February 15, 2015 - Clark

Sunday, February 15, 2015

We continued our farming interest this week with a visit to President Mwinkieu’s farm.  He is a counselor in the mission presidency and is a farmer by training.  He works for the Ministry of Agriculture in training farming skills and techniques to villages.  He also owns a farm about 20 miles outside of the city.  He raises corn, soybeans, and potatoes among other things.   He is married to Matild’s older sister and has not been supportive of Steve and Matild’s engagement.  I felt it would be good for him to see how competent Steve is as our translator and I also though President Mwinkieu could help us in preparing for the visit of our short-term specialists in agriculture, the Kimballs.  Right on both accounts.  A very productive visit.  President Mwinkieu has installed irrigation ditches with the assistance of a grant and can teach us about local crops, irrigation, work force and assistance in training from the Ministry of Agriculture; a great local resource.

We have spent quite a bit of time corresponding with the Kimballs regarding our self-reliance project.  First of all it sounds like they spend most of their time in training the priesthood leaders rather than teaching farming techniques.  They have provided several forms which will help us conduct surveys of needs and resources before they arrive at the end of March.  The commitment of the local people is tremendous.  The farm property is 14 kilometers away from where the members live.  The last three kilometers you walk on foot.  Next to no one has a vehicle and so you need to take a transport van each way that costs 500 francs or about 50 cents.  There are no food, restroom or water resources once you reach the farm and generally they stay at least a day and sometimes several in the fields, doing everything by hand.  No tractors, no electricity, no gas powered tools, etc.  Pretty amazing.  There are currently 15 families from Kisanga 2nd Ward, 15 families from Upemba, 10 from the local electrical committee and 6 families from the nearby village who participate at the farm.  Every ward and stake is now interested in participating.  I’m sure it is for the free tools, seed, fertilizer, etc.  We hope to focus on training and sustainability and not just a give away program.

I mentioned last week about the request that I help with the upcoming audit and “steering the ship” during a transition period.  Well in one week that concept has moved from oversight to a suggestion by David Bowman that Shelley and I be reassigned as the office couple.  David Bowman is the chief financial officer for the area and he has rose colored glasses with his primary concern being only finance.  Mom and I seriously thought about it especially in light of the continued frustration we have encountered in obtain funding and approval for our projects.  After a sleepless night we wrote back and told him we felt it would irresponsible to abandon our humanitarian calling.  We have seen what happens when a humanitarian couple is reassigned.  The Bowers were here in 2012 and were reassigned to Zambia for the last 7 months of their mission.  All the projects they had in progress were difficult to complete satisfactorily and no one replaced them.  We pray for our replacements regularly because we desire to see the humanitarian commitment to the Lubumbashi Mission be continued.  It takes so much time and effort to start everything from scratch.  We have some well-established contacts that are prepared to work with the Church.  We hope that connection and momentum can be maintained.  We’ll still help out with the training from the auditors this coming week.  President Thomas really needs an office couple to take over finances, any takers out there?

We had some valuable contact with Regideso this past week.  They are the monopoly in water.  We are working with them to extend existing water lines from the main lines to local neighborhoods.  The locals will dig all of the trenches as their contribution and Regideso will supervise construction and operations and maintenance after completion.  We were required to get 3 competitive bids on work, so Regideso drew up the specifications and we invited contractors to a pre-bid meeting and a tour of the five sites selected for development.  It was fun to caravan around the community and visit with the local neighborhoods.  It has been helpful to have some exposure to the construction industry in our accounting practice.  Kenneth Mofokeng comes February 23-26th to review and amend or approve of what we’ve done.  There is considerable frustration with this process because Kenneth has too much territory to cover and too much power of approval.  We start feeling like gofers with no authority.

We received a call from Sheree Clarke on Thursday asking for our input regarding frustrations encountered by senior humanitarian couples.  It seems as though our concerns are universal throughout the area and she was commissioned to conduct interviews, receive input and prepare a report of common concerns for the Area Presidency.  It was nice to have an opportunity to vent and realize others were experiencing similar frustrations:

1. No car for the first five months
2. No new projects approved since September 9, 2014
3. Our 2014 budget was spent by other missions in the Congo
4. Constant change in policies and program guidelines; no continuity, consistency or momentum
5. Shift to major initiatives away from local initiatives where we have no discretion or control over the project scope or timing.  We are becoming gofers for the short-term specialists who have 100% control over budget, approval, timing and scope of the project

This is just a sampling without me including my litany of concerns.  All that said, we love the work, we just feel like we could do so much more.  We’re not looking for a change in assignment, just an opportunity to do what we were called to do.  

We did have a nice Valentine’s celebration with a night out with all the seniors at Latte Licious, a local restaurant.  

I need to end with the best news of the week.  Friday the 13th was not unlucky for us.  We received notification from Sister Kinghorn that the Area Presidency had approved all four of the local initiatives we have been working on.  It was a long time in coming which made it all the sweeter when we received word.  We have a busy period upcoming:

• February 16-19 Rolf Randall Area Auditor training
• February 20-22 David Frischknecht-Director of Temporal Affairs, hosting
• February 23-26 Kenneth Mofokeng-Area Water Specialist-seeking water  project approvals which may carry us through the completion of our mission (pray for us)

Our connectivity was better this week and we were able to face time with some of our family members.  We hope to do more this coming week.  

Love, Dad (Elder Davis)