February 8, 2015 - Clark

Sunday, February 08, 2015

Eighty degrees and the air conditioning is on high while we’re sitting in our living room writing our weekly letters.  It is a good routine and we’re happy to be back home in Lubumbashi for our regular schedule.  There are a few noteworthy events from this past week.

President Thomas asked if I would assist in “steering the ship” for accounting and finance in the mission office during an upcoming transition period.  Sister Anthony is going home in May and President wants to complete that transition while she is still here.  There were two other couples who were planning on coming but could not pass the physical, so we have to make do with the personnel we have.  When you work in humanitarian, you have specific guidance on what mission responsibilities you can take on.  I’ve kept Johannesburg in the loop but it looks like I’ll be sitting in on the area auditor’s visit in two weeks and having other sisters (Mikesell, Vance and Cook) trained with me.  My plan is to become familiar with the duties of the office, segregate those duties among the sisters and act as a sounding board but to have no day to day responsibilities.  I hope to provide oversight and supervision without becoming the office accountant.

David Frischknecht, our Director of Temporal Affairs (DTA) is coming at the end of that same week and has asked to have us show him our humanitarian projects.  We hope to be able to promote our future projects while he is here.  He is the brother of Roger Frischknecht of Brigham City and Shelley had many of his nieces and nephews in her school classes.  He is also a close friend of Jeff Johnson, one of my high school buddies who worked for the Church.  We plan on taking him to a couple of churches on Sunday morning that are in need of an upgrade in buildings.  Wish us luck and we’ll report back.

We spent our visits this week with projects that are still in the development stages.  We were required to revise our orphanage proposal and separate it into three separate proposals, one for each orphanage rather than a combined project.  We visited two of those orphanages to determine what their contribution could be.  It’s difficult to require orphans or orphanages to make any type of financial contribution, but we were able to extract some commitments.  The Muslim orphanage is going to comply with the sanitation standards imposed by the Ministry of Social Affairs and complete all the cleaning and painting before new beds are delivered.  Tumaini was required to go to Ruashi Mining to request their completion of a pledge they made two years ago to finish the interior of 4 new class rooms.  They made the visit and a miracle occurred, Ruashi Mining is going to complete the classrooms within the next two weeks before we deliver 100 new desks to Tumaini.

We also presented our draft copy of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to both Enoch at the Ministry of Health for 3 new wells to be drilled and to Dr. Hugue regarding the Kafuba health zone covering 23 villages.  Our attempt is to try to make these programs theirs with us providing financial seed money.  The goal is to transfer ownership and future maintenance to the beneficiary organization.  This is the test of sustainability if they view the investment as their own.  Otherwise when something goes wrong or a repair is required, in the past they have looked back to the contributing party to make the repair.  They don’t view gifts as their own but that they belong to the gifting party.

This past Friday we went to Mbidi’s  farm.  He is a local  Bishop and the director of the self-reliance center here in Lubumbashi.  His ward developed a home gardening project.  Their ward membership has about 90% of the heads of households who do not have stable employment.  Mbidi’s family owns 70 hectors (2.54 acres per hector I believe).  This property is located 14.3 kilometers from where the members live.  They have to take a bus or transport each way and pay the faire with their own money.  Each family is given the usage of a plot of ground 50 meters by 50 meters square.  They plant corn, beans, potatoes, etc.  Working together we wrote up a request for a humanitarian project referred to as a priesthood driven self-reliance program.  We had to obtain consent and support from Phillip in Johannesburg, who in turn had to write a letter of request for a short-term specialist.  We have been assigned Lee Kimball and his wife who will visit at the end of March.  

Our hope is that Elder Kimball will primarily conduct training and in essence train the trainer in Mbidi.  Mbidi in his role as director of the self-reliance center will then take his show on the road.  He visits every stake or district at least every 2-3 months.  Brother Kimball is a contact from Phil Squires, a dental patient of David’s who also serves as a short-term specialist for the humanitarian department.  They are coming to stay for 3 weeks beginning March 27th.  

Yesterday was the coordinating council meeting with our Area Seventy, Elder Keungu presiding.  Mom and I were asked to attend and report on humanitarian projects.  Mom talked about conducting training for teachers of the “Strengthening Marriage” in all of the stakes and districts.  I talked about Brother Kimball’s assignment to come and conduct training in self-reliance home gardening projects.  

Although we have been able to send our letters, this past month’s connectivity has been horrible.  We talked a little about the political turmoil in Kinshasa that set things in a tail spin.  We have very little news coverage but from what we understand, the current President, Joseph Kabila, wants to stay in power beyond his two term limit that expires in 2016.  He proposed legislation requiring a complete census be conducted before an election could be held.  They estimated the census would take 3-4 years.  He bought influence in Parliament who passed the proposal and referred it to the full senate.  After the Parliament approval, there were demonstrations in the streets and several people were killed (45 initially reported)  The Senate then killed the bill and things have settled down, but the President didn’t want the world to have news access, so he shut down the internet and texting except for businesses.  It is rumored that these services will be restored this weekend and we hope so.  This doesn’t excuse those of you who have not written, because we can still receive emails at the mission office.  Our main problems have been with our at home service and the fact that we haven’t been able to face time.  Our connectivity is poor at its best without political interference.  Here’s hoping this next week is better.

We love you and have a good week.

Love, Dad (Elder Davis)