It's Monday afternoon and time to crank out another update. We got out and about a little earlier than our average Monday as we were hoping to find a good resolution to our vehicle dilemma. We are still getting around in the 2 wheel drive long bed as they worked on ours at General Motors all week and finally released it Saturday evening except it was still doing the same thing so I just left it at the Mission Office so the fleet manager could deal with it this morning. He called General Motors and said he was fixing to replace several of the fleet's vehicles but if they didn't come up with a loaner while they figured out what is troubling our vehicle that he would not be ordering them from GM. Not sure if that will generate a resolution for us. As we haven't had any rain since Monday of last week we were able to make it to all our destinations with the 2 wheel drive last week but the uncovered bed requires we haul everything in the cab with us. Rather crowded in the single cab and we are only able to drag a small portion of our usual load with us at that. Sister B's keyboard stayed home all last week and I had to put off transporting the video equipment until my Saturday solo journey to Kyambeke. Also to make some of the grades we pull I have to keep the RPMs up which makes for an even rougher ride than usual.
Had 2 new investigators show up at Ilima Friday so we are staying pretty busy as we visit each of our branches. We are not working with any investigators at Kilili but have enough at the other two so that we struggle to meet everyone's needs. The time spent with the school students on Saturday is both rewarding and frustrating. They all read pretty well but only a few have the understanding part down very well so not sure how many of them will pass their interview and I hate to see them have a disappointing experience. We have scheduled the Assistants with us on the 21st to give them all an opportunity to meet their goal but not sure what the end results will be. Right now there are 9 young folks and 13 adults in our teaching pool and a couple of others that are still working on some Word of Wisdom issues.
I bumped the Temple for a May/June date for our current batch of Temple Prep aspirants and they have indicated the potential number of children identified can not be accommodated in one group. I guess we will just see which ones demonstrate their desire by the effort they put into obtaining their documents. Maybe that will reduce the anticipated group size but if not we will just find another solution. I certainly do not want to discourage any of them but their desire does need to be manifest in some reasonable effort on their part.
I would assume the two fire tragedies experienced here in Kenya last week made the international news. We certainly heard a lot on the BBC Africa channel that we frequently monitor on our road trips. The store that burned is less than a mile from our flat and we got stuck in a traffic jam for close to 2 hours as we were returning from the embassy at the time of the fire. Currently they have found 27 bodies but the number of potential victims is 52. There are still 25 folks that are unaccounted for. The overturned fuel tanker up north is at 101 deaths with another 127 burn victims. You might wonder how so many got involved but we have witnessed 2 over turned tankers ourselves and the people just pour out of the hills dragging anything that might hold liquid. They swarm over the hapless vehicle and often are down on their hands and knees scooping the stuff into the containers. It would really be quite pointless if not life threatening to try and deter them in their quest. We saw a semi full of cooking fat overturned on one trip and there were a few policemen trying to protect the contents but they were severely outnumbered and I think their club swinging arms just got so tired that they retired to the other side of the road and watched the mob action. It kind of reverts to the same premise as my road carnage ramblings of several weeks ago. Life is pretty cheap here and the challenges of sustaining it often cause people to do things that we back home would think rather pointless or senseless. They did settle the teachers strike so that schools resumed today after 2 weeks of demonstrations and wrangling.
Well that is this week's slice from Kenya. I did mention to my companion as we traveled home from church services at Kilili yesterday that we have only 4 more Fast Sundays before we will be attending the Ten Mile Ward again. So I guess I had better get busy if we hope to meet our goals before they send us home.
May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You All,
Elder & Sister Bishop
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