Our Blog

For those of you who follow our blog, you may begin to be confused as we start to post items that don't appear to be in order.  That is because we are in the "repentance" phase of our blog.  We are trying to catch up posts from the past in order to have a complete view of our mission.  Unfortunately, our "repentance" will be out there for the world to see, but we hope you will enjoy our mission in review.  Our daughter, Valerie, promised, as a Christmas gift to us before we left on our mission, to get our blog ready to publish.  We are trying to do our part to give her something with which she can work.  Thank you for your patience!

Freetown Sierra Leone Stake Temple Trip

The saints know who they are, what God expects them to do, they are happy to do it and to let others know about it.

When we arrived at the office on Friday, 1 February 2013, all the temple patrons were there who had gathered on Thursday hoping to board the bus to the temple.  They had stayed overnight at the chapel, thinking that the bus would probably come during the night.  Sadly, that didn’t happen.  We could see frustration and disappointment in their faces.  Fortunately by about 2:00 the bus arrived after being delayed in Freetown to change some tires. The bus had traveled all the way from Liberia to pick up the saints and will go to Ghana by traveling through Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and down into Ghana.  The members quickly gathered their suitcases, plus their food for the next eight days and water in small sachets.  The sachets are little bags of water.  They tear the corner off with their teeth and then such the water out of the bag.  It looked like they were taking a lot of water with them—not more than they needed, but still a lot to carry.  They had suitcases and backpacks and bags of rice.  There were mothers, fathers, children, babies and people of all ages.  We were so proud of them.  This is a huge sacrifice for them and will be a very difficult trip.  The bus was older than we had hoped and it’s likely that it has no air conditioning, so they will rely on any little breeze blowing through the bus to cool them.  They will spend five days traveling, three days at the temple and then turn around and make the same long trip home again. .

Many preparations are made including a quick bath for the baby in the foreground.

The water in the jugs will be used for bathing. The water in the sachets on the right will be used for drinking.  So many other preparations have been made including passports for all, yellow fever shots for all, and paperwork to allow the bus and the passengers to cross the borders into many other countries.

The baby on her back is only one month old.  He will grow up in the covenant and knowing only life as a member of the Church. This day will change many lives for eternity.

Pure joy at being able to attend the temple!

There is luggage under the tarps and this is the final step in preparation.

New Mission Home

On Friday, 11 January 2013, we came to our office to discover a huge trackhoe there to begin the demolition of the building that has housed four sets of missionaries.  We have been anticipating this day for several months.  The missionaries had moved out a couple of months ago.  This is an exciting day because it is the beginning of a new mission home and senior couple apartments. It is ironic that all of this "groundbreaking" occurred just one day before the official groundbreaking.

It's always amazing in demolition how little time it takes to tear down something that must have taken so long to build. 

Nineteen days later all of the big beautiful trees that used to cover the area next to the mission office were down--the price of progress. 

The small front wall is the boundary of the driveway for the mission office.

Getting ready for a foundation.

There will be parking spaces in the area you can see here with senior apartments above them and the mission home above that.  Halfway back on the left is a "hole" where an elevator will be installed to get items and people up to the third floor, the mission home.