Final week in the mission Training Center

This week was humanitarian training. We had four days of speakers from various humanitarian departments.



Most of these are our fellow humanitarian missionaries the remainder are some of the instructors and supervisors. From left to right these couples will be serving in Salt Lake City, Kenya, Liberia (us), Salt Lake City, Mexico city, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Germany, Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake City couples are the supervisors. Four of the seven going into the field are on their second or more mission.


We took our first malaria pills today. We had to start two days before we got to the field. We will have to take one every day. So far after 12 hours no side effects.


Lots of nice sculptures throughout the mission training center. This one is of the Apostles who were sent out to be Fishers of Men.


We just finished our last dinner at the mission training center. Overall the food was okay. There were a lot of desserts.


In the six-story building where the missionaries get their language training there are 12 murals. They depict significant scripture events. This one is Martha who was preparing a feast for Jesus. They are all backlit and so they look spectacular at night time.

Throughout the two weeks we had several very inspirational and spiritual moments. The spirit of the Lord is here with his missionaries. It's nice we could be partakers of that. In the closing meeting for the missionaries who were leaving this week, including us, we sang the children's primary song, We have been called as Nephi of old. The last line of each verse says, "and we will be the Lord's missionaries". In this case they substituted the words "we will be" with the words "we are".  It was a surprisingly emotional moment.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Liberia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Helicopter Ride

Image
We went on a bicycle ride through the town of Victoria Falls. We had two local guides to direct us.  Cheryl standing on the banks of the Zambezi River. This is the river that flows over Victoria Falls. It separates Zimbabwe from Zambia. We went on a walking Safari with Dean as our guide. He had a rifle, pistol and a knife. He grew up in Botswana on his family's farm. He has an English accent. When asked if he had ever had to fire his weapon on a walking safari he told us a story of how he had to kill a charging elephant. The story was frightening because the elephant got so close that when it finally fell to the ground it knocked him over and the two people on the walking tour with him were right behind him but were untouched. With perfect timing a herd of elephants including a large bull elephant appeared about 100 yards from us. Dean got really nervous and was starting to sweat heavily. He told us where to run to if the elephant started charging. The large bull elephant turned an
Read more

The last report from Liberia

Image
  This was our last Sunday.  This is the Harbel branch president Darius and first counselor Toe.  We like this branch because it has a generator and fans in the chapel. This is the Kerkula family.  Anna, Nancy, Naomi, David, and Johnson. Elder North is on the end. They have been members of the church for over a year. I have been teaching them the temple preparation lessons. Their understanding of the temple and its purposes is quite good. On the right is Nate Tollefson.  He is from Montana. He has a son on a mission in Liberia. He is a very successful developer and property owner. After getting reports from his son about how much poverty there is here he has decided to finance humanitarian projects here. He has an existing humanitarian organization. He along with other contributors plan on donating more than Cheryl and I have spent of the churches money here in Liberia. Him and his partner Paul are here in Liberia to interview the contractors and NGO's that I have recommended and a
Read more

Working on two big projects

Image
This project is for 10 villages with a total of about 8,000 people. We are going to add some new water wells, fix some old water wells, enpower the village to fix their own wells in the future and improve the general hygiene.  The leaders of the community have gathered for us to explain the project and for us to get there commitment . To schools in the area will get new bathrooms and wells. The old latrines filled up and were too small. We will replace them with ones that have a lot larger capacity and also have the ability to be bucket flushed. Much nicer.  Cheryl and the district supervisor are in the background. We always involve the local and area governments in these projects so they can support them once we leave. These women are fishing. They use nets supported on hoops about the size of a hula hoop. This is what the villages look like. No electricity and currently no water.The wells they currently have are dry or they have broken down. We will train about 30 well mechanics in t
Read more