May 25, 2014 - Clark

Sunday, May 25, 2014

I apologize for any repetition but the days are running together quickly.  We have had an eventful week and it’s hard to believe we’ve only been here since last Saturday.  Yesterday we met with the three stake presidencies in Lubumbashi and presented an overview of humanitarian services.  President McMullin arranged for the meeting.  He is really a person of action and is living on a short-term timeline because he goes home in a month.  He has arranged for an 11-day tour of the mission to allow us to visit with other priesthood leaders about potential humanitarian projects.  We leave on June 13th and return on June 24th.  We are going to visit Laputa, site of the church’s largest safe drinking water project.  You have to carry all of your own food into Laputa.  It is a road which is legendary in the difficulties in arriving without a couple of breakdowns or having to use one vehicle to tow the other out of mud holes and water problems.  It supposedly will make our current accommodations look like the Hyatt Regency.

In yesterday’s meeting we reviewed the previous projects to determine which ones were winners and losers.  We also had them volunteer to make appointments for us with the Ministry of Health and the Mayor for the first week in July when we return from our mission tour.  We also received an appointment to meet on Wednesday to visit the site of a bridge that needs to be upgraded or replaced.  Overall the meeting was positive and President McMullin served as the translator.

Today we attended church with the two senior sisters who work in the mission office: Sister Anthony and Sister Riendeau.  They are both from the Tri-Cities area in Washington.  President McMullin had served his youth mission in France and knew Sister Riendeau’s family.  Her sister is in charge of the language department at San Jose State University and is helping with any formal translation of President McMullin’s correspondence.  She also receives written conversion stories from the DRCongo missionaries and translates them into English to be stored in the Church archives.  

Our church meetings are a little long with 100% French and barely knowing how to say hello and goodbye.  We did come home from church and practice on some simple phrases such as: you gave a good lesson, good talk, your dress is pretty, you look good in that suit, your children are beautiful, thank you for making us feel welcome, etc.  We’ll probably be native speakers by the time we come home but for now we’re deaf and dumb when it comes to French.

We had dinner at President McMullin’s on Thursday evening and he showed slides of the mission. I asked him about the growth of the Church.  He said they baptize 250-300 new members each month and the Church isn’t prepared for the rapid growth in DR Congo.  They are trying to control the growth and support centers of strength.  They don’t send missionaries into the interior or the communities further away from population centers.  He said that the missionaries don’t really work that hard, the people are just ready for the gospel.  He said the missionaries don’t do any tracting and simple invite people to church.  Last week the missionaries showed up at church and there were 15-20 new people waiting to be taught.  President McMullin said the roots and the branches need to stay in balance, meaning that the leadership needs to develop deeper roots in order to support the addition of new members (branches).  He said that service is a foreign concept here and that the least bit of service is extraordinary and prompts people to ask why.  If your church promotes service, I want to know more about your church.  

We had dinner with the office staff this evening at President McMullin’s home.  They really take care of the mission presidents.  We had a pot luck dinner and President McMullin had arranged for us to give our humanitarian presentation to the office staff.  They were great and gave us some good feedback.  The Clawsons in particular have a real sense of what can and cannot be done her in DR Congo and how to go about it.  President gave them another assignment to take us to two outlying districts for two days next weekend in order to speak with the priesthood leadership there regarding potential humanitarian projects.  

We were contacted by Flavien Kot who served as the translator for the Bowers, the last humanitarian couple to serve here.  He is going to meet us tomorrow morning at the mission office.  He volunteered to take us to the most recent projects that were completed two years ago and check on their sustainability.  The big question is whether the projects can sustain themselves after the infusion of money.  Can they complete a major repair on their own and do they have any commitment to continuing maintenance?   In many case we recommend North American solutions for local problems and they don’t have the skills or materials to maintain the North American investment of equipment.  It is pretty amazing how quickly things seem to be coming together for us, even though we don’t have a clue of how to go about most of these projects.  We’re learning on the fly.

Everyone has agreed that the local bridge suggestion is a winner.  It is a modest way to get started and it was a project suggested by local priesthood leadership.  We will visit the bridge site on Wednesday with a couple of representatives from the stake presidencies meeting.  I am sure happy to have had experience in working with priesthood leadership.  I’ve had some great trainers but none better than President Ferry.  

Mom and I spent the weekend cleaning our apartment.  The floors were covered in dust but I discovered how they do their mopping here in the Congo.  Now I’m an expert and the cleaner smell is much preferred to the musty odor of dirt.  We feel much better now that we have a refrigerator that works and we’ve figured out how to use the water filtering system.  I’ve never drunk so much water in my life.  It is a beverage we can trust.  Probably don’t want to go into the food options, but suffice it to say that I wouldn’t survive without mom, she is amazing.  She made bread yesterday and peanut butter and jam never seemed like such a delicacy.  I may have to survive on bread and water.  My pants are fitting better already.