Well, everybody - Dad and I have had a day of training in the Southeast Area Welfare Office today along with another couple who will be serving in Gabon. It was interesting and there were good treats. :) We have more training tomorrow and Saturday - then next week is the area welfare conference with all of the welfare couples serving in the southeast area (16 couples).
We miss you like crazy and hope that all is going well. We love you!
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This third week has been a marathon. We flew from Salt Lake to Chicago with a 5-hour layover and then and 8-hour flight to London with an 11-hour layover before taking a 12-hour flight to Johannesburg. We were hammered when we arrived, They took us to the Sunnyside Hotel that is only a few blocks from the Area Offices and the Temple.
Brent Lee and Bruce Kinghorn met us at the airport and drove us around. The Lees are on their 6thmission and the Kinghorns their 2nd. The 2 couples met in the Ukraine as humanitarian missionaries. The Lees have been here as Area Welfare Specialists for 9 months and recruited the Kinghorns to work with them in the area office. There are about a dozen couples at our annual training here along with area staff of 6-8 and the head of Humanitarian church-wide, Sharon Eubank. She is the daughter of Mark Eubank and sister of Kevin Eubank from Channel 5 Weather.
We arrived last Wednesday and today is the first semi-normal day I have had with jetlag, fatigue and transition. The other couples have been wonderful and it is encouraging to visit with them individually; there isn’t a single couple that doesn’t seem to love the people and the work. Humanitarian has been changed to Welfare and we are no longer Country Directors, but Welfare Services Missionaries. We have had a lot of training and I’m sure it will make much more sense when we are in the missionfield in Lubumbashi.
President McMullin emailed today saying he would not be back until Tuesday but would have the Clawsons pick us up at the Lubumbashi Airport. Sister Clawson is a nurse practitioner and Brother Clawson takes care of the motor vehicle pool. We don’t know if there are other senior couples in Lubumbashi. We are anxious to get to our final destination so we can set up shop. They have not had humanitarian missionaries there for several years, so we need to establish an office and furnish a new apartment as well as a new office. We don’t know if our office will be in the mission office or at our apartment.
They have annual training conferences for all humanitarian couples in the Africa Southeast Area which covers 23-23 countries with approximately 15 couples. It has been fun to hear of the projects other couples are involved with. There seems to be a lot of bureaucratic red tape to deal with in accounting for projects and requesting approval of the proposal, approval of payments and closure of completed projects. I need Mike Bradshaw of ABC here to hold my hand.
They have what are called major initiatives and area initiatives which is the terminology for project design and approval. Area initiatives are those over $25,000 or those outside the scope of the six major initiatives. Majors include: water, vision, neonatal resuscitation immunizations, wheelchair and short-term member projects (gardening, food) We were given our budget for the coming year and we have 2 water projects, one immunization, 2 area initiatives. We’ll keep you posted on how it works on the ground.
Our main purpose is to increase skills development, self-reliance and local capacity. We are admonished not to be in the “give away” business. One of our first questions is “what have you done to solve your problem?” and next is “how will this effort be sustained after we are gone?” Our focus is supposed to be on training and transfer of knowledge and skills.
We are still living with the theory and are anxious to get established in order to apply principles we have learned. Thanks for all your emails and words of encouragement. We check our email every day and savor every word from home.
Clark
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