Kinshasa Stake Conference/Mother's Day

Today we attended the Kinshasa Stake Conference. The chapel where we attend church is also the stake center so conference was held there. Yesterday was the adult session. As always, no one seems to know what time meetings begin. I was told it started at 2:00 pm so I trusted the source and I insisted that we go early because it might be full way before the start - I should have known. We arrived before 2:00 pm. Oh yes there was a meeting that started sometime around 2:00, but the men were meeting in the chapel and the sisters were in the Relief Society Room. "Please go to the Women's meeting, Sister Cook is in there." Sister Gates and I declined; we are not in leadership callings in the stake. We asked again and again and finally there was a consensus that the general session for all adult members started at 3:30 pm. Sitting in the hot foyer the Elder Smith and Elder Gates decided to go across the road to the supermarket ShopRite and buy some bottles of water. As they returned, the doors opened into the chapel and the crowd gathered for the meeting.

We do enjoy meeting with the saints here, there is always a choir big or small, and they can produce a great deal of volume.

We have been blessed to work with many of the leaders because they are employees of the Church. The President is an area Temporal Affairs representative, his first counselor is an employee in the finance department and the second counselor is in the military and is in our ward.

They spoke in French unlike Didier's Stake when they spoke a mix of Lingala and French. Their messages were exhortations to be more faithful in their personal lives - not any different from talks that we hear in Utah. They have some unique challenges not seen in the U.S. like a dowry called a dot (pronounced "dote") which requires the man to comply with the demands of the woman's family to pay a certain amount in goods and cash as a "payment" for the daughter - the old idea that the more the man pays the more cherished the bride will be. The families of the couple arrange a meeting where demands of the bride's family are presented. President Eustache Ilunga told of some families that include in their demands the make and model and size of the HDTV and even the brand name of the shoes, bag and the designer dress they want for the bride's mother. He had them laughing, but this "tradition" has many of the young single adults wanting to marry but unable to do so because they cannot meet the demands. This is not a new concept, but it doesn't seem to be changing among the members of the Church. One leader, also a stake president, in a joking mood, compared the dot to the demands made of Isaac from the parents of Rachel. Abraham had sent many gifts to the family of Rachel as a token of their sincerity and their respect. Some also interpret the marriage laws in the DRC as requiring a "dot" because one of the official acts of a marriage is to meet in front of a magistrate and sign documents that they accept the offer made by the groom's family.

There are some parallels with "Society Weddings" when money is spent that forces the families, mostly the bride's family, to pay for a huge wedding sometimes causing financial problems for that family for a long time.

He also mentioned behaviors that are not acceptable among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There was a report that a man had some money stolen from his pants while he was dressed in white clothing to be baptized, cell phones disappearing from bags while attending church, food being taken from a church event before the event started and taken away for personal consumption, projectors disappearing from a table in the RS room, and more. He mentioned leaders who 'cooked the books" so they could get more funds for the ward, even if the funds are used to "build the Kingdom"; the rationale that it is all right to 'fudge" the numbers for a good cause. President Ilunga said, "Think again".

Sweet Ryan Dain brought roses for each of the Senior Sisters serving here and wished each of us a happy Mother's Day. He has a challenging assignment to build chapels and hopefully a temple here. Each day reveals a new challenge.