Thanksgiving Week

Monday started early, 5 a.m., and the rain was light and gentle. When it rains here, the reactions vary from panic to hysteria among the pedestrians and especially drivers. Traffic is bad normally but on a rainy day locals drive their cars like pedestrians, rushing to and fro to avoid the rain, speeding, ignoring traffic cops and frenetic honking as if they don’t want their vehicles to get wet. They don’t stop for pedestrians caught out in the middle of the rain. Two hours later the rains are getting really serious and now I’m worried that our “pond” is full and spilling into our living space. My favorite rainy activity is to mop up flood waters.

Yesterday we attended Stake Conference. All the stakes in the South East Africa Area met in their own buildings to participate in a South-East Africa Area Conference. The message was a digital conference with the messages being produced in Salt Lake City and transmitted on disk to each stake for a one-time only showing. Elder Gay, Sister Jean A. Simmons, Elder Bednar and President Uchtdorf were the speakers. It was very specific to the needs of the members and leaders in this area discussing cultural issues that have hampered the spiritual growth of the members such as “bride price”, entitlement mentality, “we are poor”, you, the Church, are rich so the tithing should be coming from the church to us. If needs be we will take a job with the Church so the money can flow to us. Each talk reminded the members that they are responsible - not the Church and President Uchtdorf stated plainly, “the bride price” must end. There were other specific charges for the members that were so plainly stated that it will be interesting to learn what the members’ reactions were.

The expats were able to listen to the “Stake Conference” in English so afterward, Sister Johnson wanted a picture of her with the other expat sisters because it was her birthday.

The rainy season can be really hot but the rain acts as a great swamp cooler. One morning through the partly cloudy sky the sun came up with great color, even clear enough to see the blue sky also. Worth a picture or two.

We have two Fast Sundays left, time is flying by (mostly.)

As part of the Kinshasa Stake Conference, President Eustache Ilunga asked me to conduct a three-hour session on Saturday with the stake and ward auxiliary leaders. Well three hours sounded like a long time for someone that doesn’t speak French well. I thought that it would be all right because if I prepared for an hour, it would take another hour for the interpreter to translate it. We decided to have three groups discuss what each auxiliary could do to help the children, young women, and mature women to understand what they need to learn and do to be able to enjoy the blessings of the temple; that would take another 45 minutes, so I held out hope that they would cancel my part, but to no avail. With Mark’s help I tried to read some of it in French but what you really want to happen is to create interaction, so Missah Tarr, a graduate of the University of Utah and a Liberian, was my translator. Good experience but a relief to have over. I refrained from taking pictures because I thought it inappropriate, so I will treasure the mental pictures.

Sister Sneddon’s favorite holiday is Thanksgiving so we are having a full scale dinner late evening. I get to do the pies. I don’t know when we will have the time to do it all and still show up to the office because it is not a holiday in Kinshasa - but we will give it a go. An eight-pound turkey costs about $45 and I hear they are doing four of them. I will return and report the outcome.