January 04, 2015 - Clark

Sunday, January 04, 2015

A new baby trumps all other news.  It’s a universal truth and Andy and Kristen had a new son born yesterday, Charlie Abraham Davis, weighing in at 7 lbs. 13 ounces and 19 inches.  We’re so excited for them.  Grandmothers have an especially hard time being away from home for family events like Thanksgiving, Christmas, baby blessings, baptisms, etc.  I believe Shelley cried more than Charlie did yesterday, but they are genuinely tears of joy.  We had an opportunity to face time with the proud parents and the new baby.  His name is especially meaningful because of our connection with the Stuart family.  Marcia’s father, Clark Hillam, used to call Andrew, “Abey Baby” and he had a nursery rhyme he would sing that started “ABC da baby…”  Marcia, you have to send us that ditty and maybe you could sing it for us.  Brother Hillam always called Andy “Abraham” and apparently it stuck.  When Andy has shared their choice of names, all the members of our family have shed tears.  This isn’t to mention that Charlie Stuart was also a hero of Andy’s while he was growing up.  We had such a wonderful neighborhood for raising families.

This past week has seemed like we have had one holiday and five Mondays.  The holidays have been very challenging because they have just seemed like another work day.  We are both happy to be returning to a more regular work schedule.  We did have a fun gathering for New Year’s Eve with the Mikesells and the Drapers.  Elder Mikesell makes pancakes and other breakfast meals.  He invited the seniors over for a pancake breakfast to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  Both food and friends were enjoyable but the evening ended a bit early, 7:30 pm.  We’re not quite that OLD, so we stayed up playing 2-man phase 10 and watching a movie.  I did miss the New Year’s Day college football marathon but read the scores on the internet; not quite the same.

We did have some eventful activities associated with our work this past week.  On Friday, we took Dr.  Pascal from the Ministry of Health and Baltazar, director of the Kampemba health zone on a tour of potential water-well drilling sites.  We had asked the Ministry of Health through our good friend, Enoch, to assist us in water development.  He first contacted Dr. Kabila to conduct some research of potential sites.  The criteria was to identify those areas of the community that were suffering most from water-borne diseases such as typhoid, cholera, etc.  Dr. Kabila assigned Dr. Pascal to complete the study.  They listed 115 potential well sites in 5 different sectors.  Friday we visited 5 sites in in a single quartier in one of the 5 sectors.  It feels like we can do so little, but when we see the poverty and the living conditions, we are motivated to do anything we can.  Three of the 5 sites visited were obviously the most critical and we will return again this week with 3 separate contractor representative to get some competitive proposals that we can submit to Johannesburg for consideration.  

It was a little discouraging while visiting the most needy of the three locations, teenage boys stole 12 bottles of water out of the back of our pickup while we were visiting with the neighborhood leaders only 15 yards away.  Probably my fault for not locking the pickup shell.  

I wanted to mention also that we had a call from the director of a small health center in Kisanga called Kilima Simba.  They had previously asked us for assistance in completely outfitting their health center.  It’s near impossible to decide where to start when they have neither water nor electricity.  The center is generally used for maternity and immunizations.  When we met previously, we asked them how they were going to help themselves.  They said they would gather a single brick from each resident of their neighborhood, 23,800 population, and use those bricks to expand their center.  We told them to call us when they had gathered the bricks and we would return and discuss how we could help.  They called, they were in the process of adding on to their center and almost doubling its size.  We were warmly welcomed upon our arrival and did some brain storming on what we could do to help.  We decided to visit the chief of the health zone along with the center director.  At the health zone office they shared their plans for future development which included adding a health center near the Gacamine marketplace.  They said they could cancel those plans in order to bring electrical power to Kilima Simba.  We all recognize the deplorable conditions at the Gecamine marketplace and said we wanted them to pursue their own plan priorities.  However, we still feel there is a possibility of bringing electrical power to Kilima Simba in the future without sacrificing the proposed new health center.  The chief of the quartier where Kilima Simba is located is Daniel from our bridge project; he had us in his home and we met with him about how to help Kilima Simba.  There always seems to be another “tender mercy” awaiting us that we are totally unaware of.  The work really doesn’t seem to be ours but we are happy to be a part of it.  We’re taking Dr. Mikesell with us tomorrow to Kilima Simba to have him give us his assessment of what pieces of equipment would be recommended to equip this modest health center.  We’re going to make some arrangement with Steve to bring 5 bricks (one for each of us) so we can be part of the solution.  

We have spent much of the holiday time in our office trying to complete all of the yearend reports and complete our reporting of previous projects.  Lots of office time required that I generally put off because being in the field is so much more educational and rewarding.  When you’re visiting people and potential projects and developing relationships, it is so much more rewarding than reporting to someone about it.  We have also been preparing for our humanitarian couples conference in Johannesburg to be held January 11-17.  We leave a week from today, so we’ll have to write earlier or later next week.  

Today we attended church at Nyashi 2nd Ward.  President Thomas arranged for 2 missionaries to meet us at the Katuba Stake Center and assist us in locating this ward.  A good thing they did, because there is no way we could find our way back without them.  The building itself was highlighted by a large tent in the center of some building used for classrooms.  The tent was the main chapel for sacrament meeting.  The members were humble but so grateful we attended.  They were different than most of the wards here, the families were actually sitting together, the meetings started on time and there was a great spirit there.  I’m sure we’ll go back but we will need help.   We took Sister Anthony and the Mikesells and they have officially put me in charge of scheduling our Sunday meeting locations.  This was a fun one.  Where we can’t speak French, it is difficult to feel a part of the ward, but the members are always very excited that we would visit.  They make you feel like ours is  a general authority visit and always want their picture taken with the white people.

Have a great week.

Love, Dad (Elder Davis)