Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Weekly Update 2-19-08

Just a little late this week. The Stutz stayed until Friday and I went to Kilili to pick up the 3 prospective missionaries on Saturday so they could get their Patriarchal Blessings on Sunday. They have been working on a couple of shortfalls for their mission applications since then. They had their final interview with President Taylor on Monday but still needed to get yellow fever shots and police clearances. They accomplished that yesterday while we were up country and now we are just waiting on a pass port for one of them. Hopefully they can shake that loose soon and we can bring the balance of their packets back with us next Tuesday. The bottom line to all our visitors is the limited access to our computer and internet.

We did get our land line working again last Thursday and it is still operating today so maybe it is fixed this time. The Assistants accompanied us to Kyambeke and Ilima last Sunday to conduct baptismal interviews and we now have 14 baptisms scheduled for this coming Sunday. I was able to begin working with a few unbaptized kids (ages 10 to 15) from Kilili while their last Saturday so we still have an investigator pool of 22 that are all fairly solid. We plan on scheduling more interviews in 4 weeks and then again 4 weeks after that which should pretty well drain our pool. This is a real treat for us as we have no young Elders or Sisters assigned to our area as the other proselyting couples do so the teaching falls to us. We have been talking up temple prep with all 3 branches and hope to get that initiated within the next 30 days with a target date of December. We really see some of the folks getting enthused about it and it should really boost everything else they are doing if we can help them meet that goal. Other couples tell us that our biggest challenge is just getting all the documents approved to allow them to travel to Johannesburg.

We did go out to dinner at Lord Earls on the 14th and we received a package in our APO Box from San Francisco the previous day so that was our Valentines. The malt balls and cherry chocolates were great but we really got excited about the fair dinkum zip lock bag that came with them. What they sell here is not the quality we are used to and the few we packed stuff in for our travel here or getting pretty sad looking.

The roads continue to be our biggest obstacle as far as enjoying our mission. They just seem to get worse each time we travel them and my style of driving is to just get over them as soon as possible. We do see some attempts to fix them and keep hoping that we will be able to enjoy the fruits of their efforts before our time is up. There is a lone caterpillar and operator working the roads in the hills and it is making a world of difference but I cant help but think that the next rainy season will just erode all his good efforts.

Well must run as our funds were a week late getting transferred in and with all the company Sister Bishops cupboards could use a little shopping attention. I will try and get a few pictures sent before the day is out. We sure do appreciate the notes and pictures that keep showing up in our inbox and thank all those who take a few minutes to remember us. We are definitely enjoying a little warmer weather than what we see in the photos we get. May God bless you all.

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