Sunday, August 16, 2015
Today we visited the Munama Ward. The Bishop had a 16 month old toddler who sat on his lap during most of the meetings. His wife died 2 days after giving birth at Sendwe Hospital. One in 5 children die before the age of 5. We have no idea what a blessing it to have quality healthcare. Speaking of healthcare, Elder and Sister Draper had to fly to Johannesburg this week to receive medical treatment for kidney stones. The initial assessment was that Elder Draper had 5 stones and his wife Glenda had one also. They had decided that they needed to go home to Canada to receive lithotripsy treatment. Their flight arrangements had them leaving this afternoon before President and Sister Thomas intervened. Dr. Switzer is the doctor over all medical for missionary service and is the brother-in-law to Sister Thomas. At the last minute they cancelled their flight and decided to keep them in Johannesburg for treatment. The story is a long one, but needless to say we are so glad they will be staying and have an opportunity to return to our mission. They make a good team and are critical to the operations of the mission.
We have worked for months on trying to get the customs clearance documents and approvals for both wheelchairs and vision equipment. The documents need to be signed personally by the Minister of Health who is 80 years old and seldom comes to his office. We were especially discouraged to hear the news that the Governor’s brother had died and another funeral delayed the process even further. We had a champion discover us just 2 weeks ago; his name is Marcel Tambwe and he is a Gecamine employee on loan staff to the government. He works with government contracts and knows how to get things done. He told us we would have to pay the customs fees personally if we wanted the materials here in time for the training the first week of September.
These fees are the obligation of the government (MOH) but our only chance was to pay them ourselves. We needed special approval from Salt Lake and it came. We needed our cash working fund to be reimbursed from Kinshasa where we had over $6,000 of unapproved reimbursement forms (mostly our own money). This reimbursement process is also Congolese and often takes 4-5 weeks. Well a miracle occurred after I filed a complaint, all 5 of our outstanding reimbursement forms were approved and money transferred in a period of 48 hours. This provided the cash flow to pay the customs fees and it arrived within 24 hours of when it was needed.
We have also had a marvelous relationship with Enoch Ilunga, one of the Minister’s 4 key deputies. I gave him one of my ties this past week. His favorite sports team’s colors are yellow and blue, so that is the tie I gave him. He personally saw to it that the Minister signed the payment approval forms for the customs billing. This was needed in order to have the MOH reimburse the church. Marcel Tambwe negotiated for us and the wheelchairs should be delivered in the next two days. This series of events may seem coincidental but for us it was nothing short of a miracle chain of events where we had been praying for divine intervention. So many tender mercies. We saw no way possible for these projects to come together. We had been working on this process since January 12 when these forms were submitted and it all came together in a matter of less than 5 days. We’re not done yet, but this will allow us to continue planning for these projects.
The wheelchair project will train one clinician and one technician from each of 14 hospitals. The church will train them in how to properly assess the need and sizing and fit of a wheelchair and the exact wheelchair to prescribe. It will also train the technicians in wheelchair assembly and repair. The trainers will also devote one full day to training 14 handicapped representatives in how to repair their own chairs. Each of the 14 hospitals and the 14 handicapped representatives will receive their own repair tool kit. 216 wheelchairs will be provided to the 14 hospitals for free distribution to the disabled community based on need.
The vision project will involve 3 hospitals in Lubumbashi: Sendwe, Univeristy and St. Yvonne’s. These are the three premier ophthalmology clinics in Lubumbashi. They will each receive machinery and equipment to outfit their hospitals. There is a Dr. Kilangalanga from Kinshasa and Dr. Jesse Hunsaker from Logan, Utah, who are coming to train in cataract surgery. Each hospital will have a minimum of 6 physicians and then are obligated to use the equipment free of charge to serve an estimated 900 patients per hospital.
Regideso is our largest water project where we are providing water line extensions from the main line to remote neighborhoods. We started in Tshimalale this past week and hope to move to Katuba and Kamisepe this next week. We were able to meet with the Director who has been out of the country. We are trying to encourage them to prepare for Kenneth Mofokeng’s visit this Friday. Kenneth is over all water projects in Southeast Africa and he and Phillip Moatlhodi have indicated a desire to invest as much as $800,000 with Regideso as our partners in 2016. The problem is getting Regideso to do their long-range planning. I asked them to prepare drawings, engineer’s cost estimates and take us to the proposed sites of these major projects. We will spend the day on Saturday visiting Kasumbalesa and on Monday he will meet with the main Director. Exciting things could happen if they are prepared and our assignment is to get them prepared.
This weekend was especially enjoyable. On Friday we had 4 Congolese couples over to the mission complex for dinner. Mbidi and Njomi Ilunga, Marcel and Gracia, Steve and Matilda, and Mwamba and Vivian. We had originally planned on having them in our home, but when both the Drapers and the Thomas went out of town we decided to invite the Mikesells and the Senior Sisters Cook and Vance as well. We had pizza, salad, sodas and banana splits. We thought this would be representative of western food. We played several minute to win it games and everyone had plenty of laughs. We had scheduled 2 hours but spent 3 and half together because we had so much fun.
Saturday we participated in a helping hands project. I had asked Justin Mukuna if his stake would be interested in a helping hands cleaning project at Kamweneja Institut, the school where we have been replacing the roofing tins and ceiling tiles. The problem was the old ceiling and roofing debris had just been left in the classrooms. This was a dirty and messy job, but over 70 members showed up at 9 and were still there at 12 when we left. My observation is that the women do the lion’s share of the work. The men like to supervise and the women roll up their sleeves and go to work. We took several pictures and hope to share them with Johannesburg.
Other activities of the week included a trip to the Kafubu Health Zone offices with Dr. Hugue and Immaculee to observe the work completed on 11 wells with another 6 scheduled to begin this week. This is a project Elder Atkinson and I started over a year ago and it is so rewarding to see the fruits of those initial efforts. It may take $1,000 to repair an existing well that is out of commission but it cost over $15,000 to drill a new borehole for a new well. There are 68 wells in this health zone that could be repaired and reclaimed. We also attended the graduation ceremony for an alphabetization class we had sponsored and Shelley and the senior sisters attended a maturation (Days for Girls) training for the Kisanga Stake.
Box Elder High School Class of 1965 had their 50-year reunion this weekend. We have had a reunion every 5 years since graduation and this is the first one I have missed. Rennie Bott, my business partner, and I were the co-chairmen of the reunion. I supervised the original planning and organization while Rennie was on his mission and he had to do all the work while Shelley and I were in Lubumbashi. This was one of those weekends I wished I could have been magically transported back home. I have lots of great memories of those lasting friendships established over 50 years ago while in high school.
Shelley commented just yesterday that she has really enjoyed serving a mission because you have an opportunity to serve others rather than spending all your time an8+d effort on entertaining yourself. We do look forward to some self-indulgence but honestly as we look back on a single week’s worth of activities, we definitely want to be anxiously engaged when we return home. Today the lesson was number 16 from Ezra Taft Benson, “The Elderly in the Church” It gave 8 points of things to do as an elderly person. I don’t plan on becoming the prophet at age 86 as he did, but I would like to follow his example of service and be similarly engaged.
Our schedule is about to become even busier. During the next three weeks we have:
- Kenneth Mofokeng, Director of Water Projects for Southeast Africa coming from 8/21-25
- John and Marcia Dow and 4 additional trainers (Steve Clark group) coming for wheelchair training from 8/28-9/4
- Dr. Jesse Hunsaker and his wife, Diane, coming for vision training from 9/6-10.
I guess with this busy of a schedule we can’t be consider “Elderly” yet.
Love, Dad (Elderly Davis)
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