July 26, 2015 - Clark

Sunday, July 26, 2015

This past week marked my 68th birthday and one of my activities was completing a questionnaire for our 50th high school reunion.  Some of the questions were: (1) interesting places you have traveled and (2) retirement projects.  I told them it was just a sabbatical but our missionary experience dominated the answer sheet.  For me Box Elder High School and Brigham City were just the perfect place to grow up.  I felt valued, recognized and accountable.  You couldn’t get into trouble without your mother knowing about it before you got home.  When I walked down the street people knew me by my first name and they also knew how many times I had missed a block, fumbled the ball or thrown an interception in Friday night’s game.  I delivered the Salt lake Tribune from the time I was 8-14.  The First Ward was our coverage area (from Forest Street to Third South and from Main Street to the mountains) and even after we had established Davis and Bott, people in the community remembered me as the local paperboy.  I suppose I was known for good and evil but I was definitely known.  My Grandmother, Ruby Davis, died when she was 89.  I remember her saying that she felt like a 15 year girl trapped in an 80 year old body.  We’ve been remarkably healthy during our mission and I share my Grandma Ruby’s sentiment.  Oh to be 18 again, but I would never go back, the future has too much promise.

Shelley and I were in charge of family home evening this past week.  The lesson was #28, “We Are Witnesses” taken from the first five chapters of Acts.  I especially enjoyed the verse from Act 1:8, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”  It just struck me that we are those witnesses and Lubumbashi, DR Congo, certainly has to qualify as the uttermost part of the earth.  We have really enjoyed our family home evening gatherings.  It is the only church meeting we attend all week long where we understand more than a few phrases.  It has brought the senior missionaries much closer and has helped us form a common bond.  These are people who will be lifetime friends but we may never have sought one another out but for serving in the same mission.  Neil and Glenda Draper, Vaun and Renee Mikesell, Heather Vance, Janet Cook, Brent and Carolyn Thomas and previously Claudine Riendeau, Emma Anthony, Brent and Celeste Atkinson, Kevan and Teri Clawson.  We couldn’t be more different but now “We Are Witnesses” serving in the uttermost part of the earth.

To celebrate my birthday on Tuesday, I spent the day shopping for nails and lumber for the Kamweneja School roofing project.  Pierre is the installer and he has a helper, Pascal and his grandson, Andre who are working on the roofing project together.  Pierre had a granddaughter die on Monday and he went shopping for roofing materials Tuesday.  He has taken such pride in his work and wherever we go he makes sure the shop owners know he has brought them this newfound business.  The lumberyard is owned by sisters from the same family.  The fourth sister, Lydee, is the president of the association.  They are Muslim and we have had some interesting conversations.  She suggested that next time I could just call ahead and come by to pick up the lumber after it had been selected, cut and loaded.  I told her I enjoyed being at the lumberyard and wouldn’t think of calling in our order.  Not to mention that Pierre inspects every single piece of lumber before selection.  We spent the entire afternoon together.  The reason we return to the lumberyard often is that none of the lumberyard operators are what are referred to as authorized vendors and our cash working fund is limited to $1,500.  We will end up purchasing over $10,000 worth of lumber for this project;   thus the frequent and enjoyable trips to the lumberyard.

The Church makes a lot of assumptions and takes a lot of risks in having senior couples serve as humanitarian missionaries.  I say that because they send you to a week of training where you see videos and do some role playing and then send you to your assigned location to be the local expert.  Let me share just such an experience as it relates to the wheelchair and vision projects we have coming the first 10 days of September.  The church has shipped by boat from China to Tanzania over $100,000 worth of wheelchairs.  We are responsible for obtaining an exemption certificate from all taxes and duties imposed on importing goods into the country.  No training in protocol or process.  We started in February and are still uncertain if everything will come together.  There are 14 hospitals involved who have to send one technician and one clinician to the training.  The Katanga Province is being broken into 4 smaller provinces and no single existing governmental entity can correspond with all 14 hospitals, wish us luck.    The vision project has air-freighted their equipment to the Lubumbashi airport but no one has picked it up because they need the exemption certificate.  We’ll see if the work we have been doing since February pays off and they come through.  It should not be this difficult to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment.  

Probably the most tangible evidence that we are doing some good came in the form of a visit to the Trinity School where 600 women are receiving literacy training.  We had purchased pens, notebooks and paid for the reproduction of the syllabus and training booklet.  When we arrived, we were given a royal welcome in each classroom we visited.  They had us speak as visiting dignitaries and then used this as a photo opportunity to promote their program.  Shelley did a wonderful job both as an educator and as a mother.  They frequently refer to the phrase, “If you educate a mother, you education the world”.  I’m certainly happy that our daughters and daughters-in-law have valued education and are educating their families.  When you think about it, who would you prefer to have as your nurse, your teacher, your friend?  Your mother of course!

This is a sensitive time being separated by so many miles from Shelley’s mother.  Thank you all of you for looking after her in ways that we can’t.  We appreciate her example as an educator, mother and teacher of life’s lessons.  

Love, Dad (Elder Davis)