June 1, 2006
Dear Friends and Family,
I was looking back to see how long it had been since I wrote-April 6th. I find I have less time to write and few new things to write about. We continue to get assigned more responsibilities so we put in long days to make headway in accomplishing them. About 2 weeks ago, our mission president said he had great news and asked us to meet at the new eye clinic (the one I told you about the open house). A shipment of equipment had arrived donated by the Deseret Foundation. Along with the shipment were "a few’ boxes of books donated by the Kenneth & Gloria Deyhle Foundation they want us to help distribute. A few was an understatement. There were well over 200 boxes. When we finally got all of them catalogued a couple of days ago there were over 11,000 books! We have put into place a plan on how to coalesce the books by school age but haven’t finalized how we will select the over 125 schools and get them distributed. (Coalesce is a big word that my computer thesaurus found. I hope it means what I was trying to say). Doug is right now in the conference room of the clinic with the gardeners who have been assigned to help him move boxes into some semblance of order so we can get the young missionaries to load the boxes for delivery. (I am sitting in the waiting room of the eye clinic where I have been for about 4 hours waiting for the surgery to be done on the eye of a young man from our Sagamu Branch. It is a charity case, so we have to be patient
… which is why I have had time to write a short letter.)
We continue to be plagued by the breaking down of anything mechanical in our apartment and complex. We are accustomed to it and have put into place the necessary counter measures for when it happens. Right now our air conditioner, security lights and water pump are out. The things we can’t prepare for we just endure and leave it to Heavenly Father. We have stored water for just such an occurrence when the pump "gets spoiled". We bath from water in a bucket…after the third day of cold bucket bathes this week, Doug surprised me with heated water yesterday. It was a bit of heaven. When we first arrived, 77degree water seemed warm enough. But we are now acclimatized and 77 degrees is jacket and pajama weather. During one meeting a couple of weeks it started to rain. The combination of the breeze and damp chilled us and we had to turn off the fans and shut the windows to get warm. It was probably mid eighties.
Last time I wrote about the problems with the painting of the District Center. I shouldn’t have shared a disparaging story and I apologize. The paint job was completed and approved by those that had authority to do so. It wouldn’t have passed at home but then it doesn’t have to be so perfect here. It proved to be too "big" for me- something that only I had any problem with-besides I had no authority over it. I couldn’t make the difference by myself. Where we will make a difference will be one small step at a time…the accumulation of which I hope will be great. That is how we now approach all of our assignments. We have a list of the major ones that is longer than one page single spaced. Each week in planning meeting we decide on the next baby step for each assignment. As we work hard each day to achieve 6-7 of the baby-step items on the list we have slowly been able to finish some. Others will never be finished but hopefully we will have helped move them forward.
We continue to see the hand of Heavenly Father in our lives. Our health is remarkable in spite of continued mosquito bites and exposure to other things. Miracles such as placing us in the right place at the right time or keeping us from going somewhere where we found out later it wasn’t safe are commonplace. Driving rules are non-existent. Along the roads are the remains of bad accidents. Yet we have not even had a close call with any accident in over 50,000 Kilometers of travel. Not even a flat tire and we have been through some rough roads where we deserved one. We were in a traffic jam taking a missionary to Lagos to hospital. I prayed that we wouldn’t be stuck there over night as could easily happen. Routes seemed to open up and we squeezed our little car into every cranny it would fit as we inched forward. Places just kept opening up. We made it through in under 5 hours. Others we know got stuck in it for the whole night and into the next day. The next afternoon we were warned not to return that way because traffic was still blocked, we went back by another route. On our way to one branch for Sunday service, we received a call not to come. We turned around and went to another branch. One missionary there came out to greet us and said she had prayed that we would come because of someone we needed to meet. Though we weren’t scheduled there, she knew we would come in answer to her prayer. Another man approached us with a very surprised look. It was his first time in church. The night before he had dreamed he would shake the hand of a white man in church that day. No white man lived in the town that he knew of. In we walked and he shook our hand. We did not know we would be at that branch that Sunday, but God did. While traveling on the expressway we exited on the wrong road. We couldn’t find where we were on the map to get back in the direction we needed to go. As we drove along we asked for divine guidance at each junction or exit, which way we should go. We followed how we felt prompted and eventually we returned to the correct expressway, never having had to backtrack and never knowing where we were. We have never felt unsafe while we have been here. It is the miracle of our mission and a gift from Heavenly Father.
Another gift from God is a better understanding of the purpose of life. Coming from a wealthy country with the accumulation of wealth a prime objective of so many to an impoverished country where earning enough for a meal a day is the prime objective dramatically changes one’s perspective. Occasionally on the news we see a national story about some sport or movie idol and it seems surreal that this would be thought to be important enough to take time to report on. During one such report on Euronews about Tom Cruz, Doug blurted out- "Who cares?" Ten months ago we did! I wonder how long it will take us to get caught up in it again. I hope some of what we have learned sticks with us for the rest of our lives.
It is an hour later, the nurse finally came to get the young man to prep him for the operation. My computer battery is about dead and I have something I have to do before it dies…so Odabo for now.
Love Sister G.
I was looking back to see how long it had been since I wrote-April 6th. I find I have less time to write and few new things to write about. We continue to get assigned more responsibilities so we put in long days to make headway in accomplishing them. About 2 weeks ago, our mission president said he had great news and asked us to meet at the new eye clinic (the one I told you about the open house). A shipment of equipment had arrived donated by the Deseret Foundation. Along with the shipment were "a few’ boxes of books donated by the Kenneth & Gloria Deyhle Foundation they want us to help distribute. A few was an understatement. There were well over 200 boxes. When we finally got all of them catalogued a couple of days ago there were over 11,000 books! We have put into place a plan on how to coalesce the books by school age but haven’t finalized how we will select the over 125 schools and get them distributed. (Coalesce is a big word that my computer thesaurus found. I hope it means what I was trying to say). Doug is right now in the conference room of the clinic with the gardeners who have been assigned to help him move boxes into some semblance of order so we can get the young missionaries to load the boxes for delivery. (I am sitting in the waiting room of the eye clinic where I have been for about 4 hours waiting for the surgery to be done on the eye of a young man from our Sagamu Branch. It is a charity case, so we have to be patient
… which is why I have had time to write a short letter.)
We continue to be plagued by the breaking down of anything mechanical in our apartment and complex. We are accustomed to it and have put into place the necessary counter measures for when it happens. Right now our air conditioner, security lights and water pump are out. The things we can’t prepare for we just endure and leave it to Heavenly Father. We have stored water for just such an occurrence when the pump "gets spoiled". We bath from water in a bucket…after the third day of cold bucket bathes this week, Doug surprised me with heated water yesterday. It was a bit of heaven. When we first arrived, 77degree water seemed warm enough. But we are now acclimatized and 77 degrees is jacket and pajama weather. During one meeting a couple of weeks it started to rain. The combination of the breeze and damp chilled us and we had to turn off the fans and shut the windows to get warm. It was probably mid eighties.
Last time I wrote about the problems with the painting of the District Center. I shouldn’t have shared a disparaging story and I apologize. The paint job was completed and approved by those that had authority to do so. It wouldn’t have passed at home but then it doesn’t have to be so perfect here. It proved to be too "big" for me- something that only I had any problem with-besides I had no authority over it. I couldn’t make the difference by myself. Where we will make a difference will be one small step at a time…the accumulation of which I hope will be great. That is how we now approach all of our assignments. We have a list of the major ones that is longer than one page single spaced. Each week in planning meeting we decide on the next baby step for each assignment. As we work hard each day to achieve 6-7 of the baby-step items on the list we have slowly been able to finish some. Others will never be finished but hopefully we will have helped move them forward.
We continue to see the hand of Heavenly Father in our lives. Our health is remarkable in spite of continued mosquito bites and exposure to other things. Miracles such as placing us in the right place at the right time or keeping us from going somewhere where we found out later it wasn’t safe are commonplace. Driving rules are non-existent. Along the roads are the remains of bad accidents. Yet we have not even had a close call with any accident in over 50,000 Kilometers of travel. Not even a flat tire and we have been through some rough roads where we deserved one. We were in a traffic jam taking a missionary to Lagos to hospital. I prayed that we wouldn’t be stuck there over night as could easily happen. Routes seemed to open up and we squeezed our little car into every cranny it would fit as we inched forward. Places just kept opening up. We made it through in under 5 hours. Others we know got stuck in it for the whole night and into the next day. The next afternoon we were warned not to return that way because traffic was still blocked, we went back by another route. On our way to one branch for Sunday service, we received a call not to come. We turned around and went to another branch. One missionary there came out to greet us and said she had prayed that we would come because of someone we needed to meet. Though we weren’t scheduled there, she knew we would come in answer to her prayer. Another man approached us with a very surprised look. It was his first time in church. The night before he had dreamed he would shake the hand of a white man in church that day. No white man lived in the town that he knew of. In we walked and he shook our hand. We did not know we would be at that branch that Sunday, but God did. While traveling on the expressway we exited on the wrong road. We couldn’t find where we were on the map to get back in the direction we needed to go. As we drove along we asked for divine guidance at each junction or exit, which way we should go. We followed how we felt prompted and eventually we returned to the correct expressway, never having had to backtrack and never knowing where we were. We have never felt unsafe while we have been here. It is the miracle of our mission and a gift from Heavenly Father.
Another gift from God is a better understanding of the purpose of life. Coming from a wealthy country with the accumulation of wealth a prime objective of so many to an impoverished country where earning enough for a meal a day is the prime objective dramatically changes one’s perspective. Occasionally on the news we see a national story about some sport or movie idol and it seems surreal that this would be thought to be important enough to take time to report on. During one such report on Euronews about Tom Cruz, Doug blurted out- "Who cares?" Ten months ago we did! I wonder how long it will take us to get caught up in it again. I hope some of what we have learned sticks with us for the rest of our lives.
It is an hour later, the nurse finally came to get the young man to prep him for the operation. My computer battery is about dead and I have something I have to do before it dies…so Odabo for now.
Love Sister G.
posted by PorpShow at 8:27 AM
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