January 2013

Tom had another good and interesting experience in the temple.  He was asked to be a follower on the first session of the shift.  I went along as a patron.  We usually don’t have brother followers on sessions here just the officiator and a sister follower.  The reason he was asked to go in was to help Elder Rakotonjanahary, from Madagascar, as he officiated his first session after being here for a number of months.  His English is not very good, but he is anxious and willing.  He actually did pretty well.   Tom had to give him a few clues, but it went well and it was fun for Tom to be of help.  When we were done his wife, who was the sister follower, thanked Tom for helping her husband and being patient with him.  He also thanked Tom and gave him a big hug.  After being in Japan we can understand the problem when you don’t know the language very well.  There are a number of languages here that the regular temple workers need to deal with, many more than we ever could imagine in Spokane.

The Eppels have been assigned a major project in Madagascar.  They will leave on January 31^st and won’t return until March 2^nd.  They will be training priesthood leaders and doing all but one of the 41 units’ audits in the country.  One audit will usually take about 2 hours when the data is good, which in many cases is not true.  These will also be done in French, which Elder Eppel speaks only a little, which will add additional time to the audits.  They will be busy traveling, training, and auditing the whole time they are there.  We told them they might come back older than we are when in reality they are about 9 years younger.  Obviously there is something needed in Madagascar to require this much effort.  Elder and Sister Rakotonjanahary’s name is typical of what names are like in Madagascar.   We are glad the Eppels have Madagascar as one of their countries. 

 

One Friday morning this month we left early for Botswana.  We followed directions we got from Google and only made two wrong turns.  It took about an hour to process the papers at the border and in all about 6 hours to get to Gaborone.  We enjoyed seeing Bob and Janet Rands from Spokane who are serving in Gaborone as the seminary and institute directors.  We had lunch with them and then went to a small game reserve near where they live.  We saw lots of warthogs including some babies who were nursing.  We also saw zebras, impala, monkeys, and a couple of large antelope called elands.  We also went by the place where they filmed the movie “The First Ladies Detective Agency”.  The set was in pretty sad shape as the weather has caused it to deteriorate.  When we got back to the Rands they showed us the first part of the movie on video.  We could see what the set had looked like originally. 

Verdet Monkey


Hartebeest

      Ladies #1 Detective Agency/ Warthogs

 

The next morning we trained President Clement Magswagothata and his counselors and clerks of the new Gaborone, Botswana Stake in their new financial responsibilities.  They are enthusiastic and well organized.  We think they will do very well in getting the audits done and in teaching the local units to follow church policies.  We left about noon for home.  This time it only took about a half hour at the border and we followed our GPS and were home by five.  The GPS took us home a slightly different route.  One interesting sidelight – along the shoulders of the main highways in Botswana graze cattle, goats and even donkeys.  One has to keep an eye open not to run over some stray who takes a mind to cross the road.

 

The car we were assigned to drive had about 5,000 to 6,000 kilometers on it when we got it.  The car needs to be serviced every 15,000 km.  Well we hit that a little while ago; so we made arrangements with the Area car manager to have the car serviced today.  He led us on a very exciting 20 km drive in rush hour traffic.  He knows the way, but we didn’t have a clue where we were going.  Except for the bus that almost crushed us it went well.  We had to go back and get the car after work and that went much better.  The lady at the Nissan dealership said we were good until the car reached 30,000 km or a year went by; so unless the car breaks we should never have to have it serviced again.

We are getting ready for the audits for year-end 2012, but there probably won’t be many done until February.  We hope they all start early and get them done by the March 15 deadline.  We are also getting started planning our assistant area auditor conference that will be held on April 25-27, 2013; so we are keeping busy.

The Area Office is in the process of completing the annual history for 2012.  Each department has to write the happenings they experienced during the last year.  Tom did a great job of doing the history for the auditors.  The main progress we made was in the calling of all the local assistant area auditors.  These brethren will make a difference in being able to train and follow through with the local priesthood leaders in seeing that church financial policies and procedures are observed.  The Eppels had a touching experience as they trained in a very remote area in the Congo.  I will share with you what Sister Eppel related.

“One of the highlights of 2012 was a training trip to the remote Luputa Stake in the Kasai Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  What a wonderful training meeting!  There were 41 men in white shirts and ties reverently seated and prepared for the meeting.  The singing of the Church hymns was beautiful.  There was such a strong spirit.  The Stake President was a fine young man.  They all sat attentive during the training – very participative and involved.  All in all an incredibly spiritual experience and well worth the difficult trip.

The next morning at about 7am on the return journey the area auditors passed a Bishop riding his bicycle back to Mwene Ditu.  Amazing to think he had ridden all that way to attend his meetings the day before and who knows what time he had left that morning on his way home again.  A two and a half hour trip by car!!  The commitment to and love of the gospel of that group of priesthood leaders was truly inspiring.”

This last Friday night Loretta Sibanyoni from our ward received her own endowments. We gave her the temple preparation lessons in Tembisa.  I was able to be her escort, except since I was also on shift as an ordinance worker, I was also the follower on the session.  She confided that she had seen negative comments about the temple when she “googled” the church shortly after becoming a member about two years ago.  So she was a little nervous about going.  She said it was much different than what it said on Google.  The assistant matron who gave her the instruction did it in a loving and comprehensible manner.  Hearing her do that brought up sweet memories of the times when I was privileged to do the same thing.  We took her to Muggs and Bean, a small restuarant,  for something to eat afterward and then home to Tembisa.  Understandably she didn’t want to take a combie (taxi) home by herself so we offered to take her home.

Yesterday Crystal and Eric arrived! They brought us mail (Christmas cards mostly), brown sugar, vanilla pudding and most important themselves.  It is so good to see them.  We took them to the devotional this morning and will go to a family home evening tonight.  They even walked with us at 5 this morning.  They will be here for two weeks.