Worldwide Leadership Training Choir

 Dear family and friends;

For the last month Mark and I have been participating in a missionary choir with practices each Sunday and performance at the Worldwide Leadership meeting last evening. 

Sunday June 23, we were seated at the back of the pack, Mark on the far right and I on the far left with 1,100 missionaries front and center. 

There were also 3,500 more missionaries to the right and left of the podium and 172 mission presidents and their spouses front and center. What a sight that was. It was a wonderful experience to sing with the missionary choir. The link below is for the entire broadcast: Work of Salvation. At the beginning the choir sang "Hark, All Ye Nations" and ended the broadcast with "Call To Serve".

Some of the interesting "announcements" concerning missionary work included implementing a program of using technology to help with finding, contacting, and working with investigators. Missionaries will be using internet, iPad, cell phones, email, and Facebook among other things to contact, track, and teach. It will be interesting to see if it makes it to the Congo while we are there.

Quote from lds.org:
"But in this digital age, that will now include the Internet as a method, he said, explaining that for people today, online media are often their main point of contact with others, even close friends.
“During less-productive times of the day—chiefly in the mornings—missionaries will use computers in meetinghouses and other Church facilities to contact investigators and members, work with local priesthood leaders and missionary leaders, receive and contact referrals, follow up on commitments, confirm appointments, and teach principles from [the missionary guide] Preach My Gospel using Mormon.org, Facebook, blogs, email, and text messages,” Elder Perry said."
He added that Internet access and use of digital devices by missionaries will be introduced in phases over the next several months and into next year."

Our mission preparations seem to be progressing slowly but in one month it will have to be done.


https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/watch/the-work-of-salvation/2013/06?lang=eng

What we know of Kinshasa, Congo Missionary digs

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Dear family & friends:

            I've been collecting a few images that give us an idea of the circumstances we would be living in on our mission. These come from the blog that the mission president's wife has been writing. The first is the apartment building that our unit is in in Kinshasa. It's pricey because of security and European-style quarters. A few years ago, the Church capped apartment costs for couple missionaries because of situations like this. With rent and utilities and amortized furnishings and appliances, the capped amount is $1,400 a month.

            The Church has long-term leases on several units, so they put three-stage water filters in each one, and we are to change the cartridges once a month. The building is referred to as the U.S. Embassy apartment because their personnel live there. Parking is underneath, and there is a security check of your vehicle on the way in each evening. (Couple missionaries are required to be in their apartment by 6 p.m. each night, and I guess you stay there until 8 a.m. the next day.)

  

This is the view from one of the couple units to the plaza below, a sort of central plaza for the city of Kinshasa. The Chinese embassy is directly across the street from the apartment, though I don't know which building it is yet.

             

You can see the Congo River from the apartments.

      

The main boulevard of Kinshasa goes past the building, as seen from one of the couple apartments.

            This is the place where the Perpetual Education Fund office is located, in a Church-built Education System building in another part of town. The drive to this site is said to be 10 minutes with no traffic, or 25 in traffic.

            

 This is the front of the building, situated next to a stake center of the Church. This land is where the Church plans to build the Kinshasa Temple, announced last year. It looks like there are two couple vehicles in this picture. The vehicles I understand to be Toyota trucks with four-wheel drive.

 

            This is a picture of the couples serving in the mission as of this year. About half of the couples serve in Kinshasa. Several couples are assigned to other areas and came to Kinshasa by plane for this occasion, a couples conference. Elaine and I would not be traveling to outlying areas like Cameroon and Central African Republic; our assignment is in Kinshasa.

 

            The apartments, workplace and transportation are established and functioning, which is a good thing. There are grocery stores and a Belgian bakery near the apartment, that are European-oriented, we understand, so they have a selection of (pricey) foods. One thing that my tutor from the DR Congo tells me is that fish is plentiful, though not beef. We will be bringing the protein powder we use at home. Elaine is a resourceful cook; that would come in handy.

This is what I have so far...

Mark

How did we get here?

Last year, 2012, Mark received an email from an acquaintance alerting French-speaking returned missionaries that there was a need for a couple to serve in Paris, France as a director for the young single adults program. It sounded interesting so we contacted the individual in charge but no response. It was one of those situations of "We will call you". Strike One.

I thought if we go on another mission the chances of going to a French-speaking country again was great so I suggested Mark take on the duty of teaching me to speak the language. Some days it seems that I have learned little but it has given Mark a chance to expand his fluency. We read Principes de L'Evangile one word at a time and then a phrase at a time then a paragraph. I will have to live to 100 years to become pas mal in speaking.

In June, 2012 we paid off our mortgage which gave us a little more wiggle room in our budget so we decided we could go on another couple mission.

The church announced a lot of new missions, a large number in South America. Mark studied Spanish and I was a missionary in Bolivia so it was a possibility that we might go to a new Spanish-speaking mission or possibly to a Portuguese-speaking mission, Portuguese is a romance language, right? I guess we dallied too long because all mission office couples were called in early spring.

A member of our stake presidency told us of a need for a couple to serve in Australia, I was good with that because I have always wanted to go to Australia. Nothing came of it, but I liked that idea.

Mark's friend at the Provo Temple (he has an assignment there each Saturday afternoon/evening) was called to be a mission president and he needed to find (recruit) someone to serve in a mission office in Asia. We had served in the West Indies Mission office so we knew what tasks were assigned to the office couple. After a month or so, Mark's friend told us that someone else had been assigned by the area authority.

We had submitted our papers when the Asian thing was a possibility, so the Missionary Department of the Church called in a panic worried that we just couldn't get a visa to go to this Asian nation on time. We told them what we knew about there being another couple assigned to that mission so they had to process that information. Strike Two.

Three strikes and you are out right? We were not certain what would happen with our application. A stake clerk calling in behalf of the Church Missionary Department and asked us if we could increase the amount of money we had indicated we had available to sustain us during the mission. [Note: On the mission application you are asked how much money you are able to spend each month. Each mission has an average amount one would need depending on the mission, some missions are $1,000 a month up to $3,500. An example would be the amount we had to have to serve in the West Indies, which was $1,600.] Our response to this query was to commit to go higher. We then looked at the charts and determined the missions that required the larger amount. They were Victoria, British Columbia, Brisbane Australia, Montreal, Moscow, Russia, and a few others. Looking good, we thought.

On April 9th we opened our large white packet and read that we have been called to serve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Kinshasa as Perpetual Education Fund Self-Reliance missionaries serving in the PEF/Self-Reliance office speaking French. My first response, "Africa?" "Congo?" "French?"

We enter the Provo Missionary Training Center July 22nd for a week of training, then a second week of PEF training also here in Provo. Then a seventeen-hour flight from here to there.

We are now involved in all the "to dos" required to travel to a foreign country such as passports,visas, immunizations for EVERYTHING, clothing for a hot place, medications for 18 months (almost impossible to accomplish), what to do with the house, etc. etc.

This is a wonderful opportunity for us to use our skills to help members in the DR Congo improve their chances to become self-reliant and to provide for the needs of their families.