Our first trip to the US Embassy

 

A member of the church contacted us and asked for help appealing a rejection he received for his US Visa. His family had qualified via a lottery for a visa but his wife failed the reading test during the evaluation interview. I had to write a letter that was accompanied by her educational documents and deliver all the papers to the US embassy. It's quite a big structure. This is just the entrance to one area. This first area sent us to a second area who sent us back to the first area who sent us back to the second area. Eventually the second area accepted our packet of information. If they don't contact me this week I will have to do some sort of follow up.

It is so difficult to find a job and provide for a family in Liberia. Even immigrants that do no better than coming to America and working fast food or driving Uber feel like they've hit the life's lottery.

We get contacted a lot by schools, medical facilities and contractors seeking for funding for projects.  This is Orancy Jacobs.  He represents a small NGO that wants help to build a rural school. Normally we don't even interview them because we get so many more than we can accommodate and many of them don't fit our criteria for projects. In this case his request happened to make it to the area office in Ghana and so they requested that I interview him. 

I conducted an evaluation of his organization and what he wants to do. Unfortunately he's looking to develop a private school and we only help public schools.  I sent my report back to the Africa West area humanitarian department and they will handle it from there.

All of the mission senior couples and mission president met together for a meal and get together. The couple at the far end of the table and on the left are going home in a couple of weeks and so it was a farewell dinner. Elder and sister Hanks are MLS missionaries that serve in one of the rural areas where there are no restaurants or stores anywhere, they are pretty hearty people. He left on this mission as a newly retired economics professor from Utah State University.  Cheryl and I had the Zaza beef platter.  It was very good.

We had a closing ceremony for the Wein Town Public School project. The church paid for the construction of a five classroom and two office building. We also constructed a 6 stalled latrine, water drainage system, supplied 400 desks, put electrical wiring in the new and existing classrooms, and painted all of the buildings.

This was the ribbon cutting ceremony done by the county education officer. Two of the people with the smart phones are television reporters.  I was interviewed. We don't get any of the local TV channels on our TV so we don't know if it ever made it.

These are the two full-time missionaries for the area the building is in. We also had a member of the local branch Bishopric and the church country communications director.  The communications director wrote an article about the event that appears on the church website for West Africa.

This was a good project. It almost doubles the capacity of the school and allows them to have night classes.

These closing ceremonies are always rewarding experiences for us. They are a realization of the good the church does for Liberia and the blessing we have in being able to be a part of the process.

The contractor for the project bought us Liberian clothing as a present.

This young man arrived at sacrament meeting about 20 minutes early and sat there reading his strength of youth booklet.  It's amazing what the youth will read if they don't have a smartphone.