Getting warmer and more humid!

October 15-21, 2012

            We are feeling warmer weather and can tell that it is more humid.  Elder Smith who lives just below us said that one day it showed 101 degrees on his thermometer.  He said it was in the sun which to me means that it registers hotter than it really is, but it was still plenty warm.  We have had more rain.  We are glad that it rains more during the night than during the day.  We hope that continues but we will see.  We find it interesting that we are actually starting to see people carry umbrellas to shade them from the sun.  I took this picture from our balcony just to show two people with umbrellas sitting on benches in the Place.

            We are fortunate to have air conditioning in our apartment, our truck, and at our office.  At church, the have air conditioning in some of the rooms but many times they just open the windows to allow some air movement.  Normally, we fair pretty well.

             This week has settled down from last week's big Summit Conference, but we still see lots of police and military, probably more than we noticed before.  We  got stopped by a long light and there were three policemen there.  Two walked up to us and tapped on our window.  We waved and then I immediately showed my drivers license, but that didn't seem to be what they wanted.  We played dumb and they let us go when the light changed.  Maybe they were just wanting something to drink because it was so hot outside.  We are told that the motorcycle policemen are the worse to get stopped by.  It usually means that you have done something to merit it, and they are higher up the chain of importance so we are told that they have a more demanding attitude.  When we see one, we just hope they turn or go on ahead of us.

              Traffic is again back to the normal with lots of cars on the road.  I had to take this picture of two cars in front of our apartment.  Traffic is supposed to make a circular pattern around the Place, but certain drivers will take whatever they want.  If you look close you can see the arrows painted on the road telling the cars to go up and left around the square, but they continue to shortcut across to head right.

                With the Summit Conference over, they are again letting vendors back on the street.  I took a previous picture of this area across the street.  It was actually cleaned up for the conference, and they put up the fencing that they painted blue.  Most of the vendors now have umbellas.  We assume because of warmer weather and possible rain.

               We have had another good week.  It seems that our time has been occupied by not only trying to learn and understand the big picture of PEF and its many procedures, but also being forced to delve into the detail of present students, their folders and records.  Then there are the new applicants and their needs as we work with S&I coordinators and priesthood leaders.  However, we must say that getting into the individual records and the problems with reconciling them with the financial side has actually been very insightful and helpful in our learning process.    Before we arrived in the Congo, we had been in touch with Elder and Sister Stagg who let us know that there were issues in reconciling PEF records with student receipts and bank records.  As they explained a little bit about the problem, they indicated that they were working towards resolution and hoped it would be finished before we came.  As we were told of certain bank issues, we hoped that what they said was correct and that they would be resolved before we got here because it seemed that if they weren’t, it would necessitate getting us involved into the nitti gritty details of every file.  Well, our concerns were right and we have had to get into each and every file.  We have been preparing PEF records and information so that we can soon reconcile each one with bank records.  For that we have been waiting on the bank to make certain corrections and give us the detail to verify that they have things right. 

               We keep telling you that we have meetings with the bank to get this done and that done but we are learning that here in the Congo, nothing is easy.  C’est compliqué!    Even this week, we were supposed to meet with EcoBank but our account manager has been in Goma, a political hotspot for DR Congo and he didn’t make it back.  We asked to meet with his supervisor but they had something come up and postponed our meeting until tomorrow.  We hope we have prepared well, but we feel that we will raise some questions that will force us and the bank to go back and work on things to resolve them.  We will keep you posted.

               When we first got here, we were leaving the apartment most every morning at 7:30 AM.  We stayed very busy and would return home between 4:30 and 5:00 PM.  When Thembinkosi was here from South Africa, he preferred to leave at 8:30 to get to the PEF Center just before our scheduled opening hour of 9:00 AM.  We realized that leaving at 7:30 just wasn’t giving us time in the mornings.  However, now that he is gone, we seem to have worked into a compromise and we leave at 8:00.  That gives us a little more time, but our study time in the morning is still lacking.  Laraine gets her reading in even with all she does preparing our lunch and getting us ready.  I hope to get better.  She usually does baking of cookies, cupcakes, or something else for our lunches during the week in the evenings. 

 

              We still feel pressure with so much to do that we squeeze in a 15-20 minute lunch or as on a number of days the last couple of weeks, we have just pulled out our sandwiches and continued working while we eat.  We guess that is what they call a working lunch.  We just hope it doesn’t cause a problem with us eating while we have PEF students in the Center.

               We often use the term Mormon standard time, but we are learning that there is a Congolese time too.  We had a little hole in the pipe between faucets in our shower that needs to be fixed.  We thought we had things arranged to have a plumber come Friday morning to fix it.  We had been told not to expect him to arrive on time so we waited 40 minutes and then called Pascal who had arranged for the plumber and who works in the mission office over missionary apartments.  He made a phone call and called us back saying they were on their way and would be here in about 20 minutes.  We waited another hour and no one arrived.  We again called Pascal.  He told us to wait because they should be there.  Well, they arrived a little more than 2 hours late.  They apologized and went in to look at our problem.  Immediately, they said they did not have the part, they would have to buy it and come back another day.  They talked about coming Tuesday but that is not for sure.  Anyway, we find that all too often we need to be prepared to wait.

               We had a special PEF video conference Friday afternoon.  This was intended for Africa Southeast, Africa West, and Europe.  It was from SLC starting 8:00 AM mountain time but was at 3:00 PM our time.  We have new leadership of the PEF Committee with Elder Carmack and Elder Cook leaving.  The new leadership is Elder Robert C. Gay, Elder Anthony D. Perkins, and Elder Enrique Falabella.  They were presenting a new direction from the First Presidency for the PEF program.  We had been told that we would not be able to stream the video conference because DR Congo does not have fiber optic internet.  We hoped that we could get a power point via internet on the computer and listen to the audio over the phone.  As it turned out, we only saw very few pieces of the power point (most of the time we had the message that the internet connection was too slow to project properly), but we were able to listen on the phone.  We are still trying to digest the new direction of PEF and hope to receive further guidance from our area manager in the next while.  It entails some pretty significant changes in direction.  We will keep you informed as we learn more.

               This weekend has been general conference weekend in our mission.  I assume it is something like this in other areas where there is such a great difference in time zones and with different languages.  With slow internet, they wait for the arrival of DVDs of all conference sessions in French.  They then schedule showing all conference sessions in the different ward and stake houses.  On Saturday they start at 1:00 PM and show two sessions.  On Sunday, they start at 10:00 AM and show 3 sessions.  Conference is shown in each of the buildings so members don’t have to travel so far.  Transportation is always a problem.  After talking to the other senior missionaries who said it just isn’t worth attending when you don’t understand anything, we decided that we too would stay home and re-listen to conference here at the apartment.  We listened to two sessions yesterday, but actually listened to the Women’s meeting since we had not listened to that before.  And today, we again listened to conference and enjoyed hearing again the inspired messages given.  Laraine and I talked last week and I mentioned that it would be good for me to hear the sessions in French, but she didn’t think it fair to force her to sit through all the meetings not understanding anything.  Therefore, it worked out very well.  We had to download and listen to one talk at a time because we can’t download the full session at a time.  That way we only get talks and not the music which we missed.  But Laraine listened in English on the iPad and I used ear buds and listened in French on the iTouch.  It really went very smoothly and we enjoyed it very much.

             We have mentioned before about Elder Billings who teaches a construction class.  He teaches construction to meet the church's standards and comments on the poor quality of construction here.  We have always remarked about how evident the poorer standards are as we have passed this building on our way to the office.  We finally took a picture but the picture really doesn't do justice to what it really looks like.

              I just had to put this picture in because there is a bench in the park that doesn't have legs.  We have always seen people sitting on the back of the bench with their feet on the sitting part.  Well this week, I finally saw a couple of people actually sitting on the seat with feet stretched out in front of them.

 

               We enjoy talking to family each week via Skype and using FaceTime.  We talked to Ryan and his family just after he was set apart as Bishop of his ward.  We are proud of him and his family, and know that this week will be much busier.  We hope we can find a time to visit.  We also learned that our grandson, Trevor, was involved in a collision playing soccer which resulted in a broken collar bone.  Trevor, we wish you well and hope it heals quickly.  We know our family stays busy as do each of you.  We appreciate your prayers as we definitely feel your prayers in our behalf.  We wish you all a great week.