April 25, 2015 - Clark

Saturday, April 25, 2015

We’re writing early because tomorrow is conference for us.  We have two sessions to watch and won’t have time in the afternoon for our usual weekly letters.  We have had an eventful week.  Our translator, Steve Mutombo, interviewed with the Church for the position in purchasing being vacated by Felly Bukasa who was promoted and is moving to Kinshasa.  Steve has been wonderful and is a true friend who gets our humor and really seems to enjoy being with us.  It would be difficult to lose him but we are praying he will be awarded the position.  As a translator, he is only part-time with no benefits and no guarantees after we return home.  Steve needs a full-time job to support his future family.  We’ll keep you posted and it’s a dilemma for us but we could be looking for a new best friend.  Both of our translators, Flavien and Steve have both been wonderful and are among our best friends in Lubumbashi.  

From Tuesday through Friday we were involved with the Kafubu Health Zone training of 15 well-repair technicians.  We had lots of help in hiring a trainer, selecting candidates, arranging for transportation, food, lodging, classroom materials and location and on and on.  This was all made easier by Immaculee, another Congolese best friend.  Her husband had a stroke last December 4th when Phillip Moatlhodi was here from Johannesburg.  She has been absent from work for almost 3 months and now is back in full swing helping us with the project that will attempt to train representatives from  the villages in the health zone.  They have a combined 68 pumps that are no longer operational.  Most of the time, it is something small or uncomplicated to make the repair but there is no ownership on the part of the villages.  The aid of outside parties has made them totally dependent and few self-reliance principles have been taught.   That is our objective and you would think it would be easy, but it’s not.  

We have watched two sessions of conference today.  We saw the Saturday afternoon and Priesthood sessions.  It’s difficult to see the aging of our leaders.  We grow so close to them and begin thinking they will be with us forever.  I was happy to hear from President Monson in Priesthood Session with his facial expressions and rolling his eyes while masterfully preaching his lessons in story format.   I imagine we feel like this every conference, but you wonder who may not be with us for the next General Conference.  For now we’re hanging on every word.  Conference is always meaningful and the messages seem custom fit just for you.  It definitely felt that way this conference.  I especially enjoyed Wilford Anderson’s talk about being able to hear the music if you want to dance.  Such simple parable-like stories with such depth of meaning.

Michel’s family left this week for France, where his youngest daughter, Clara, lives.  They had planned on having a family reunion there before his wife, Kieu, passed away two weeks ago.  They are following through with the reunion and I believe Michel really needs to be surrounded by family at this difficult time of loss.  Michel is not a member of the church but is a wonderful person.  We understand that for five nights following Kieu’s burial, the choir members from the three stakes here in Lubumbashi showed up to sing for the entire evening at Michel’s brother’s home.  It is said to be the only thing that brought relief to Michel and allowed him to sleep.  I just marvel at the goodness of the saints here and their acts of service.  

We are scheduled to move to the mission home once the real estate contract has been closed.  It seems to take forever to finalize anything here.  There is one of the homes that is occupied by a businessman who travels and he hasn’t been around to move out his belongings.  An attorney came from Kinshasa to assist with finalizing everything, but the owner will not be paid until all outside parties have vacated the property to be purchased.  We were to move in on April 1st and it may be another month or two, who knows.  I’m not anxious to move because we have better power and water where we currently live.

Speaking of better power, it has now been out for about 24 hours and it makes it difficult to cook or to keep anything cool in the refrigerator not to mention no warm water.  The weather here is just about perfect but the locals are complaining about the cold.  We are about at the end of the rainy season and entering what you might call the winter months when the temperatures drop to a range of maybe 57-80 degrees.  (Just about perfect if you ask me)  It’s November that’s miserable when the temperatures get up to around 70-90 degrees.  There is relatively little humidity here as we have an altitude of over 4000 feet.  It is amazing that almost everyone has a winter coat to protect against the freezing temperatures.   

My assignment for our conference get together with the other senior missionaries is to make sweet rolls.  We have the generator on to provide temporary power and the timing is tricky.  This is a conference weekend we will not soon forget.  My letter is a little shorter than usual, so I’ll try to send a copy of our report of last week’s activities with the pump repair project in the Kafubu Health Zone.  Have a great week.  We love you all,

Love, Dad (Elder Davis)