Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Tonight we are in Lusaka, Zambia in the mission home. President and Sister Ericson have graciously invited us to stay with them until we get our assignment. There are numerous places in the mission where we can be useful, and he and the Lord are trying to decide where to send us. We will wait for his directions.
The second picture is of the little bit of paradise we found out back.
Yes, that's a palm tree, and the darker tree on the right is a mango, and if you look closely you can see bunches of bananas hanging on the tree behind it. The lemon tree is on the far right. This is the back yard of the mission home, and it was 75* when we took the pictures. This is wintertime, equivalent to the end of January at home. It certainly is pleasant now, but may be much warmer come summer.

Monday, July 29, 2013

We are off to Lusaka, Zambia for the next chapter of the saga. We are being reassigned, so this should be a little more permanent (hope! hope! hope!). We have spent the last two weeks in the Southeast Africa Area Office, Sister Reynolds calling in search of lost members, and Brother Reynolds imaging new laptops and desktops to be distributed to Seminary Administrators all over southern Africa and Madagascar. This makes a total of 7 weeks we have been in limbo since being invited to leave Zimbabwe back on 6/6/13. We have made some wonderful new friends, and had a chance to say goodbye to a number of them at a "luau" this evening. We will miss the SEAA group, but are looking forward to meeting President and Sister Ericson in Zambia tomorrow 29 July. No pictures with this post, we are packing to leave. Sister Reynolds remarked that this is the 7th time she has packed the suitcases since March.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

It's almost a month since our last post. My how time flies. We continued to work in the temple until it closed for extensive updates to the air conditioning/heating. It will not reopen until September 10. We had a retirement party for Sister Victoria who is in the center of the photo. She had worked until she was 93, and it was sad/happy to see her go. She has been a stalwart saint for many years.
We are still awaiting visas for Zimbabwe, and although some of the younger missionaries have finally gotten extensions, there seems to be no movement on ours. We have agreed that if we don't see any immediate opportunity to return to Zim by the 15th of August, we will seek reassignment, probably to Zambia. In the meantime, Sis. Reynolds is working in the SE Africa Area Office, helping locate members with whom the Church has lost contact, in hopes that we can rescue some lost souls. Bro Reynolds is working in the IT department, imaging Laptops and PC's for distribution to staff throughout SE Africa, from Angola to Mozambique and all points in between. Much like our short stay in Zimbabwe, and in the Temple, we have been fortunate to find a place of great need and be able to help. We are anxious to be back in the field, however, so this is just another holding pattern. Perhaps we will have more news next month.