know is right gives us peace and doing things we know are wrong brings internal struggle and unhappiness.  It was a good discussion.

Wednesday we went to the Mont Ngafula building that is usually about a half hour away, but that day it took much longer to get there because half the road was gone. We guess that they're planning on widening the road, but for now it was crazy with people going all over the place trying to get to their destinations.  The pictures don't show well that people were going both directions on the both sides of the asphalted road and on the dirt part. It was truly madness for an hour. 

Then we arrived at this beautiful chapel. Our buildings are really the nicest structures in the city.

The next day we went to visit the Binza Zone at the Ngaba building. It's an interesting drive there too.
We leave our nice apartment building and office...

and drive down a very nice street... 

 and then in about 10 minutes  we're in a completely different world. 

   

And there, in this neighborhood, we arrive at the church-built chapel, which is a beautiful one.

Pascal, who works for the mission and several others were there waiting for us.  There was also a lady there selling them some kind of dried, salted, and charcoaled fish or eel or something that we couldn't quite identify. They all said it was delicious and we should buy some, but we passed. 

We held interviews again and I taught the elders who were waiting for their turn and asked them to also write their personal histories.  What a tremendous experience it is to meet with these good missionaries. 

Two more rounds of interviews in Kinshasa followed that week.  So, all 90 Kinshasa missionaries had been interviewed. Then we headed across the river to Brazzaville for the last of the interviews with the group of 20 missionaries there. 

 We also held a zone conference with this group of missionaries. Talking and teaching the missionaries is one of the most rewarding things we do.  Besides teaching others the gospel, these young people are becoming the leaders and key to Africa's future, both in and out of the church. 

With interviews and Brazzaville Zone conference behind us, we spent the night in Brazzaville and then flew off  for the rest of our 12 days of zone conferences in the outlying cities of Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo, and Douala and Yaoundé, Cameroon.  It just goes round and round and never stops, this merry-go-round we ride.