Kevan Kingsley Clawson's Blog, page 28

Mbuji Mayi District Conference

Here are some pics of the Mbuji Mayi District Conference. We flew to Mbuji Mayi on Friday; Saturday, while Pres. McMullin was in meetings at the District Offices, Terri and I were in other rooms with missionaries. Terri was dealing with their health issues while I talked to them about their apartments (we are also looking for new apartments in the area for expansion). Saturday afternoon were some meetings: Leadership meeting for both Priesthood and Relief Society, then immediately afterwards, the Adult Session. On Sunday was the general session, and in the afternoon we flew home.

By the way, I was asked to bear my testimony to almost a thousand people… in French…

Like in Kananga, they held the District Meetings in a large theater. It worked very well for their needs!

This is where the relief society met–a room just behind the large theater.

While the brethren met in the main theater section of the building.

Of course, after every meeting, pictures must be taken. This is Sister McMullin with some of the Elders. We each spend a lot of time getting our pictures taken with both missionaries and members.

You can see the place was packed! The children were put in the room behind the theater (where the RS was the day before), as well as outside the doors, and was shown by remote TV to a crowd under two tents outside.

They had a good choir, as well as our missionaries–they also formed a choir and sang both at the Leadership meeting on Saturday, and in the main conference on Sunday.

President and Sister McMullin on the stand with the other leaders, just prior to the conference starting.

These are the tents used by some during conference, as well as other rooms in the building.

 

Terri with a group of members and missionaries

Family pics

Here are a few family pics I have been getting here and there:

My father, who passed away about a year before coming on our mission to the Congo.

My son Isaac and his wife Jackie, who live in Mexico, celebrating a US Thanksgiving dinner!

My Uncle John having his life story recorded for posterity

My nephew Stan who did the video recording

Uncle John in the hospital

Uncle John as a young man

My father’s favorite picture of he and my mother

My son Mike, who lives in Brazil, with his daughter Lita

My grandson Logan (a Mexican pirate?)

My favorite picture of my mother, taken by my daughter Liz

Misc odds and ends

Here are just some odds and ends I thought you would enjoy. Many of these pictures were taken by Elder Eastman, who works in the office with me (mon chef) in dealing with apartments and supplies.

We were about a week without power and water at the mission home. It got so bad with the water that we started filling bidons with rainwater!

 

Water is so precious here…they will get it from anywhere! Here is a group of people waiting in line for water from a ditch.

 

 

 

You find lots of little churches in the villages; just make-shift buildings people can meet in to worship God in their own way.

Tailings from one of hundreds of little mines around the country.

 

 

 

 

Of course, you see these brick ovens everywhere as they are the prime source of building material in the Congo: fired brick from the local red clay.

One of the few monkeys I have seen here. You don’t see animals here at all (other than chickens and goats used for food)– no dogs, no cats, you don’t even see mice or rats (very often)… it’s kind of strange.

 

Elder and Sister Eastman, on the left, and a small congregation of saints in a tiny village north of Kakonda.

President and Sister Munga, on the left. He is a counselor in the mission to President McMullin. He has been assigned to seek out and find small clusters of saints around the mission, who are not close enough to a chapel to receive the blessings of the Church. This is one group he found out about and visited with the Eastman’s. They were very excited about the visit and look forward to seeing people on a more regular basis in the future.

The home where this small group of saints meet each week. Many of these groups cannot take the Sacrament as they have no priesthood holder to bless the emblems… yet they meet every week to worship. One of the goals of President McMullin is to find some way to contact and include these small groups of saints into the Church organization.

President Munga and the local leaders of this group of saints.

A larger mining operation

A large group of people standing in line for one of the few sources of water in the area. People here spend many, many hours each day simply obtaining enough water to live.

A typical ‘bridge’ used to cross the water ditches: old bumpers off of cars and trucks

Yet another of the many casualties we see along the roads. With no tow trucks or service stations, they just leave them there. Some they come back to fix, others the come back and strip down to the shell, and many they just leave–it is cheaper to leave it than to go get it!

 

It is always amazing how many people walk the roads between large towns and villages. There are always people on the road walking, or carrying a load on a bike, or on their heads, etc.

This is a new Catholic church being built not far from the mission home in Lubumbashi.

Sunset from the mission home

 

Now that rainy season has begun, many can be seen out in the fields preparing the ground and planting seeds for the growing season.

Typical sight coming into Lubumbashi–food to sell at the local marches

The entire country uses the same tool to farm with; a large hoe with a short handle. Very few tractors (you see them on the road occasionally, but never working in the field). And I don’t know why they don’t use a longer handle on the hoe! They all use a short handle, which means they must bend over all day to dig the dirt.

My local rock source. We have been trying to find gravel to put at missionary apartments to cover the dirt, so they don’t always track mud inside the houses. They don’t have sand and gravel pits here! This gravel is made by hand; field stones gathered during hand-farming are brought to the side of the road; then a person with a hammer beats on the stones and breaks them into smaller pieces. They separate them into two sizes: small and medium (these are medium), and put in in sacs for sale. Each sack costs 3,500 francs (about $3.50). When you drive by you will usually see a child with a small hammer whacking large stones methodically, with a small pile of smaller stones and chips surrounding him.

Emanuel’s home takes shape

Emanuel has been building his own home. He made and fired his own bricks, and has been building his home section by section. The newest section is a salon (living room) and a front, covered porch.

The existing house, in the background, consists of two rooms: a living room/bedroom and a kitchen. To the left is a garage. He is now building a living room.

The small building behind the wall is a toilet and shower

Once the walls are completed he installs wood framing and a metal roof.

The salon is now completed the small brick wall in front is the start of the covered porch area. This will be a great addition for them: they will have a real bedroom and a real living room to entertain guests!

Emanuel and his daughter Perciany

The rains came and the house fell…

The rain has come in earnest now, and during one of the first major storms we saw several terrible incidents:

Not one, but two houses across the street from Emanuel caved in from the rain. The bricks were good, but it seems as though the mortar they used between the bricks was not…during the heavy rainstorm the water ate away ate the mortar enough so that when the wind blew their walls caved in!

To my knowledge no one was hurt, they all got out before it fell. But now they have no home and are living with relatives.

In the mission home complex we have three full-time guards at the gate (paid for by the owner), they take shifts to man the gate and tend the gardens and do other stuff around the complex (which has four homes, an office, and a small apartment).

One of the guards children was killed in the same storm: the metal roof on their home was held down with large stones (typical here in the Congo, and in fact, in most places in the world we have seen the same thing); the wind lifted the metal roof enough that one of the stones fell into the home and onto the head of a sleeping child.

They took the child to the hospital, where it died. While in the hospital, his wife, pregnant with another child, went into labor and gave birth!