May 21, 2014 - Clark

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Today was a great day to become more familiar with the members of the mission home.  We spent the morning with Elder and Sister Clawson teaching English to two zones of missionaries.  Sister Clawson is the medical officer and they have been serving missions for the last 10 years and they are probably younger than we are by 5 years.  Brother Clawson handles all the apartments and fixes everything.  He has such a pleasant demeanor and told us the best thing to learn in DR Congo is patience.  

We had a wonderful time with the missionaries.  The format of the time together was that each Elder introduced himself and then had to ask us a question all in English.  Shelley and I fielded the questions together and had the Clawsons to interpret if the Elders were new to the field and could only speak French.  They asked questions such as who, what, when, where, why and how about the two of us.  We were told not to wear our name badges so they would have to inquire.  

The best part was being asked to bear our testimonies to the Elders in English.  Following our meetings, we had several missionaries say, “I love you Elder Davis”.  It was so genuine and heartfelt that we felt part of the missionary effort.  

We have recognized that the office staff often works through lunch, so we will have to start packing a sandwich. The staff are composed of the following:

1. Justin who is the general office manager and on Sundays serves as one of the 3 stake presidents here
2. Emmuel who is the full time employee who works with Brother Clawson and negotiates all the leases on apartments
3. Sister Anthony who is in charge of all accounting functions for the mission
4. Sister Riendeau whose calling is women’s auxiliary support, but she is French and teaches both French to the sister missionaries and English to all missionaries
5. Elder and Sister Clawson as previously described.

We finally were able to get our technology working.  Vodafone is the local provider and we discovered that our i-phones will work as portable hot spots which allows us to have cellular internet access anywhere.  We can create a hot spot (basically a portable router) with our phone and then pair our computer or i-pad to the i-phone and have access.  We think we can do this for around $200 a month but we’re trying it out right now.  The mission office has unlimited internet when we are there with the old Pioneer47 access, so now we access from both our apartment and the office.

We also met with Justin about our visa issues.  In DR Congo, you can’t leave the country after your 6-month travel visa expires until you have been granted another visa that lasts for a year.  The problems they have been having are that you have to send your passport in with the year visa request and in the past the requests have taken 3-5 months.  This means that if we had projects in progress outside Lubumbashi, we couldn’t travel to the projects if air travel was required and it generally is.  Justin is trying to anticipate those delays and is working to streamline the process.  If Phillip has any connections in Kinshasa maybe he could do some checking for us.

Allow me to describe our living quarters.  Everyone with any assets lives in a gated secure compound with guards.  We live in a compound that has a main home and 4 other apartments.  The owner of the home vacated his home and lives in the servants quarters attached on the back of the home.  The home has been given to us for living quarters.  By local standards it is a mansion but since the owner was living here alone for the last 2 months while his wife is traveling, it was in pretty ill-repair.  The windows are all open louvered because the temperatures are moderate and generally air conditioning is not available.  The floors were covered in dust and the freezer didn’t work.  The power goes off almost every day and is used by the local mines, but is usually restored for a few hours in the evening.  We have both a generator and a battery backup and I’m not sure the reliability of any of it just yet.  We keep a flashlight handy at all times.  The worst part about the apartment is the lighting.  Almost every room is dingy due to lack of adequate lighting.  It had been suggested that we have our humanitarian office located in our home but we were afraid we would feel isolated without a car and almost imprisoned because of the lack of lighting.  We could hardly wait to visit with President McMullin upon his return from touring the mission.

We had our official welcoming and interview from President and Sister McMullin today.  He spent over an hour with us and we came away with considerable insight into the challenges in DRC.  Conclusions reached included:

1. He will arrange for a meeting with all 3 Stake Presidents in Lubumbashi
2. He welcomed our proposal to be housed in offices at the mission home and said he would make whatever accommodations were needed to assist us
3. He asked  us to make a list of improvements to be made to our living quarters because the church has a longer term lease on the property
4. Humanitarian has to work with Public Affairs and he will put us in  touch
5. He has scheduled to take us on a tour of many parts of the mission from June 13-24 and wants us to meet the District and stake leaders outside of Lubumbashi.
6. He asked us to prepare a presentation for all the church units we will visit.  I’m sure the Kinghorns  can help us with these preparations.  The problem is they must all be in French.  President McMullin wants us to be trainers in what Humanitarian does and encourage these leaders to develop local solutions for their challenges.  

I’ll write more tomorrow, but it was a good day.  The Clawsons sent us home with a cake and the President sent a late email inviting us to dinner on Thursday evening.  These are wonderful people who make the challenges of the DR Congo bearable.