FULL WEEK

June 20, 2011 Update

Patriarchal Blessings

One of the highlights of our mission is definitely being able to meet with the members and the prospective missionaries, who come for their patriarchal blessings. The ones we have met have been absolutely the cream of the crop. What spiritual giants they are. They have been so humble and so ready for their blessings. We have shed many a tear in those sessions. Neal gave a blessing to a young man Saturday, who is the only member in his family. He is a twin in a family of six children. He said his family and his friends do not understand why he wants to go on a mission, and how hard it has been for him to put in his papers.

We hear all the time that if someone joins the Church, it is a sure thing that the members will eat their children. It takes a brave investigator to come through the door and realize that we are Christians and love the Lord. We’re often told as well that people don’t understand our American English. They only understand British English. We think that is so funny.

BITES:

As you know, I’ve had recurrent problems with multiple bites. They come in large groups every 3-4 weeks. I get them in patches all over my body. They swell up like hives and itch like crazy. I never see any bugs, and even though we often have guests, they never get bites here even when they are visiting at the same time I break out. Neal gets bites only occasionally, and they don’t look anything like mine. WE’ve checked the bed and bedding and can’t see anything that looks like mosquitoes or bed bugs…We sleep under a mosquito net every night and spray like crazy all the time with permetherine. Nothing has worked!

Tuesday, June 6 we had a wonderful couple stay with us. I broke out with a vengeance with over 40 bites, and by the next Tuesday I really had a bad bout with a new set that really was pretty awful. So we called the mission and talked with the doctor who oversees all of Eastern Africa. He conferred with his dermatologist friend in USA and showed him the pictures. They gave their ideas and recommended I go to Nairobi to see the doctor the mission uses here. We’ve been impressed with him in the past. He is Indian-wears a turban-very well-spoken and seems very knowledgeable. He thinks it is worms, fleas, or the Doxycyline we take to prevent Malaria. So we trying to make some adjustments and will see. Anything would be a blessing. The medicine he prescribed as a cream is heavenly. The itching starts, and voila! The medicine takes the itch away. I’m lovin’ it.

Training with Elder & Sister Usi (70)

We made that fast trip to Nairobi-down one day, back the next, and stayed in Eldoret about 2 hours away for a training on Saturday with Elder Usi, an African Member of the Seventy. He and his wife did a special training to all Primary workers and members of the Br Presidencies in the 9 branches in our district and 2 branches in Kisumu and Busia. It was a wonderful meeting. They told us that the First Pres and members of the Twelve have a goal to visit every country of the world where the Church is organized within 4 years. Two of the Twelve and the Primary Pres will be in Kenya on Oct 29. This meeting was in preparation for that time.

New CES direction

While in Nairobi, we met with Brother Omondi, who is our CES supervisor. He gave us some new insights and goals for our work here. We were very grateful to have his comments and to get more direction on what we should be doing. He would like to see the branches have Seminary and Institute Activities…Seminary on a monthly basis, and Institute on a quarterly basis.

No one in our areas have had any activities. Even R.S. homemaking type activities are very rare…I’ve only been to one (which Sis McBride and I did). They do sometimes get together to eat, but the idea of learning skills or doing crafts is pretty foreign. Everything must be done during daylight and getting to a meeting outside of Sunday is difficult for many of them because it requires such long walking and they can’t afford the fare to take transport.

And Oh, the people!

People are very hungry now. Harvest will not come until the end of Sept or October. Our employment people have been talking to them about storing or drying food to encourage them to capitalize on the harvest and hold back produce for when times are hard like now.

We met a delightful woman who is 102 years old. She just cracked us up. She was as feisty as you can imagine. I loved looking at her hands and feet. She has worked so hard. She was chopping kindling for her meal with her rusty old panga. She laughed with us. We were there to visit with her grandson, who is probably in his 50s. He is a former branch president, but doesn’t attend Church at all. His wife has left him, and he wants us to get her and his children back. We encouraged her grandson (the man we were visiting) to interview her and get her life story.

PROSPECTIVE MISSIONARIES:

One of our very favorite experiences is to teach the prospective missionary class every single Monday. We love it. Those boys are just so eager to learn and sacrifice so much to come. We know they come hungry, and yet they are anxious to be there. We pay their fare, but they must be there before the opening prayer to get it. Class starts at 11:00AM. We get to the building at 10:30 and there are 6 of them waiting for us each time. The rest come before time to start. EVERYONE was on time today (8 of them) and that has happened almost every time.

African time keeping is horrendous…If they arrive 2 hours after the class is supposed to start, that is par for the course, so this is nothing short of miraculous. They help us upstairs (very steep) with all our junk, and immediately start sweeping out all the mud, branches, and debris scattered about the floor. They are truly Sons of Helaman!

They are working hard to try to get all they need to prepare. It isn’t like at home, oh my goodness. It costs 150 KSH …about $1.60 to $1.70 to get a birth certificate. It is next to impossible for them to come up with that kind of money. So, they are working it off…then they must get a Kenya ID. Right now, there is a problem the government is working on to get Kenya IDs issued. The boys cannot apply for passports without a Kenya ID. They are hopeful that things will work out for the IDs to be processed again. I think they stopped processing them a year ago May.

Once they have IDs, they need passports, which are like 4,000 KSH (about $50), then they need a police report that costs 1,500 KSH, and a medical. They must serve as branch missionaries for 3 months before applying and be ordained as Elders (of course).

So, there are HUGE obstacles to overcome. If they want to be considered for serving in South Africa or other countries which require driver’s licenses for elders, they must acquire one, which costs 10,000 KSH and two months of class work.

So, our job is to encourage them and push them and psych them up to go because we know what a blessing it will be for the people they teach and for them, and especially for their branches when they return. Unfortunately, Satan also knows what a blessing it would be for them to go, and he works sooooo hard on them to discourage them.

Branch Training

Another thing we’ve been very involved in lately is meeting with each of our five new branch presidencies to learn the Handbooks together. Some of these men are brand new in the Church. It is quite an overwhelming prospect to be called as a Branch president or counselor, when you are very, very young in the Church. They teach us as much as we teach them. We are learning together.

We rotate so that we visit each branch at least once (during the week) every two weeks. During that time, we tell the Br Pres we will come and he can use us any way he wants. If he wants us to drive him to some members far away, we will do so. If he wants us to take a counselor or other leader to do visiting with less-actives, we will do so. If he wants us to sit down with his presidency and just train out of the handbook, we will do that. The latter is what we’ve been doing.

It has been a growing experience for us all. They are so humble and teachable. They want so much to do a good job. And their jobs are SOO hard. They have huge problems to contend with, but they are very reliant upon the spirit. As I said, we learn much from them.

They have absolutely no supplies for their branch presidencies: no notebooks, no pencils, no paper, no paper clips, no calendars, no blanks to fill in callings on, no agendas….Imagine what it would be like to start with that. They get luba (budget) from the Church, but they don’t really know how to use it. In several branches there is no copy machine anywhere in the vicinity (even at the store in the village) to make copies. Just imagine that…what that is like. So, we are trying to give them the barest essentials so that they can at least have a notebook and paper to write down assignments. Neal is really encouraging them to have branch meetings and trying to teach them what you do in those meetings. They just soak it up, and it is just a joy to see them try to implement some of the ideas! Again, one of their biggest challenges is distance. There is no way they can have a branch presidency meeting at 7:00AM. Some of them would have to get up at 4:00AM to get there. But, they are trying. We just take our hats off to them for trying.