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.

The Joys of Missionary Service Projects

Missionaries are supposed to do 4 hours of community service per week. Often, the Elders are so busy keeping on top of teaching investigators and new members that the service projects fall through the cracks and simply weren’t happening. About 6 weeks ago, our Zone Leader Elder asked me to be in charge of planning the service projects.I had to put my thinking cap on. Normally we wouldn’t have a budget, and we aren’t supposed to give them our own money. However, I found a solution. Our special friend, Tom Roy, who has been Ed’s tile layer on all his jobs for about 15 years gave us some money to help out on our mission, even though he is not a member of the LDS Church. (Editorial note from Chuck: Most of us know him as "Tom the tile man" because whenever he would call and leave a message it was "Tell your dad that Tom the tile man called.")

Tom said he usually gives to some “cause” each year, so we were his “cause”. We wanted to use it for something special. Tom’s money has become our service project funding. We may run out, but it is great to have it while it lasts.

We decided with the elders to all be involved teaching weekly, structured English classes with lesson plans and activities. I became the coordinator and the elders became the instructors.
I had a copy of an English as a Second Language manual with 25 lessons. It had a workbook that goes with it. I am in charge of getting the copies made for the worksheets. We started with less than 10 people. We now have about 55 Africans in our English classes. I had to make 350 copies this week. This gives us 2 hours of service per week.


For our other projects, we have done a variety of things. One week, we painted the living room of a cute expectant mother. She is threatening miscarriage, and we were told that the doctor “stitched her up so the baby won’t fall out,” and he told her not to get off her bed or off the sofa until the delivery in about 3 months. We went to visit her in their humble home.


We asked if we could do anything and she said “Non, Merci.” I looked around noticed that the living room needed paint. I asked her if she would like new painted walls, to look at while she is lying down. She was thrilled and we had a great afternoon painting her living room.

Her husband is a counselor in the bishopric and this will be their 4th child. They have 1 bedroom and the living room (about 10' X 14'), which has a sofa and a chair, 2 burner gas cooktop and a little fridge and a table & chairs, in a corner. They are cute and happy and love the peace and happiness of the gospel.
Another week, we cleaned up the road leading into the church. The dirt roads (which is most of the roads) have deep ditches on both sides. People throw their trash everywhere, but the ditches fill up with the trash eventually. The “city” came by and dug the trash out of the ditches on the road into the church, and then scraped some of it off and hauled it away. However, the roads aren’t flat, so any of the recessed areas still had this yucky junk filling up the “holes” and “dips” in the road and people kept driving on the garbage. We decided to clean it up.
We bought 4 rakes and some gloves and garbage bags. It was a hot & sweaty job, but well worth the effort. This is one of the little Muslim girls who live right by the church, who decided to help us.

Yet another week, we painted the posts of the rooms of an outdoor school.

They owners were so grateful that they cooked us a great African dinner.The Elders loved it.

This week, the elder's helped us move from one home to another across town. We did it all with our Ford Ranger... with many trips back and forth.

Once the truck was so loaded, we had to get a Taxi (for $1.50 American) to transport the elders.

We have plans next week to clean up a maternity hospital. They asked us if we could possibly donate a generator, so they could have lights at night when the women deliver at night with only lanterns. We told them that we were sorry, but we couldn’t. If anyone wanted to have a Relief Society project and make and send us small receiving blankets, they would love and appreciate them!

I was a originally a little concerned about finding the projects, but I have learned to look for opportunities for us to help. The Elders are hard workers and it has been a joy to work with them.