The Next Round of Meeting.

During our first round of zone meetings each trip required a round trip drive of an hour or two, the next round of conferences required real traveling and was pretty intense.

Six days, three countries, two boat trips, five cities, six airplane flights, numerous car adventures, four zone meetings, one branch block of meetings, visits with branch and stake presidents, looking at church properties, three mission release interviews, 44 young missionaries and three senior couples with whom to get acquainted. Did I miss anything? Wow!

On Thursday afternoon we headed for "the beach" to take a boat across the Congo River. In order to go to any of our other cities we first go by boat to Brazzaville. We've been told about this trip, but you have to do it to believe it.

Thierry, our office manager, took us to the “beach.” We stayed in the air conditioned car while he arranged for tickets on the boat, took our passports to the immigration officials and exchanged dollars for Central African francs to be used in the two countries we were visiting. (Note: This was all happening on the day before his wife, who was in the hospital at the time, gave birth to a 2 month premature son. Baby Ariel's doing fine, but will be in the hospital for some time.) Bless Thierry's heart!

There were crowds of young men wanting to help us with our luggage and people wanting to sell us everything imaginable. Noisey merchants and their porters were everywhere. It was just masses of humanity going about the business of life on the docks.

Thierry knows everyone and arranged for an immigration official (in the green & white shirt) to walk us through the process of getting on the boat. Sounds easy enough, but not so! There were hoards of people wanting to cross the river, pushing and shoving and yelling at each other. It was seriously tight quarters and my claustrophobia was really put to the test. We were held between two iron fences, along with a few hundred others, while we waited for the next gate to open. There were two lines going opposite directions. We were in the line to the nice boats and we were very glad.

The gates were finally opened wide enough for one person at a time to get through and we were rushed over to a nice touring boat. It held about 20 passengers. Each of us was given a life jacket. The boat ride lasted five minutes and was safe and easy. Getting to it was a challenge.

At the other end of the dock from our boat were larger boats, crammed with crowds people and their belongings. They had been in the line going the opposite direction from our line. They had piles of plastic chairs, buckets and bundles to take to Brazzaville to sell. There were animals and every sort of baggage. Thierry made sure we weren’t on that kind of boat and we were so grateful!

When we reached the other side of the river we saw just how easy our ride was compared to the transportation of many goods. Dugout canoes take people and goods across the river. We saw them loading as we exited our boat. It was just amazing. These people work so hard.

When we arrived in Brazzaville there was no ramp to use to disembark, so we had to climb with our luggage up a steep hill about 30 yards long. The assistants accompanied us on this first leg of the trip and helped us with some of our suitcases. I don't know what we would have done without them. I was helped by Elder Yangoie near the top of the hill when we reached a huge step up . He literally saved me from tumbling back down. At the top of the hill were hundreds of people coming and going across the river. I could hardly believe my eyes when we saw the enormous numbers of people packed into the dock area. We were so glad to have people to help us make this trip!

We were met at "the beach" by a "brother" of the church employee that was supposed to greet us. Frere Gaetan was held up in traffic. One never knows if a brother is really a brother or just somebody that you feel close to. But after waiting for a few minutes out in the crowds of people on the dock who were working and traveling, we got through passport control and Gaetan took us to our hotel. It was a really nice hotel, probably the nicest we've stayed in while in Africa. It was fresh, clean and well decorated and we enjoyed it very much.

The hotel and the statue in the roundabout outside.

As soon as we were settled in our room, the first order of business was meeting with the 20 missionaries in the Brazzaville Zone in an upper room of a restaurant, with some privacy. The conditions in a restaurant weren't as conducive to the Spirit as we would have liked, but we trudged ahead. As always, we loved the missionaries as soon as we met them. There were several whom we had met in Lubumbashi and Likasi.

It was especially an honor to meet Elder LaGuerre. He's the first missionary to ever serve from Central African Republic.

The next morning Gaetan picked us up at 6:30 to go to the airport to fly to Cameroon. There's a new airport in Brazzaville and it was very nice.

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The only problem with it was the crazy pushing and shoving that went on to get into the passenger area. Wow, are the people here ever anxious to get on the plane. We had a stop in Pointe-Noire that was supposed to be just to let passengers deplane. Then we were supposed to leave immediately for Cameroon. We were on the ground for two hours for reasons unknown—no explanation. This made us late for our connection between Douala and Yaoundé. The couple in Douala, the Nuttalls, met us and an airline employee took us to the office to change our tickets to a flight to Yaoundé later that night. Our flight to Yaounde was on a new airline that just started service. Cam-air Co. They were really wonderful. They were helpful and their planes were the nicest ones we've been on. The walkway to their plane was also interesting.

Again the rush of people happened when they announced a flight to Paris. We sat quietly waiting for the Yaounde flight. Then we noticed that everybody but us was leaving the waiting room. We asked an airline worker when the plane to Yauonde left and she said it was boarding. It was going to Paris through Yaounde, but there was no announcement of that. We boarded a jumbo jet that was going to Yaoundé (a 40-minutes flight) and then on to Paris. We were tempted not to get off and go on to Paris for a little vacation, but we rose above it. We finally ended up in Yaoundé around 10 PM where the Thompsons, a great senior couple from Canada who both speak French, met us and drove us about an hour to their apartment. We fell into bed about midnight, happy that the day's travel was behind us. We'd been on planes and in airports for almost 14 hours. After all day traveling, it felt good to share the home of this great missionary couple.

Meeting the Missionaries

Before our mission our first goal was to meet the missionaries. So, before we left home, we arranged to have a little "Meet the Mission President Tour" set up. Our goal was to meet all of the missionaries in the first two weeks that we were here. So, the day after we arrived we began having conferences. First, we held meetings with the missionaries in Kinshasa. There are 5 zones, each of which services a stake. We didn't get pictures of every zone, but we did remember to get some of them.

This is Kimbenseke Zone. It was the first one that we visited. We went there the morning after we arrived, still a bit jet lagged from the 28 hours of travel, but moving on. The Headlees (outgoing mission President) and Koellikers (Area President) went with us to this building. The Headlees were on their way to the airport to go home. They stopped just long enough to greet the elders and take a few pictures.

Then they waved good-bye and drove away, leaving us on our own for the first time.

There we were standing in front the the church, about 12 hours after we arrived, and watching them drive away. It was pretty shocking knowing that we were now in charge. But a whole group of great young elders were waiting for us. So, off we went to our first "meet and greet."

Next we visited Mont Ngafula zone.

Our hearts have already been turned to these missionaries. An interesting note-one of these missionaries is from Madagascar. We have a few missionaries from there. They're easily distinguishable by their names, which are very, very long. I have no idea how we can remember these names.

Elders Andriamanomjy, Tsifolimandefitra, Zaphimaarnanjara, and Andriantolojanahary, Tshimanyangala,

The Mont Ngafula stake has a nice building with a full basketball court and big parking lot. Interesting that they have these big parking lots when there won't ever be more than three cars in the parking lot on Sunday. Planning for future needs?

The drive to each building was long and interesting. You could take a picture every second and get something worth seeing. It all looks like.... Africa.

The last picture is of a very large enclosed area that our driver told us was the Zoo. When we asked about the animals, he said that there aren't really many animals. They were all eaten during the war. Things have been rather complicated in the Congo.

We visited the missionaries in three more stakes and the corresponding zones, Kinshasa, Ngaliema, and Masina.

The trip to each was like all the others. You could have taken a picture a minute. It was fun to meet all the missionaries and most of the stake presidents and also wonderful that in each group there were one or two that we knew from our last mission.

Kinshasa is an amazing place. It goes for an hour or more in every direction with just miles and miles of... Africa.

Kinshasa is a city of nearly 10 million people. We're not sure that we'll ever find our way around in this enormous place.

Thankfully we have a driver, Aime, to get us where we need to go for now. Brent's trying to learn his way around and hopefully it won't be long before we head out on our own. We need to be able to be independent and leave the comfort of our nice mission home apartment when we want. Although it's such a nice place that one could just stay here forever and enjoy it. We feel very blessed to live in such a comfortable home.

Family room/dining room combination

Kitchen and view from the living room

Our first round of "Meet the President Meetings" was great. We enjoyed so much meeting our new sons and daughters. Thurs. we're off to the other side of the mission and the adventure of travel in Africa.

Again We Leave You...

During our four and 1/2 months at home we had many fun visits with dear friends. However, we spent all the time we could with our family and it was heavenly. We made trips to St. George, Salt Lake, California and Texas.

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Because of our early release we were home for the birth of a new grandson, Everett Scott Jameson.

We had grandkids' camp, went to the zoo several times, attended preschool graduation, school plays, concerts, ball games, car shows, birthday parties, and all the other things that grandparents should and love to do.

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Then the time was past and with one more party together, we were saying goodbye. Goodbye is never easy but sometimes it's the right thing to do and our family supported us in our departure.

The grandchildren who were there that night sang a special song for us, Nephi's Promise.

Then there were hugs all around. I guess that one more hug will last two years and will be easy to remember when we miss these little people so much, especially if it's moments like these.

The next stop was Utah. We spent a few wonderful days with the Utah Jamesons and tried to pack in more memories to hold onto for the two years to come.

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On June 22, 2011 our family gathered in a beautiful room in the church office building to await the time for our setting apart. Brent seemed pretty calm as he took a quick peek at the sports news of the day.

All six of our children and three of their spouses had made the trip there to be with us, at some considerable sacrifice. Thanks kids. Brent's sister, Marilyn, was also able to be there. We missed three of our in-law sons, and our brothers and sisters who couldn't be with us that day, but the day was "practically perfect" in every way!

Brent was set apart as President of the RD Congo Kinshasa Mission by Elder Jeffrey Holland, assisted by Elder Steven Snow. Then I was set apart as a missionary and Brent's companion by Elder Snow, assisted by Elder Holland and all of our family priesthood holders (Brent, Ryan, Eric and Scott.) It was very special to have these two men set us apart, since they had been with us in Burundi when Elder Holland dedicated the land. They came in talking of our shared experiences.

It made it a very personal and wonderful event. We will remember it as one of the highlights of our lives.

Blessings for us and our family were clearly promised as we follow the Lord's direction and do our personal best. We were comforted and encourage and it was a never-to-be-forgotten day. Maybe, with the Lord's help, we really can do this. We sure plan to give it our best effort and pray that the Lord will do the rest. We know that's what he's promised each of us and hope to qualify for His help in everything we do. The great need to rely on the Lord as we do things beyond our abilities and to be qualified by the Lord to do more than we're able to do alone is in reality a wonderful blessing.

Groundhog Day

The movie "Groundhog Day" has impacted my life over the years. It's the story of a man who wakes up every day to find the same day repeating itself. He has to keep doing it over and over until he gets it right. Actually, it's makes me crazy to watch the poor guy struggle through the same day over and over again, but it sometimes says exactly what I'm thinking. So, here we are having "Groundhog Day." After four and 1/2 months at home, we're returning to the Democratic Republic of the Congo Kinshasa Mission. This is the mission to which we were called on our first mission. We're back in the same mission home apartment where we stayed the first four days of our last mission, the sky is still grey, the bread lady is still on the corner, the police are still ever present, and this world has changed very little. Last mission, after four days, we went to the Lubumbashi and then on to the new mission when it was created. But so many things are just as they were. The big difference is that now it's our home, Brent now has the responsibility to serve as the Mission President and I'm "the Mom" to 127 great young missionaries. Somehow all that hasn't registered yet and we just feel like it's "Groundhog Day." Fortunately our Groundhog day is a happy one, filled with wonderful missionaries and members. So, here we go again!