What does it mean to live on the Equator?

1. The sun comes up about 6:00 and goes down about 6:00 every day and the sunsets at our beach (a 5 min drive or 20 minute walk) are fabulous!


2. The waves seem to come straight into the beach, not at an angle, like in California.

2. For the first three months of our mission, the weather was mild. However, the wet season has hit and it has hit with a vengeance! This is our home! The water was so high it came up across the porch and into the house. The road in front of our home… and then the calm after the storm.





And now it is HOT & HUMID!!!!!!
But it is all part of the adventure and we are loving it!

Our Maternity Hospital Service Project

We had the opportunity to go to the maternity hospital for our service project. It was great!

We got to the hospital and the man in charge was very busy with a Polio vaccination drive, so he said that we could do whatever we wanted. We started by having the guys clean up the huge front area. The hospital is set back about 100 yards from the road, so our guys spread out and picked up all the garbage.

I walked around with the director and asked if they had any new babies? He took me to a room and showed me the 8 babies delivered that morning and it was only 9:30 am. Soooo darling!

They don't have little warming beds, or warm lights to keep them warm, so for the first couple of hours of life, they bundle the babies in these cute knitted outfits.
The director had told us last month, when we set up the project, they were hoping to paint in December. They told us this week that the funding hadn't come through for the paint, so we tackled washing up some things that were really bad. One of the worst things were that the walls and the doors had fingerprints and dirt and grime on them.
We didn't want to climb around the new mothers and babies, but we figured we could start by scrubbing all the doors and the jams around the doors. It was amazing the difference that it made.

This is the sister of one of the brand new babies. I guess if they don't have a babysitter, they just bring the kids with them to have the baby. They only stay at the hospital for a few hours, and then they go home.
Then, we washed the exterior walls of the front of the building, which is under a roof, and enclosed with a fence. It is the only waiting room for visitors waiting for the babies to be born, and it was very scary dirty.

I was so proud of our Elders! They had so much fun scrubbing the walls, that it was like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence. All of the kids in the neighborhood came over and wanted to help.

There were lots of children around, because of the polio immunization drive. I don't know if you have heard, but there has been a bad outbreak of polio in the Congo in the past couple of weeks... over 135 cases. Half of the people have died. All but five were in our city, Pointe Noire. Everyone is getting immunized with drops.
We might paint in December, if we can get some paint donated. Members of our extended family have decided to make receiving blankets for some of the babies to get to wrap up in and take home. Most of the babies leave wrapped in a towel or a pillow case. It's fun to have so many of you involved in serving in Africa.

Once again, we had a great time together, and when we were finished, we felt we had really accomplished something worthwhile.

Our New Home

We have a new home. We have a 14 month lease and will probably be here for the rest of our mission. Our other home was OK, but it was expensive. We decided to look for something else. We spent several afternoons looking at homes. We looked at at least 20 homes before we found this and feel that it it one of our special blessings.

We have a big wall and locked gates, which gives good security.
We also have bars on the doors and the windows, but as you can see from the picture at the top, it still looks nice. We have a big room off the kitchen with dining area at one end, and then room for our sofa & Chairs... and still have room for a Ping Pong Table, if we had one. Even the bathrooms are nice!

We have 3 bedrooms, and supposedly they are finishing off another bedroom behind the garage. Besides our nice big Master bedroom, we have one that we use for our office and one for our guest room for when President Headlee or other church guests come to town. We will use the bedroom behind the garage for Elders, as needed. (Sick, etc). Our kitchen is lovely, and one of the nicest in the Congo.
The home is brand new, and they are still working on finishing it up. We are a little ways out of town, but only 6 minutes from the airport and 10 minutes from church, if no traffic. We are very happy with our home, and hope to make many special memories here.

How do we spend our Time?

Some people have asked what we do during the day. It is interesting that when I asked that question before we came to the Congo, the mission presidents and their wives, and the Baxters… who we replaced said… “It up to you. You and the Lord. You will decide when you get there and you will be your own person and leave your own mark.” I now know what they mean. Each day we wake up at 6:00 and we go walking from about 6:20 to 7:00.
We shower and get breakfast and then at 8:00 we usually do whatever needs to be done. Sometimes we get to study the scriptures, but usually there are things to be done for the ward or the elders, so then we read and study in the evenings. We try to study French for an hour, usually in the morning.

Ed often takes off to do repairs and run errands. He usually goes to the well each day, and meets with his interpreter that we have also hired to be the daily monitor on the well job. Ed runs errands that would only take minutes at home, but here they can easily take an hour or two… such as going to the bank. (500 "cfas"=$1 so 10,000 cfas=$20.00. $10,000 is the largest denomination they have, so Ed walks around with piles and piles of money in his briefcase.)
He spends lots of time on getting the elders Visa work in order and applying for the Visas, so we are all legal. We have to keep getting new ones, for all of us, so we can stay in the country. Ed is also the advisor to both branche presidents and spends lots of time training them. (They are in the middle of these photos.)

There are about 180 active people in each branch. He works hard and is trying to get our beautiful chapel into good condition. The temporal affairs offices, who are usually in charge of keeping the chapel clean and in good repair, are so far away in Kinshasa and South Africa that noone has kept things up on a regular basis. Ed is a huge blessing to them.

I have ended up being in charge of service projects,
the English classes, sick elders, baking cookies and treats for the elders, cooking a big dinner for P-day, Coordinating all Distribution center orders (Of which 200 families have orders in to the distribution center on back order for several months), finding and furnishing apartments, training auxiliary leaders, welcome posters for new members, attending investigator and new member lessons with the missionaries,
acting as Ed’s secretary and trying to learn to speak the language. It will be interesting to see what else comes up in the next year.

Our evenings are often busy until 7:00 or 8:00. We usually go home and cook dinner, study a gospel book, watch a conference talk on the computer, sometimes play train game on line, and sometimes get in a Skype phone call to our kids or Dad & Mom. We don’t have a TV, and there are no theatres or video stores, and you can’t download NetFlix or other videos from the Congo. There are no English books or libraries or bookstores with English books … but we do have a Kindle and enjoy reading a little through our electronic books we can download to the computer and then to the Kindle.


We have some ok restaurants in town, one especially good fish restaurant… and some sort of adventurous restaurants that the Elders get us to go to once in awhile.


We love being together every day and every night, and basking in the glory of sharing the gospel with these great people and our Elders. We are blessed to be part of this pioneering of the church.

Couples’ Conference in Kinshasa

We had a rare treat earlier this month. Our great mission president and his very special wife, President and Sister Headlee, decided they wanted to have a 4 day training session for the 6 couples in our mission. There is the mission president, the couple that run the mission office (The Hatches, 1 month in the mission) the humanitarian couple (The Moodys-going home next month), and 2 other couples besides us that work with the Elders in areas of the country of Cameroon. We have about 120 young Elders in the mission (ages 19-27) and about 25 girls (ages 21-27).
Only about 20 of these are from America & Canada. The rest are from Africa. Because of the safety issues and the challenges serving in this mission, the only 3 cities that the North Americans can serve in are Pointe Noire and 2 areas in Cameroon. Each of those areas are so far from the mission home, in the country of DRCongo, that a senior couple is required to act as representatives of the Mission President.

The 2 couples from Cameroon flew into Pointe Noire and spent Friday night, October 2nd with us. We flew from Pointe Noire northeast to the capital city of the Congo, Brazzaville. From there we were picked up by local church leaders and driven to the Congo side of the Congo River.
We were told it is the 2nd biggest river in the world. Our mission president greeted us. The mission home was lovely and we had a great time with these special couples. We were treated like royalty. Sister Headlee is a gourmet cook and we ate like we were on a cruise (but even fancier and better quality) and loved every minute of it.
We slept at the apartment of the humanitarian couple, the Moody’s, who have become our friends.

We had spiritual sessions and lots of informational sessions, to teach us what we should be doing. We got to go to a store one day that had more American products than we can get in Pointe Noire. I got a couple of strange thin hot pads, the one can of Hershey Cocoa powder they had, 6 packages of Jello, cupcake tins, and cake mixes. Everything cost 2 or 3 times as much as we can get it for at home. We were limited by time and space in our suitcases, but I was excited about our purchases. (We each had to take a case of water filters to Pointe Noire, as our extra suitcase.)

We stopped by a craft market and I bought a couple of fun wood carvings with the women with the babies strapped on their backs, like in real life here in Africa. There are no car seats or strollers or bouncers or anything else. The mothers simply wrap the babies up in a big piece of fabric and carry them all day on their backs. I am fascinated with it.


Ed got to go golfing. We knew there was a golf course and on shopping afternoon he asked if anyone wanted to go golfing with him. Noone said yes, and so Ed quietly went downstairs to the mission office and told Elder Moody, who was not up at the prior meeting, that if he wanted Ed to coordinate the well in Pointe Noire, Elder Moody would need to take the afternoon off work, and go golfing. Elder Moody said “It’s a tough job, but I can see it is essential” so the 2 of them went off by themselves and had a good time golfing on a below average course… but the greens were green grass, and not dirt… so they were happy.

It was a wonderful event and we returned home ready to throw our hearts and souls and bodies into the building of the kingdom. We missed our elders and we were glad to get home.

Finally… Packages from Home!!!

After 2 months of checking the post office box, we got 2 packages in the same day. Mitzi’s had been here for a month, but they misread the PO Box number. Carrie Collins also sent us a box and it was as exciting as Christmas!

Mitzi sent us and our elders hooks to go over the bathroom doors so our towels can air out and dry. She also sent some luxuries that we have been missing… Hershey’s Cocoa, Country Time Lemonade powder, Shout stick with a scrubby on the end, Flavor Ade Popsicles and WALNUTS!

A highlight was Carrie’s detailed letter. It was so fun to hear about the Collins and our own kids in detail. We even know the names of Cheryl’s cats they were fostering… we wonder if she kept them...?? The best thing about the package is knowing that it is possible to get things, if we are patient. Thanks again!

The New Well is Started and the Beginning City Ceremony

The new well is finally moving forward. Ed and I went with the Moody’s to meet the heads of the city water department and our new buddy... the mayor. They took us to the new well sight, and then we walked around the five neighborhoods, which will get the first delivery of water. (The city has promised that they have funds set aside to extend the water lines out into other commercial and residential areas. ) As we walked through these neighborhoods and saw the families whose lives will be dramatically improved, I realized that we are very blessed to be part of this church who is making it a priority to do this monumental project. I watched my wonderful husband, who knows very little French, and now has a hired interpreter, interact with these Africans like he has done it all his life. The first hurdle we faced is that the new well is being built upon an old cemetery. All the city officials agreed that we would need to have a special ceremony to have the blessings of the departed ancestors in order for the well to be successful. It was such an important event that the Mayor was the special guest, to thank the church for it’s funding. There were radio and TV stations interviewing us, and we were the guests of honor. It was a big deal! After a speech by the water commissioner, the Mayor, and the branch president we all moved over to the drilling machinery for the “Tribal leaders & special spiritual women” to bless the land, that those whose departed spirits were being disturbed would support this important water project that would give life to many others. We were respectful of it all, but definitely Ed and I raised our eyebrows when they started spewing wine all over the equipment and the ground
It was quite a show. (Dad, you would have loved it.). We then went with a walk with all the dignitaries to see the neighborhoods that would be supplied by the well. The land was blessed, the Mayor loves us, the drillers started the work after a ribbon cutting ceremony, and all was well. We were told the well would be drilled in 3-6 weeks and the system to the 5 stations would be completed by the end of January. The next week the drilling was stopped. The Catholic church is the main church in the Congo. The Catholic church in the area called the branch president and demanded to know who gave us permission to drill the well. We referred them to the city water department, as our church is only funding the well. After 2 weeks of discussions and meetings between the Catholics and the city, work began again.

The following week some of the drill parts broke. For the past 20 days we have been told every day by the drilling contractor that “they have gone to the airport to pick up the parts” or “they have gone to Brazzaville (which is an hours flight) to get the parts.” So far we haven’t seen the parts to repair it. Ed checks with them every morning, but they are still "waiting for the parts". We shall see what next week brings. This promises to be an adventure. We can now see why the church insisted on someone monitoring the situation on a day to day basis.

"Patience, Elder and Sister Gates... Patience. T.I.A!" (This is Africa!)