The Ellis’ Arrive

Sister Thomas speaking (in French!) to the missionaries. President Thomas is in back, along with Brother and Sister Ellis.

Brother Ellis speaking with the missionaries (using one of the Assistants as an interpreter)

 

The Missionaries take a short break, and eat some apples and bananas before starting the Leadership meeting.

This week Brother and Sister Ellis (a Seventy) comes to Lubumbashi this week for a mission tour. His first stop, Lubumbashi, included a Zone Conference with all the local missionaries (3 zones: Lubumbashi, Katuba, Kisanga), and then a leadership meeting with the local missionary leaders (Zone, District, and Sister Trainer Leaders).

Then they go to Likasi for the same meetings, then fly north to Mbuji Mayi, Mwene Ditu, and Luputa, for more of the same. As the Thomas’ have now been to all of those places, Terri and I are staying home (we also have the Drapers who are arriving this week, and continued prep for the next transfer that starts soon).

On Sunday we take them to the airport for their flight to Mbuji Mayi. Then, we might have a quiet week (it is always quiet around the office when the President leaves… when the cat’s away, you know!)

I am in the process of documenting all the apartments in the mission: apartment info, pictures of each apartment, history of problems, etc., so the mission will have a data base they can refer to if they have problems.

We are opening new apartments in Luputa and Ngandajika, then, I think, we are done for a long while. We actually have too many apartments now—the number of missionaries has fallen due to the change in mission Presidents (they are kind and don’t sent a lot of missionaries for a while—so we had more go home than came), but that will soon change and we will begin to add missionaries again…at which point they will need all the apartments we have found.

There is a good chance there are a lot more senior missionaries coming to serve in the Congo, so we will perhaps be able to send a couple to Mbuji Mayi (we have be trying to do that for a long time—Terri and I were supposed to go there to replace the Moores when we first got here, but that changed).