Update from Uganda

Dear Family and Friends:

It has been a couple of busy weeks here with two of the top humanitarian people from SLC and our big boss from South Africa visiting with us. Sharon Eubanks has responsibility for the wheelchair projects worldwide and Robert Hokanson has responsibility for the water projects worldwide. John Elks from South Africa also came with them. He approves, or not, all of our area projects. We write them up, submit them to Elder Mills in South Africa and then if he approves they go to John Elks for the final go ahead. They visited with us for four days and we arranged for them to meet with all kinds of organizations to evaluate and talk with them. We also took them out in the villages to look at water projects and to talk with water district people. They were wonderful to work with and to be with. Brother Elks is from England originally and has that wonderful British humor. We were in our truck following behind some water people on our way out to look at a borehole. Ron was lagging behind and we were losing our guides, so brother Elks said to Ron, “put foot”. I guess this is an English saying meaning to hurry up. I loved that and now I get to use it. They were very helpful and even treated us to some very nice meals. We have been green lighted on water projects now so we have as much to do as we can produce. We met with the water district bureaucracy folks on two projects of over 200 wells and boreholes to either refurbish or to drill new water sources. The water districts are like most everything else here, very limited funds and very political. The Church bears most of the financial costs, but we do require that they contribute and do what they can to help supply clean water to the people in their districts. They are required to supply labor, land and various other things. We require them to have a water committee in each district, so that someone is responsible for the well after the Church has completed the project.

We have also ordered three containers of wheelchairs from SLC and took our visitors to meet with the organization those partners with the Church to bring them into the Country. Each of the 52 districts in Uganda will get a portion of this order. We were told the last time they were brought into this country, the missionaries helped unload them, set them up and were there and helped hand them out to the people who were listed to receive them. We understand it was a pretty emotional time for all.

We have now bought all the tools for a pineapple project that we had approved a few weeks ago. 95 women, out in a very remote village, have banded together and have bought five acres of land and the Church (through us) is providing what they need to prepare the land and to plant. We took two trucks out to deliver all the things they need to first clear the land. These women work very hard and clear the land by themselves, sometimes with the help of very small children and babies tied firmly on their backs. The land is thick with bushes and undergrowth and I am imagining plenty of critters, like snakes, etc. When we first went to visit and walk the land, I was very cautious about where I stepped. They clear all of this by hand. We delivered hoes, pangos, fencing material, rakes, nails, pineapple tissues, fertilizer, etc. I have attached a picture of Ron shaving with one of the pangos. He thinks he looks like Crocodile Dundee. After unloading our truck, the woman receiving the material did a little dance for us as we pulled away. She was so thankful and just kept saying over and over again, thank you Elder and Sister Bean and we said this is from the people of our Church that contribute to the Humanitarian Fund, we are just the buyers and delivery people and get the fun of seeing how much good it does. There is a lot of polygamy in the villages and men are not around very often. Women are the ones that contribute mostly to the family needs, so we were very happy that this project was approved.

We have also submitted the paperwork for a piggery project for one village, and a pilot banana project that we really think will turn out well for another. We love this part of the calling – but, the driving is a nightmare of very intense concentration and trust. This is hard on both of us, Ron doing the driving and Sandra very nervous seeing all the potentials for disaster on her side of the truck We experience big trucks piled high with sugar cane or matoke with three or four guys sitting on the top, passing four or five other trucks and coming straight for you in your lane and you are sure it is going to be a head on. At the very last second they find a way to get out of your lane and zip into theirs, or we are run off the road, it does cause your heart to stop for a moment. We are usually very tired when we return home. Then add a drenching downpour to this and it is very very tiring, we also try not to drive at night.

We took our visitors to the airport in Entebbe and really hated to see them go. They were on their way to Kenya to visit the humanitarian director there. They were very helpful with good ideas and suggestions and were also a lot of fun to be with. We hope before we go home that they will visit again. On the way back from the airport we stopped at the Entebbe botanical gardens. There were beautiful trees and jungle foliage and monkeys chattering and sitting on branches There were tropical flowers growing on many trees and bushes and jungle flowery smells, birds, long vines for swinging on, thick undergrowth, we really felt we was in a movie in Africa and that somehow our tree house was close by. We understand that the 1930 movie called Tarzan was filmed here. We were waiting to hear his famous yell in the distance and we would not have been surprised. It was a great photo opportunity. This area is located on the shores of Lake Victoria and is very picturesque.

We will be moving from our first home here in Kampala in about two weeks. We are moving to a new apartment house with eight units. We (sisters and elders) have rented four of them. It has advantages and disadvantages. We like where we are living presently, but the rent has gone up and the extra $400 to $500 more each month is prohibitive for all of us. We will be on the top floor of the new unit so we will have a wonderful view, but the floor space is much smaller and it doesn’t have the beautiful yard with avocado trees and flowering bushes that we have now. The construction here is very poor, so we see a lot of flaws, but overall it will be nice and it is new. The place we live in now use to be part of the mission home and the distribution center, so there are closets full of stuff and it is our lot to go through them and toss or give away. The good part of the move is that the Church is buying us a new washing machine. Such luxury. Ours has not functioned properly since we have been here and now it has died completely. I am using Elder and Sister Moore’s machine for the time being. Our washer is also a beautiful shade of rust on the outside and you can only wash about three things at a time and absolutely nothing heavy, sometimes it doesn’t spin, so you wring things out by hand. So we are excited to see a new white one and you can even wash towels in it.

Kami called a few days ago and said they will be coming to Africa to visit us. It will be around Christmas and maybe even during Christmas. She said she has had all of her shots required to come here. Brent just finished climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania a few weeks ago, so he is already prepared to come. We want to congratulate him for that accomplishment and understand that out of 14 climbers, he was the only one that didn’t get altitude sickness. We are looking forward to visits from our family and hope that more will come to visit. Our mission is such that they can go with us on our projects and we think they will find it interesting. We spoke with Darcy on her birthday and she said she and Mark will be coming in June or so. We will have fun showing them around and taking them with us on our various Humanitarian visits. We hope to have more of our children come before we go home. It is a wonderful experience, but does require some pain on their part – shots and all. You will get to see Africa in a very intimate way. See the people and how they live and visit with them. We will have an extra bedroom in our new place and it is waiting to have guests.

Roger sent us a newspaper article published in the Los Angeles Times about his successful long running musical. It has been long playing in Los Angles and has gotten great reviews and is now going off Broadway. Roger’s dad has mentioned it to almost all he sees. Congratulations Roger, we are very proud of you and hope when we return home that it will come to Seattle.

We are doing well health wise, although a lot of people in our branch had and have malaria. Our branch president has been in the hospital for 17 days and is now home, but not doing so well. It is a terrible disease and we have been surprised how many people here have had it again and again. Thank goodness for mosquito nets and malaria pills. We are truly blessed and realize it every day.

We understand that Torri’s son, Ryan, our grandson, is getting ready for his mission. He has his paperwork done and his interview with Uncle Matt is all that is left to be done and then the paperwork goes to SLC. We are proud of you Ryan. Keep us updated. We remember how hard it was to wait for that letter. We miss our family and friends and home and love to hear from you.

Lovc,
Elder and Sister Bean (Sandra and Ron)

Rainstorm at Jinja; Dental Clinic Handover

Dental Equipment Handover

Wet Missionaries

Children Filling Water Buckets

Children Dancing

Rainstorm in Jinja (What they'll put up with to shop!)

Dear Family and Friends:

An update on what is going on in east Africa.

We are in the rainy season and most every day we have a very substantial downpour. It comes equipped with thunder and lighting and buckets of water pouring from the sky. The roads turn into orange rivers and in some places we have to drive carefully through a running stream of water. It is really fun when another car or truck passes you and covers you with orange water.

Two new proselyting senior missionary couples have now arrived in our mission. Both couples are wonderful and really fun people. A sense of humor helps here. Last Tuesday we all drove to Jinja to pick up some furniture for their apartments. Ron and I went with them because they needed our truck. President and Sister Christensen also went along to help. Jinga is Uganda’s second largest city and is located on Lake Victoria It can be a pretty interesting drive. There are a lot of big trucks loaded with bananas, sugar cane, petrol and such. We wondered how the new missionaries would fare on that road. In fact, upon arrival, Elder Nye, new missionary, was sick and had to stay in bed at the home of the missionary couple. Before shopping we took our three pickups to show the new missionaries the source of the Nile. There is an entrance gate where they charge admission and of course being white, it cost us a little bit more to get in than the locals. We tried to argue that we were residents of Uganda, and ended up paying a little less. We rented a boat and our guide was wonderful. We sailed along the shoreline and saw all these monkeys playing in the trees. They were swinging on vines and chattering and were very curious about us and came down very close to the boat and peeked out through the foliage. I was thinking how much fun it would be for our grand kids to see this. We then saw a crocodile sunning its self along the bank and a monitor lizard lying in the water. They use the lizard skins for the top of their tall drums. There were hundreds of different species of birds of all kinds and colors.

We noticed a huge black cloud forming a little way off and the guide said we better head for shore. We nearly made it. We were just pulling up to the dock when the rain hit. By the time we got out of the boat and up the bank, it was raining so hard we could hardly see. We ran for cover in a small restaurant, without sides, just a roof and there was a craft booth set up by the side of it. The women ran for the craft booth and the men to the restaurant. The men made the better choice because it rained so hard and the wind blew so hard that it nearly took the tarp off the top of the craft booth. There was no way to stay dry. We were all soaking wet, but what was really fun, we took pictures of the soaking wet women shopping and looking at paper necklaces and debating about colors during the worst rain and wind storm they have had this year. We are a hardy bunch. We ended up helping the craft people cover their things and put away their stuff. They were very happy to have us there. When we saw rivers of mud and water coming down the hill sides, we decided rain or not we had to run for the trucks and get out of there. By the time we left, we were as wet as if we had fallen in the Nile. You see, missionaries do get to have fun along with a lot of hard work.

This week Ron and I visited a couple of water projects and an organization called “Invisible Children”. It works with and helps the families and children that are up north in Gulu and other villages that are caught in the war zone. The organization works with these people in helping them with a little business. They are helping these displaced people make bracelets, which are made out of reeds and some kind of sturdy straw like material. The people gather these reeds out in the fields and attach them together with colored wire to make bracelets to sell. The colored wire comes in White, red, green, yellow, brown and black and each has a child’s name on it and signifies something. There are a lot of children who have seen their families killed and are found hiding in the bush. A lot of the little boys are kidnapped and forced into the military service and made to fight or be killed themselves. Little kids like 5 years old and older. There were quite a few people who had escaped from the northern area, and were in the back of the building making these bracelets. They make part of them and then send them up north for the people there to put them together. They are then shipped to San Diego to be sold in America and the money is sent back to the people that make them. The people running this organization took us into the back room and told us we could select a bracelet free and would only let us buy 5 more. There is also a video about these kids. It was a very interesting tour and we asked them if there was anything the Church could help them with. They seem to be a well run organization and keep wonderful records of who make the bracelets and how many. They are doing much good here. We took the man from BYU Idaho with his cameraman to visit this organization with us. We then took them to an orphanage. We have decided that this orphanage should be helped with the Humanitarian Fund. They need beds, mattresses and mosquito nets and a water tank.

After leaving the orphanage we dashed home to change our muddy shoes and meet President and Sister Christensen for the formal opening ceremony of the Mulago Hospital Dental School. The Church contributed the X-ray equipment in partnership with the Canadian Rotarians from Alberta Canada, who in turn got a large grant from the U.S. Rotarians for all the dental chairs for the school. We were invited to represent the Church. Sixty-eight percent of the adult population in Uganda has oral health problems and there is only one dentist for 150,000 people presently. It was a wonderful project and we got to listen to a lot of speeches and it was covered by the media. I guess Ron and President Christensen were on TV, but since we do not have a TV, we never get to see it. We only hear this by word of mouth. We have also ordered 750 wheelchairs from Salt Lake and are hoping that it won’t take long to get them.

This is a wonderful assignment and we just want to thank everyone who contributes to the Humanitarian Fund. We receive the blessing of seeing what this money accomplishes in a very poor country, it eases a lot of suffering. I think all you senior couples should put your papers in right away. This is a wonderful mission experience. There are hardships here, but the blessings outweigh the sacrifice

Love Elder and Sister Bean