Weekly Update 2-24-08

Well I have access to the computer and internet this morning so will dash off this weekly report before the day begins. Yesterday was a long but rewarding experience with our departure for up-country at 6:45 and our return at 6:30 last evening. When you subtract the 6 hour road trip that does mean we only spent 6 hours on site but that is 2 more hours than we normaly are there. Besides attending their Sunday Services we werre able to participate in the baptism of 14 new members. Nine were from Kymbeke and 5 from Ilima. We held a joint baptismal service at Kymbeke which meant 4 extra kms of walking for the Ilima folks. One member father baptized his wife and 15 year old daughter. There were 6 other young people from member families from 10 to 14 years of age who finally were able to satisfy the english requirement that is imposed if they are not baptized at age 8. One sister was a rebaptism because there was no record of her previous one and we could not get sufficient information to regenerate a record of the event. The other 5 were from 4 families with no previous members and there are still some additional parents and children from those who we are actively working with. The 2 weeks we lost to violence kind of derailed us with school back in session and harvest upon us now but the window of opportunity for working with the adults is back with us dependant when the next rainy season hits. The schools have another month break in April so that we can work more with the young people through the week. Because the folks in the Kilunga Hills are subsistence farmers they are very fortunate to have two growing seasons. Although much of Kenya enjoys the 80 to 50 degree temperature range each day there is a lot of it that does not get sufficient rain to support both seasons as they do there. Because so much of the crops in the north were destroyed or disrupted with the violence, the price of maize and beans (the food staples here) has gone up and I thought that would be a plus for the folks we are working with but they assure me that all of their crops are for personal consumption. Things like mangos and papya are considered snacks or treats as they have no way to preserve them beyond their season and didn't think the previous missionaries efforts to help them dry them for longer term storage was beneficial as they lacked the nutrients to really be considered a basic food item. The pre-missionaries that stayed with us found it rather funny that we would serve fresh mango or pineapple as part of a meal when it is considered more fluff by them but they did like Elder Bishop's fresh mango shakes. I have the luxury of a few slices stored in the freezer which they don't even consider since ther is no electricity hence no freezers.

The Kofi Anan led mediation talks seem to be progressing some days and with the visit of Sec. of State Rice and encouragement from the UK are suppose to yield some solutions this week. The opposition has declared if that doesn't happen by weeks end that they are taking the peaceful protests back to the streets. Those are the same peaceful protests that killed and displaced so many people in January. Be glad that America has progressed to the point that we just have to put up with campaign rhetoric for two years and the military arm is controlled so that only lawful orders must be obtained.

We continue to have some successes in the keyboarding and English classes but because of the understandable distractions of sustaining life we have many students at varying stages of progression and it makes it tough to prepare for and support the classes. We are working on some changes that will hopefully sustain their progression but allow us to shift our time and focus to temple prep with a hoped for trip while school is out in December. There are so many families that are so ready for that event in their lives and it certainly should strengthen each branch. We think we have solutions to assist in getting documents for international travel (Kenya to South Africa) but need to start at the basics such as generating birth certificates and ID numbers (comparable to social security numbers).

We just got a call from Brett and family so I think our phone is really working this time. If anyone else feels so inclined Mondays and most Saturdays are the only days we are not on the road by 6:45am which is 8:45pm the previous day MST. The APO box with its' 1lb restriction is definitely the best mail route and several of the other couples have even started having stuff sent to our box. The 1+ hour required to check it is sometimes a bother but 3 of us have boxes there (Pocock was a Navy Chaplain and Demars is retired ARNG) and we can pick up mail from all 3 boxes when we go so share the duty. The other couples are very supportive of the time we spend away from Nairobi and we get frequent invites to dinner when we arrive back late from up country. The 6+ hour road trip continues to be our biggest challenge but General Motors does a pretty good job of putting our truck back together when we take it in for service each 5,000 kms, which occurs about every 30 days. Dear sweet Sister Bishop is doing a great job of critzising my driving less which reduces our stress but I know her tounge is probably getting very calloused from biting it. One of the chores today is to get our side mirror fixed as a bus in Molango decided to occupy the same spot our Isuzu was in yesterday. I was rather steamed and demanded his name and insurance information but realized I did not want to spend the time hunting down the police station etc. plus the lesson in Sunday School had just been on forgiving our enemies and those who despitely use us.

Well it is time the good sister and I do a walk as we only have two days we can get that kind of exercise each week. Thanks for the concern and support. I will get a few more pictures up before the day is out. Thanks Bethany for keeping the Blog Site up. We just found BJ's family's new one and that was sure fun. We had kept checking the old one and just figured they were keeping busy enough that there were no updates. I recomend them to those who aren't doing them and am sure glad for this one as I probably would not be keeping any other kind of journal of our mission here. I am looking forward to having this put into a book sometime shortly after June 2009. God Bless