August 12, 2007

The week in the MTC was great but rather intense as we had to teach the first 3 discussions from "Share My Gospel" to different volunteers playing different roles. Our first discussion was to Kyle Whittingham's mother. We spent a couple of hours manning the phones in the call center and finished getting our shots. We had several training sessions, briefings (it turns out that we should have been taking our malaria pills with food and didn't need to start them until 7 days after what our original directions said), and devotionals (we only sang Called to Serve twice).

We began the day of travel by arising at the MTC 2:30am Monday and finally getting to bed at 12:00pm Tuesday in Africa. In between that was 19 hours of flight time with layovers of 5 and 4 hours in Chicago and London respectively.

We spent Wednesday in the Mission Office here doing inprocessing stuff. Thursday morning was devoted to unpacking and cleaning as Elders had been living in our flat since the Herrs went home in April. That afternoon one of the other couples gave us an orientation tour of the city and allowed me to get my APO set up at the US Embassy.

Friday President Taylor and one of the Assistants took us to the Illima and Chembeke Branches to meet some of the members there. The people are just the greatest and the scenery is amazing but I am not sure I have ever tried to negotiate roads like those before. They are tough to describe so we will have to get pictures in one of our next trips.

Saturday was more cleaning and laundry while one of the other senior elders took me out for some driving experience. It is a little tough to describe driving conditions as all the roads are rather small and rutted. The driving itself is best accomplished by just avoiding eye contact and just force your way where ever you want to go. It would be a challenge even if done from the left side of the car. In the afternoon, Barb and I ventured out on our own to pick up a few things we needed and I only said "You sweet little son-of-a-gun" once which showed a lot of restraint on my part. I do believe that Sister Bishop has already made the decision that she is not driving for the next two years. Our little diesel powered Nissan pickup is a 5 speed standard and shifting with the left hand is definitely a stretch.

Today we rode with President and Sister Taylor and the Assistants to the Kilili Branch for their Branch Conference. They picked us up at 7:00am and returned us at 6:30pm. We were on sight for 5 hours which if you do the math is 6 1/2 hours travel. It looks like for the time being that we will be traveling to each of the 3 branches mentioned once each week and spending one sunday a month at each branch. I don't know if Mombosa has fell off the radar yet because it might be a while before the President finds if he has a replacement coming or not. It will have a priority as there is more potential for English speaking investigators at Mombosa. Already I think it will be hard to leave these 3 branches for an assignment on the coast as the people are so gracious, sincere, needy and loveable. However the travel time and lack of English (there is a lot of Swahili and Tkumba spoken by the older members) does not make it the area of interest the Church desires to focus on establishing churches and temples. It is however one of the first areas here to accept the gospel but that was by people who had left the bush temporarily for jobs but then returned and brought the gospel to their families.

There are 6 other couples currently in Nairobi with us which makes for a lot of great comradeship and they have certainly made every effort to ease our transition and make us feel welcome. Because of proximity they do Family Home Evenings on Mondays and go out to dinner each Saturday evenings for anyone who does not have assignments elsewhere at those times.

We are getting a handle on the local currency. We have 83,000+ schillings to live on after the mission office deducts our flat rent, vehicle rent and couple of other items. Some typical prices are box of cereal 259 schillings, can of tuna 152 schillings, 2 KG of flour 97 schillings, 1 litre cooking oil 119 schillings, and a tank of diesel 5,000- schillings (we only pay for one tank a month and the church reimburses the rest. Our dinner out yesterday for bacon wrapped pork medallions with fresh mango salsa was 1,900 schillings. We have a gecko that lives in our flat with us but Barb says he can stay as he eats a lot of insects. We think the grandkids would have
found the chickens pecking around the open doors during church services and the dog that walked through the front of the building during opening prayer and again during priesthood training very entertaining.

Now that the jet lag and culture shock are subsiding we will start doing a better job of taking our camera with us so we can send pictures as some of this stuff you just have to see to believe.