Random thoughts and another great week!

8 Septembre 2012

This week I thought I’d give you some of my random observations along with our fun experiences.

            Last Sunday our ward was split.  We will now be attending the Gombe 1^st Ward at 8:00 a.m.  Our new bishop is Aime Ngoy.  He’s a wonderful man who has been a magistrate and judge, but because he wouldn’t take an assignment on the east side of the DR Congo (because of its danger), he is now employed as a driver for the Church.  The Mission President likes it when Aime drives because if they’re stopped by the police, Aime shows his magistrate’s certificate and the police let them go.  Aime’s wife runs a small boutique, which means she sells about anything.  Aime supplies our eggs.  We buy a flat of 30 at a time for $6.00.

            There was a choir at church that almost rivaled the Tabernacle Choir.  The men wore matching blue ties and the women wore matching blue scarves.  They all wore white shirts and dark skirts and pants.  But best of all their voices were wonderful. 

(Observation – Often there is no one to play the organ or piano in church, so the chorister will stand and sing the first line, he or she stops and that’s our signal to start.  They have no inhibitions to sing solo and sing out and sing strong.  We could take many lessons from them)

            I had a lot of fun with a little girl (maybe 2 years old) in Relief Society.  I played the finger walking game with her and she would giggle and giggle.  She kept many of us entertained.  (I was having a hard time concentrating on the lesson anyway.  It was all in French.  I’ve got to try harder to listen and learn.)  This little toddler and I became friends and she felt comfortable enough to lean on my leg and then she touched my leg.  She looked up at me in surprise as she pulled my nylon away from my leg.  She knew I was different because I had white skin, but I wonder what she thought of skin that pulls away from itself.  She very sweetly put her cheek on my leg.  I’m sure she’s never come in contact with nylons before.

            Monday was the first day of school in Kinshasa.  We’ve been told that school goes from 7:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon and from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m.  There are two sessions each day.  Our apartment is right next to St. Ann’s Catholic School for boys.  (Observation – they must be looking for ways to make money to support the school.  Since we’ve been here, they have rented what I would call a dance hall on their property to bands of all sorts who once a weekend play all night until 6:00 a.m. in the morning.  Those nights we don’t get very much sleep.) 

 

 

            The boys at St. Ann’s wear uniforms (white shirts, black pants and ties) and line up outside every morning at 7:30 a.m. just as we are leaving our apartment.  Our apartment is on the 4^th floor and the kitchen not only overlooks the roof where Elder Robinson runs, but it also overlooks the Catholic School.  (Observation – there is one albino, very tall and thin.  So far he seems to have very few friends.  We asked Didier at work about albinos.  He said they are relatively uncommon and looked at as different or not normal.  This young albino has already won our hearts and we don’t even know him.)

            Monday afternoon, we were desperate for paper for the P.E.F. office.  We had to go to the store!  We found the paper store, called The Pop Shop, but everybody else found the store as well.  We couldn’t have picked a worse day to have to go to a paper supply store than the first day of school.  We parked on a side street on an uphill sidewalk and were happy to find even that.  When you go in a paper store here, you look at the supplies that are all behind the employees.  You pick what you want, they hold it for you and you go pay and then come back and pick up what you ordered.  (No chance for shoplifting!)

 

 

            Monday evening, we got together for Family Home Evening in Pres. and Sister Jameson apartment with the other senior couples.  Pres. Jameson had invited a guest to speak to us, truly a legend here in Africa.  His name is Datar.  He is from Liberia, but came into contact with the Church in Nigeria where he was going to school.  He spoke English with a strong accent and I didn’t understand everything he told us, but what I did understand was miraculous.

            During a military coup in Liberia his father and cousin were executed.  Datar was baptized in 1988, married in 1989 and the same year he was called to be counselor to the Mission President in Liberia.  Civil war broke out and the mission president and his wife and other Caucasian couples were evacuated to Sierra Leone.  He remained to take care of the young missionaries.  He was told to move into the mission home, but he and his new wife didn’t feel comfortable.  They would go there during the day, but return to their home at night.  One night they felt a strong impression to go to the mission home.  That night their home was bombed and everyone thought Datar and his wife, Angelie, were killed.  They had immediately evacuated to Sierra Leone also and Datar’s family held a funeral for them.  When things settled down, they returned and his brothers and sisters had a hard time believing he was alive.  They insisted on seeing Angelie before they would believe it was really him.

            Another time in Liberia he was randomly picked up on the street and taken to the river and lined up with many other men.  He had watched other men go through the same ritual.  They were lined up, shot, and their bodies fell into the river.  As he was lined up, a man came along in some sort of transport and called his name and pulled him out of the line-up.  None of the soldiers who lined the men up seemed to mind.  He was taken away and let go.  To this day he doesn’t know who the man who rescued him was or why he helped him.

            He came to the DR Congo in 1996 and civil war broke out here in 1997 and the missionaries had to be evacuated.  But he talked more personally about the civil war that broke out when the president of the DR Congo was assassinated in 2001.  The military went to many houses, killing any foreigners they found.  Once again the mission president and Caucasian couples fled to Ghana.  In order to get into Ghana, they had to have visas, which they didn’t have.  Datar contacted an official who was a friend of Datar’s in the Ghana Embassy.  He came quickly, and extended visas to these couples, and they were able to get out safely.  Once again Datar stayed to take care of things here in the DR Congo.

            More recently he talked about Elder Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Glenn Pace visiting the DR Congo during a period of civil unrest.  They along with others were down by the Congo River and took a picture of Brazzaville across the river.  As soon as they did, the military surrounded them, took them into custody and took their passports along with other things.  They detained them for over an hour and nothing could be resolved.  Many more hours went by and then Datar was called.  He seems to know the right people in the right places and made a call to their commander who ordered them to be released.

            He’s a very unassuming man, with an infectious laugh and such great faith, who kept reminding us “If you stand for God, He will stand for you.”  I wish I could have understood more of his stories, but I think that gives you a gist of this great man.  Many of these experiences are written in a book by Glenn Pace called Safe Journey.  Sister Billings looked on line for this book and found out its on sale at Barnes and Noble for $.99 if anyone’s interested.

            (Observation – Monday night while driving home at 9:00 p.m. it was very hard to see the people walking and crossing the street because of their dark skin.  Maybe that’s another reason we’re supposed to be home by 6:00 every evening, not just that we might get hurt, but also so that we don’t hurt anybody else.)

            Tuesday we got to the office and Crispin, the man who takes care of the building and washes our truck (every other day it seems) wanted to mop our floor in the P.E.F. office and asked if we would step out for 15 minutes.  Elder Robinson and I saw a lady who sells bananas not far from our office and thought this might be a good time to get some.  We ended up finding another woman selling baguettes for $.20 a piece.  What a find!  Bananas and baguettes!

As we drove to work this week, we realized there’s a school on our road.  We soon found out its possible for 2 lanes to turn into 4 lanes in a hurry, and we were pretty much stuck in traffic.  

 

 

 

 (Observation - I’ve figured out that we are leasing a 4-wheel truck not just for the ruts in the roads that are pretty deep, but many vehicles drive up on what we would call sidewalks (dirt where people walk) to get around another car.  Whatever people think is possible to do in a car, they do it and there seems to be no restriction, at least for the natives.)

 

 

These are just a few radom photos while we were drving!

Pedestrians and pouse pouse carts push their way through traffic any place and any time.

 

 

 

 

            (Observation – When we wake up in the mornings, we can hear people shouting on the street – that was pretty unnerving the first couple of weeks here.  But we also hear what sounds like a carriage with horses clip clopping down the road.  It’s a beautiful vision, but the reality is it is people, usually young men selling a service, i.e. shoe shining, selling tissues in small packages, pop, etc.  They have two pieces of wood connected in such a way that they can click them and let you know they have something to sell.)

 

This was a man leading several blind persons each with a hand on a shoulder.

 

            (Observation – There is a very fine dirt here that seems to get on everything, even in the apartment.  I think that’s why Crispin washes our truck so often.  There are beautiful palm trees and other tropical plants along the main boulevard (called Trente Juin, which means the 30^th of June, the day the Congolese achieved Independence from Belgium in 1960).  Everything looks dirty most of the time, but this week it rained, and I was amazed at how beautiful and clean everything looked!)

 

            Wednesday started out to be a normal day at the office, until Elder Robinson invited me to go to a bank to get a check cashed.  Now that was an experience!  The bank we visited had a private gate.  We were in a courtyard with no signage for a bank.  We walked into a door with one small room.  About 5 people were sitting at tables counting francs, lots of francs (but 500 francs is only worth 50 cents).  There was one man sitting behind a wall where you took your check.  You had to sign it, date it twice, write down all the personal information you could think of (address, phone #, etc.), show official identification, driver’s license or passport, and then sit in a steel chair until you found out if the VIP teller would cash it.  (Observation - If a check is written from one bank, another bank will not cash it, which makes Elder Robinson’s job a lot harder.)  Last time Elder Robinson came to this bank to cash a check, he was with Elder Stagg and they were ushered out of this room to another where they had to wait 2 hours to get a check cashed.  Sister Jameson always says, “Everything’s hard in the Congo.”  (Observation by Elder Robinson:  We deal in US dollars more than we deal in francs.  Even the checks I cash are in US dollars.  Tuesday I took two checks to cash to Ecobank.  That is when I found out they would not cash a check not drawn on them even though the church has an account with them.  We then were told that they didn’t have any dollars so we had to travel to another bank to cash my one check.)

            We had our first experience getting our hair cut in the Congo at the La Bella salon.  A young Congolese man cut Elder Robinson’s hair shorter than I’ve ever seen it, but he’s still as handsome as ever.  Rami, a Lebanese young man cut my hair, but a young Congolese man washed and gave me the first head message I’ve ever had at a beauty salon.  Rami had his own ideas about how to cut my hair and it’s still quite long.  I hope I can make it another month for another haircut!

 

            Thursday we had a beautiful family come in to meet us at the office.  They have been transferred here by the Church to work in Finance.  Brother Grana is from Spain and his wife, Nilsa, is from Portugal.  Their two daughters, Martha and Anna, were born in England.  Their assignment here in the DR Congo is for 2 years.  I admire their courage.  I would find it quite challenging to bring a young family here, but we’re all looking forward to getting better acquainted with them.

            Friday we had the wonderful opportunity to have dinner at Elder and Sister Moon’s.  We enjoyed the food and the company very much.  It’s fascinating to hear all that this Humanitarian couple is involved in.  They showed us pictures of their visit to a village.  The people, especially the children, followed them almost in parade form.  They met a wonderful woman, a member of the Church from Zimbabwe who married a man from the DR Congo.  They live in a remote village and she’s trying to run a school with no glass in the windows, very rustic benches, and a hole for a latrine that they move from time to time, leaving the old hole open with human sewage.  The conditions in which the people live in these villages are so hard to see.  I keep remembering President Henry D. Eyring in a P.E.F. video quoting the scripture, “If ye are not one, ye are not mine,” and reminding us that our Heavenly Father doesn’t want one group of his children to have so much and another group to have so little.  The people in this village were pleading for a well that would provide them with clean water.  Some local people have taken it upon themselves to drill wells, but they do it without adequate knowledge, even lining the pipes in one case with tar.  Friday the Moons were down at the port very close to our apartment to see if they could get a cargo container containing wheel chairs freed from the government red tape that has held it there for months and in the hands of the Church.  They have invited trainers who are coming from all over the world to disperse these wheel chairs to the people who need them and fit them for their particular size and needs.  The Moons had been fasting that they could accomplish this, and they seemed to be able to meet the right people in the right positions that day with the promise that this container will be released next Tuesday.  They know it’s an answer to their prayers.  The Moons have a difficult and a fascinating calling!

 

This is a picture showing women doing laudry in a stream.

 

 

            Today, Saturday, we went shopping and tonight we’re going to “Nice Cream” with the other couples for a get-together.  We’ll tell you more next week.  This letter is getting way too long.

 

            Our love!!