March Came in like a Lion and Stayed that Way

Big news came in March when we found out who has been called to replace us as Mission President and wife in the DRC Kinshasa Mission.  We have talked by skype and email several times since they were called and we're so happy to have this wonderful couple take over when we leave.  It's also very strange to know months ahead when your calling will end and who will replace you.
 We've begun to have a lot of "parental feelings" toward missionaries and members and it feels good and comfortable leaving them in the hands of the Cooks. They're great!


Knowing that our time is short has made us even more anxious to make the most of every hour as missionaries. The end of March and all of April we've been in a whirlwind.

We did two more  conferences. We combined some of the zones in Kinshasa since they were small and there are now 11 zones in our mission.  It's always good to be with, teach  and train the missionaries.

 We continue to focus on four goals; being  perfectly obedient, reading the Book of Mormon every day for the rest of your life, teaching families, and rescuing the less active. I wonder if they get a bit tired of these four goals being repeated, but we have learned that they really will lead to success and happiness as a missionary and have application in their lives forever.

They have a great time together and it's fun to see them interacting with each other.  When we combine zones there's a lot of check kissing, back slapping  and head bonking that goes on, as they see others with whom they've previously served or who come from the same cities, stakes, and wards back home.  It's a rather unique thing that we have so many who knew each other or are related. It's because 85% of our missionaries come from the DRC. It's the same way for our Americans since there are only three cities where they can serve.  They mix with each other in every transfer and become very close. For them it's like they only have about 30 missionaries in their mission, so they know each other well and there's unusual comradeship among them.. 

 
The week after the zone conference round was Easter, transfers (eight departing missionaries and no new ones, because visas still remain a problem) and General Conference.  We had a great Easter celebration at the home of one of our couples, the Bybees. We had our first taste ever of leg of lamb, and of breadfruit pudding and the familiar old standby of deviled eggs.  It's really an added dimension to have couples with whom we can gather and celebrate.

March was a lion of month and I think that the next three will be the same as we race for the finish line. 

Visits to the Kinshasa Apartments and our Multi-national Mission

When we're in Kinshasa on a Monday morning we like to go and visit apartments just to see the missionaries. We don't get to do that as much as we'd like.  It's not really an apartment inspection. Our full-time employees go there often  and do that duty, thank goodness!  Asking kids to clean their room was never one of my favorite tasks.  But it's good to see the apartments now and then.  We usually give them a half hour's notice or maybe we just surprise them.
First, we visited two different apartments for elders. They have water and power almost all the time and looked well kept.

The small gas hot plate seen here is something we've put in all 17 apartments in Kinshasa and the five in Brazzaville.  They use an electric hot plate when they have power and the gas when they don't.
This apartment even has cupboards in the kitchen, which is not common in DRC.
Beds, study table and chairs, a standing closet for clothes, kitchen table and chairs, fans and a book case are provided for each apartment.   Usually there are 4-6 missionaries in each apartment.

One of the favorite foods here always seems to be salted, dried fish.  I've made it a well-known fact that I'm not a fish lover, even when you buy it filleted, wrapped in plastic and frozen at Costco, I'm not a fan!

These elders were delighted to show me the bookcase in their bedroom storing their fish.  It had little ones, which I think are sardines, not canned but salted and dried. They just throw them in sauces and eat them whole Yuck!
They had medium-sized salted, dried fish. They fry it in a pan full of oil. Then even had another type. It looks like maybe it's salted, smoked eel.  I always make a fuss when I lift a lid of a pan on the stove and see fish cooking. I hold my nose, pull a dramatically displeased face and say, "Je n'aime pas le poisson!!"  (I don't like fish!!) I always get a good reaction from that.  Only one missionary, out of more than 350 has ever agreed with me.  

 The other apartment was nicely kept too.  Their kitchen was clean as could be.  It certainly did make us happy to see them taking care of their apartments.  They all seemed genuinely happy to have us visit.

This is typical of the kitchen equipment they have.  In the blue barrels they keep the casava flour to make fufu.  The tiny can of very strong tomato paste (four times as strong as American tomato sauce) is the foundation of most of the "sauces" they make to eat with fufu. 

Here are some samples of can sizes in the DRC.  They contain (from left to right) Full-cream powdered milk,  a  US #10 can for reference, black beans, pears (US size), evaporated milk, tomato sauce (US size), small can of corned beef, strong African tomato paste and sweeten condensed milk.  The little sweetened condensed milk looks like something you'd find in a " children's play food assortment" at home. So cute!  

The prices are high on everything canned, except the tiny cans of tomato paste. All of the other products are  imported.  The small can of fruit runs about $3, tomatoes sauce about $1.50.  In Burundi there were only five kinds of canned foods - African tomato paste, tuna, mushrooms, corn, and popcorn kernels.

It requires a bit of recalculation to use these sizes of cans in US recipes, but we're grateful for canned foods. We love the assortment of things available here. 

 The last apartment we went to belonged to a group of sister missionaries.  We didn't warn them that we were coming. The apartment still looked great. They were on task and there was a wonderful feeling of sisterhood in the apartment. As we sat in the bedroom talking, we realized that this is a very unique group. I'm wondering if there's anyplace, other than visitors' centers, where a group like this would be found. The sister missionaries in that room come from six different countries.  We had  (from left to right) me-US, Sister Flagbo-Togo, Sister Mutomb (of interest is that Mutomb is the first African missionary we've ever know whose name didn't end in a vowel)- DRC, Sister Zaorobone- Central African Republic, Sister Nsenda -DRC, Sister Fanantenantsoa- Madagascar and Sister Kabie-Ivory Coast.  I think that is a very unique situation to come from that many places and live harmoniously in one apartment. (The white puff above us is a mosquito net tied up for the day.)

Even though these sisters come from many countries and have many differing cultures, tastes and habits, they're all still cute young women with fun things in common. They all giggled when Brent teased them. They all felt compassion, love and concern when we talked to Sister Zaorobone about the coup d'état  and the resulting problems in her homeland. They all squealed with delight as we passed out invitations to our upcoming Sisters' conference. And on every bed in the house there was a Teddy bear.  We just had to take a picture of them with their bears. 

On our way home from the apartment visits, Aimé, who works for the mission and is the bishop in the ward where we live, invited us to see his new rented home in the area. Twice this year he'd had a flood disaster in  his former rental home.   Because someone had blocked the drainage ditches when they built a new home, water nearly filled the house each time it rained, causing them to loose almost everything they owned.  Faced with these losses twice in one month, Aimé and his family were forced to leave their home and lived for a few weeks with a ward member. Recently they were able to get into a new place.  Aimé was pleased to show it to us and we were thrilled to see that they now have a nice, comfortable two bedroom home for their family and Aimé's sister, who lives with them. It was good to see them finally settled in a safe and secure place. During this outing of apartment visits with Aimé as our driver, he commented on having recently read about the early pioneers. He said that he was inspired by how hard life was for them and yet how they did such amazing things.  For us,  Aimé is one of those people who has taught us about true faith.  When faced with his great difficulty, even more than the usual hard life of the Congo, Aimé just kept saying that with faith in the Lord and the gospel we can be happy. He is a wonderful example of how we can do hard things with a happy spirit and make life good, despite the difficulty of our situation.  He embodies the true "pioneer spirit of Africa" and is one of our heros. 

On to the English Conferences

We arrived only about an hour late in Pointe Noire.  On the way from the airport we stopped quickly to see a new apartment that the Wheatleys are thinking of moving into and then headed to their current home. Brent's getting to be a pretty skillful negotiator and worked with the landlord to get them down several hundred dollars a month on rent and get some things repaired, including adding rolls of barbed wire to the walls around the property and security bars on the windows.

By the time we got to the Wheatleys' home all the elders were waiting for us.  We walked in, sat  our suitcases down, grabbed our scriptures and began zone conference.

 These young elders are just remarkable. They are so full of the spirit and so willing to do whatever they're asked to make the work move forward. They are a joy it is to be with them!

I always feel a great sense of relief when we get to the cities where we can do our teaching and training in English.  It's such a relaxing time for me to be able to express my thoughts with the vocabulary built over a lifetime.  I'm grateful that I can communicate in French, but wow is it great to be able to do a visit in English in all three of these outlying cities!

Right after zone conference Brent had business with the branches and worked until late that night on matters relating to the three branches over which he presides as a stake president does over wards. 

The next morning before heading out of town, we went to visit a missionary apartment.  It's always good to see how things are going and how the elders are living.






 It's a good apartment.  We did have a little visit about their stewardship toward their home. We felt like the parents of teens again as we encouraged them to work a little harder to keep it both clean and neat. They seemed to understand the importance of a "house of order" and  hopefully there will be a little  improvement.

This is the view from their apartment entrance  It's a typical Pointe Noire Street.


From Pointe Noire we flew to Douala, but had to do it through Bangui, where we stopped briefly to drop off  some passengers.  We and spent a few hours Douala with the Gaileys, who were kind enough to pick us up and take us to their home until ourr flight to Yaoundé.  It was so nice not to have to sit in the airport for four hours.  We had a nice lunch and visit before time for the next leg of our journey.  "You can never get there from here" in Africa. It always takes a few stops.
We had a wonderful zone conference with the missionaries in Yaoundé and then Brent took care of some important branch business in .

 These are the missionaries now in Yaoundé.
They are dedicated and serious missionaries. What a nice group.



But this is who they are when they relax and just be young guys!  We love being with the North American elders. They are hard working and dedicated, but they sure do know how to have
FUN!!

Again we had a look at the  new apartment for the elders. It was nice and perfectly kept.  It was even so clean and neat that they got treats for their efforts.

 The apartment is  located on a main, busy street that's kind of crazy, but it's a convenient location and has good security. We hope that it will serve us well for a long time.

From the strange catwalk that leads to their apartment, there was a great view of Yaoundé.

Yaoundé is my favorite city in the mission.  It's cooler, nicer and cleaner than any other place. It's also quite hilly and I enjoy the contour of the land there.  Since it's elevation is higher and it gets more rain it's greener with lush vegetation.
After our time in Yaoundé we flew back to Douala where we had conference with the elders there and again, more church business.

  

Mild mannered missionaries.......................................... who enjoy a chance to let their hair down.

 Unlike our usual frantic trips we had part of a day in Douala without meetings or other needs, so the Gaileys took us to the ocean.  Douala is a sea port, but we'd never seen the sea there before. There's a great deal of commerce that goes through Douala, but we bypassed that  area and went to a little point that leads to a Naval base. We just stopped and enjoyed the ocean view for a few minutes.

The road along the coast that leads to the Naval base.

We saw dugout fishing canoes with sails bringing in the catch of the day.

Fresh Fish Market on the beach in Douala

On the way home from our trip to the ocean, the Gaileys stopped to buy a bottle of roasted peanuts.  These women sit all day on the side of the street and pour very small peanuts, which they've roasted in a pan over an open fire, into used bottles.  Often they use fancy liquor bottles, but these ladies mostly use old pop bottles.  They use a stick to push them tightly into the bottle and it's amazing how many peanuts you can get in a liter bottle. Gaileys visit this group of ladies often.  Brent has learned to really like these crunchy little nuts so we bought some to take home. If we if just don't think about where they've been, they're delicious!

 Then we began our interesting return trip. Life is always interesting when we travel.  We flew from Douala to Pointe Noire, where we were to make a 30 min. stop to drop off passengers. When we got there, they had us get off the plane and ushered us into a room  (gratefully one that was air conditioned). The little lay over, which was to be a 30 stop on the plane,  turned into four hours in the Pointe Noire airport, with no explanation as to why this had happened. When we finally did board a plane, it was like a Twilight Zone plane.  It was plain white with no markings whatsoever.  Inside all the writing was in Arabic and the crew were Arabic, and spoke almost no French.  Just a little unnerving!  Fortunately we arrived safely in Brazzaville late that evening, ate our camping meal in the Hotel Adonis and anxiously awaited our trip across the river early the next morning.  However, when we awoke, it was raining and that meant no river crossing until the hard rain had stopped.  We waited three more hours in our room in Adonis for the rain to let up enough to cross.  It was a pretty soggy crossing .but we made it and in record time.

Love the solution for the rain bothering your hairdo. A plastic shower cap is totally acceptable head ware. 

Finally we arrived in Kinshasa more than 30 hours after we left Douala, which is a trip of about 850 miles total distance and could have taken us about an hour if you could "get there from here" directly. Like we say Rule #1 is always in force in Africa.  Nothing is easy in Africa!  But it's always worth it to visit with those who work so diligently and faithfully in these out-of-the-way places.

Step two in the Zone Conference-go-'round.

We spent the night in the "President's hotel," which is what our Congolese helpers Bishop Gaetan and Brother Nitch call it. The Adonis Hotel has became a home away from home for us in Brazzaville and they treat us very well. They always have the air on before we arrive to cool down "our room-#212."  It's the nicest room in the hotel and we get a good deal on it, since we have been there a lot and the young men who run it have become friends.  They now put "two" towels in the bathroom for us and have things just as we like it.  We have given up trying to get to a restaurant since we're always too tired and hungry to go and wait for a meal.  So at the end of the day we have a good camping meal which is just what we need.

In the morning we eat on the terrace and have our favorite meal of croissants, raisin rolls, pain au chocolat and hot chocolate, or if we take the early plane they put our breads in a little "take away bag" for us. They're so nice to us at the "President's Hotel!"

Notice the bags that we have with us in this picture.  We've learned to make a trip for nearly two weeks with just one small bag and a briefcase each.  We  can take them as carry-on bags and never lose sight of our things. It's wonderful to always know that we will arrive at our  destination and have our luggage arrive there too

At the airport in Brazzaville Rule #1 came into full effect this trip. After many trips through that airport with no problems, this time they couldn't find us in the computer. We had electronic tickets, but they still wouldn't issue us boarding passes. We usually do this process alone and it goes fine. For some reason,  Gaetan didn't leave us to do it ourselves this time, but had an airport facilitator walk our papers through. Thank goodness! It took him nearly two hours of going back and forth from the airline office in the airport to the check-in gate. So, we just stood in the airport and waited and watched. It's always quite a show.  We stood for over an hour in a crazy African style line and...

then finally got  into the ticketing area and sat and ... 

watched our  facilitator struggling to get us tickets and....

enjoyed seeing  people in their interesting African clothing. Loved his man's outfit the most!

Our plane was to leave at 9:30 and at exactly that time we finally got boarding passes. We still had to clear passport control and security and it was already time for the plane to leave.  We were sure that we had missed our plane.  We raced through the airport and made it in record time, only to find that for some reason, which was never explained, they had not boarded .  All the passengers were standing in a huge mob waiting at the door.  We were SO relieved and this as a little miracle we had received.  Our schedule is always tight enough that a missed plane can put us off for the whole next ten days.  Forty-five minutes later and with considerable relief, we collapsed into our seats and headed to Pointe Noire.

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.