Dear Family and Friends:
It is the end of February and we are looking forward to participating in a country director’s meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa for a week. We will be flying there on Monday, March 3rd and returning on the following Saturday. We will be meeting with all the other country directors from East Africa, which includes the countries of: Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Swaziland, Nambia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Angola and DR Congo. We are excited about this and are anxious to hear about what the other country director’s are doing in the way of humanitarian projects. The first three days will be discussion and training sessions and on Thursday, we will all go to the Johannesburg temple. We have chosen to take one extra day to do some sightseeing and maybe take in a play. We understand that Johannesburg is a nice modern city with a lot of nice stores and paved roads, but it has a big problem with crime and other safety concerns. Two months ago they removed all the sister missionaries from South Africa and sent them to Uganda and some neighboring countries, which are deemed to be fairly safe. As of now the Church is no longer sending sister missionaries to South Africa.
We had our mission conference on Friday and our Kampala district conference on Saturday and Sunday, February, 23rd – 25th. Elder Paul Koelliker, who is a seventy serving as first counselor in the South East Africa presidency, came to Kampala to speak to us. All the couples had dinner with him and his wife on the Friday night before the conference. He is a very wonderful person and for many years worked closely as President Hinckley’s right-hand man on all temple construction. He had very interesting stories to tell and spoke at both sessions of our conference, as well as extra sessions with the missionaries and auxiliaries. He also toured the mission, which included Ethiopia. As a side note - the Church has just approved the organization of a branch in the ccuntry of Rwanda and it will be a part of our mission.
Sunday was as a very warm and sunny day and the district center was packed with members and investigators. The big fans in the ceiling of the chapel were on and provided much needed cool air. The little children were dressed in their very best and the little girls had beads and braids in their hair and many of the little boys had on white shirts. It is so much fun to see the little African children. They are just little dolls and they are so sweet. The choir had practiced every day for weeks getting ready for this conference. We know this because when we would go to our office in the Church, they would be practicing and it didn’t seem to matter what day or what time we were there, so were they. Consequently the music was wonderful.
There were five or six couples from Utah attending the Conference on Sunday. They are dentists visiting Uganda for a month donating their services by looking after any dental problems in the area. We went to dinner one evening with one of the couples and had a nice conversation regarding their intentions. They are not representing the Church on missions, but are LDS dentists that have formed an organization to participate in this much needed service, using their own money and donating their time.
In early February we went to the Bushenyi District at the request of a member of parliament for that area. He came to our office and asked us if we would accompany him to look at some serious water problems in that district. His name is The Honorable Tindamanyire Kabondo Gaudioso and is the chairman of the finance planning and economic development committee for Uganda. He, as we like to say here, is a Big Drum. We thought it would be advantageous for the Church to have such a person as a good contact. We agreed to go look at his concerns. He met us on Tuesday morning at the church. He had a driver in his car and we followed him in our truck. The Bushenyi District is quite a long way from Kampala. It is in the southwest part of Uganda and is on the border of Rwanda and the Congo. The Queen Elizabeth National Game Park is located within its borders. It is very beautiful country. It is called Little Switzerland because it has very high hills that slope or just steeply fall into beautiful crater lakes. There were huge banana groves planted up the sides of the steep hills and many flowering trees. As we drove there, we kept remarking on the beauty of the area.
The MP had arranged for us to stay in a nice place called The Kingfisher. The rooms were separate little huts with one side built into a steep hill. We arrived there at night so we did not see the gorgeous view that we overlooked until the next morning. When we looked out our window early the next morning, we found we were on the top of a very steep hill that overlooked the Queen Elizabeth Game Park. The MP had certainly seen to it that we had the best view in the whole compound.
He met us for breakfast that morning and we then went with him for the next two days to look at their water problems. We wanted to find out what he wanted the Church to do to help and to see if we thought the project was something the Church should do. Our truck wouldn’t make it up some of the steep hills in the area and many of the sites did not even have roads. We did a lot of physical climbing to get to the top of some of the hills. What is so interesting about that is, when we would get to the top of a hill, there would be a village, a school and all sorts of people living up there. These are the people that plant and cultivate all these steep slopes. Because the terrain is so steep, water is a big problem and has to be hand carried, always by the children or women, from the lake at the bottom of the hill, up the hill to the top. The lakes and other areas where they are getting their water, are very dirty and many people are plagued with water borne sicknesses and many die.
On the third day of our stay in the Bushenyi District, the MP treated us to a game drive in the Queen Elizabeth Park and a sightseeing cruise on the channel between Lake Edward and Lake George. It was a fun day and we saw elephants, hippos, lions and many many varieties of birds. we enjoyed it very much and it was a nice diversion and rest from mountain climbing. The middle of Lake Edward is the boundary between Uganda and the DR Congo, so we could look across the Lake and see the Congo. The next day we drove back to Kampala and assessed the water project. We think that we are going to at least ask approval to do part of it and if it is successful, then do the rest at a later time. The Church has designated Uganda as a Focus Country and so they are willing to let us use quite a bit of the humanitarian resources to help the people in this country. This is certainly a very expensive clean water project, but we estimate it will ultimately help 40,000 people and think that we can get it approved.
The first phase of our upland rice project appears to be successful and we will probably do a phase two this year. As to our pineapple project, all 40,000 pineapple suckers have now been planted and the pineapple fields look wonderful. We are about ready for a hand-over ceremony on this project. This is the project that helped 98 women in the Kikwanda village.
All the school furniture (desks, tables, chairs and bookcases) that we are having made locally in a small village, are just about done and will really help this school.
Along with our large water and sanitation projects, we have also had two new projects approved and look forward to getting them started. This is just a quick update on some of the things we are involved with.
We are very busy and our time here is going very quickly. This is a very interesting, fulfilling and rewarding mission and we are thankful for this blessing. We love Africa and the people in Uganda and will surely miss it and them when we go home. In spite of not having power and water for several days at a time and playing bumper cars on the roads, we have learned to make do and just regard it as a small price to pay for all the wonderful blessings we get from being here.
We thank all of you for your support and love.
The Beans
