A Baptism at our Apartment

We had a baptism at our apartment.  We had a baptismal font at our other building but the new building we moved into doesn’t have one yet, so we have had a couple of baptismal services at the pool at our apartment.  We never go swimming in it, but it looks clean and works well for baptisms.

The pool is about 5 feet deep and they try to perform the baptisms on the steps but usually end up falling in when they put them under the water.



Elder Graham, from Layton was serving as a witness for the baptism of Aldrich, who is Romeo’s son’s friend.  Romeo performed the baptism.



Brother Joseph is engaged to the young women’s president in the branch.  He is a bouncer at a club and his life has changed so much.  He wanted the smallest person who could, to baptize him as a sign of his humility.  Junior baptized him.  He is a priest.



This little girl Joy, was bored at the baptism, so we gave her some markers and she climbed up on my desk and drew pictures and fell asleep while coloring.



Joy is the cutest little girl.  We are teaching her mom the gospel and when we go to their house, she always runs to us and gives a big hug.



We had over 40 people in our apartment from the branch for the baptism.  We ran out of chairs and the Elders had to sit on the floor.



This is Dr. Samuel and his wife Caro.  He has been a member for 5 years and moved around a lot in his studies to become a doctor.  He was never ordained to the Aaronic priesthood, so last week he was ordained a priest.  Sister Gailey and I are teaching Caro and their two older daughters Sidonie and Lydia.  Joy is  their daughter and they have two little boys, Jackson (2) and Jimmy (1). We hope they will be ready for baptism in a few weeks and Dr. Samuel will be able to baptize them.

Relief Society Birthday Party

On Saturday March 16, 2013 the BonaPriso and BonaBari branches had a combined relief society birthday party like they do all over the church.  These sisters spent hours preparing the food out in the sun on the hot concrete behind the church building.  They had rice, beans, fish heads and some other things that I’m not sure what they were.  They cook it over charcoal which is pieces of burn wood that they re-light.


The women got together a few weeks before and tie died some fabric and then made matching dresses from the material.  Sister Gailey doesn’t have a sewing machine or much desire to sew, so they made a dress for her.  It is kind of one size fits all with these dresses.

The sisters spend two hours before getting everyone dressed and looking just right.  They make hats out of fabric that they tie in many different ways to give it a different look.

This is the finished product.  Jan came home and skyped some of the family in her new outfit.  Alek didn’t know what to think of his grandma.

With her new dress and hat Sister Gailey fit right in.  It is a little hard to tell which one she is.  Good thing she has her name tag on.  They had all the sisters go up in front and model while they plaid modeling music.  Sister Gailey got the biggest applause and cheers.

On the drive home, we got a lot of really weird looks.  Here I am with my African Queen.  Jan has gone from being a princess at home to a queen here in Cameroon.

Tie Dying Material for Dresses for the Relief Society Birthday Party.

The sisters got together to tie dye material to make themselves matching dressings.  I’m not sure what used to dye the material, but all the sisters were holding their noses so I think it was toxic.




The Elders stopped by after playing soccer just in time to provide the muscle for wringing out the fabric for the sisters.  This is Elders Morin, Zurcher, Andriamamonjy, and Garland.

Random pictures of things we see every day.

We ordered some new couches from Oscar.  He is in the branch presidency in BonaPriso.  He made 4 couches for us and the Elders in about two weeks.   The dark one behind the two chairs is one of them.  He made them in the little shop behind us.  We are right on the side of a very busy highway that runs through Douala.  We had to dust them off when we brought them home.

This is a bird that was walking around one of the shops in Kinshasa.  We don’t usually see birds like this just walking around.

This is a fish market on the side of the river.  They go out and fish with nets, and then come in here and sell the fish fresh.  At least as fresh as they can be sitting out in the 90 degree heat all day.

We live in an apartment with a gate.  We pull up and honk and Isidore our guard, opens and closes the gate for us.  He sleeps on a piece of cardboard on the concrete when he is not working around the apartments.  He is being taught by the Elders.  He has paid 4 cows to his in laws and has to pay two more before he can get married and then baptized.

This is a typical neighborhood here in Douala.  The children play in the streets and at night everyone comes out and sits in the streets and visit.

This is a popular swimming hole near us.  The water looks much greener in the picture than it really is. Many of the young men swim without swimming suits and they love to stand on their heads in the water with their legs and other things out of the water when we drive by.

We buy bottled peanuts from these ladies.  We told them we would only buy if we could take their picture.  They blow the skins off the peanuts that they have roasted and pack them into water bottles.  We pay about $4 for a bottle of peanuts packed like the lady in the picture is packing them.  The really are delicious.  We’re not sure how sanitary, but we haven’t gotten sick from them yet.

There are hundreds of these vans on the roads.  They will put about 30 people in them and then pack their stuff on the top.  The springs are shot and some of them lean so bad we can’t see how they don’t fall over.

When you buy chickens, you get the head and feet inside.  We didn’t realize it until Sister Whitesides cooked one and started eating it and pulled out the head with the comb and the feet.


This is another picture of one of the bus vans.  There are 5 rows of seats with at least 6 people on each bench.  One or two more are added by standing on the back and the side by the sliding door.  It is the cheapest way to get around Douala.

They transport all kinds of things on push carts.  They will pull them  for miles.  You can see the guy is soaking with sweat.   We have even seen a car being pulled on one of them.  On the right is a mototaxi.  They haul up  to six people on a Honda 125 motorcycle and normal traffic laws do not apply to them.  They just drive around cars and through red lights.

This is a logging truck hauling logs to the sawmill. We pass a lot of them on the road to Yaounde, when we go to visit the Whitesides.  You can see they are as big around as the car that is passing.   Much of the lumber goes to China.

This picture is taken through our windshield.  We are driving down this street.  Busyness like this is not at all unusual where we drive.  My truck was repainted just before we got here and it has scrapes down both sides from driving through these areas.  My mirrors keep getting folded in from hitting things and people.  We just keep going.

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We may have posted this before, but this larger pictures shows just how much you can get on a push cart.

Couple’s Conference in Kinshasa

On Feb. 11 Pres. and Sister Jameson invited the three outlying couples to come to Kinshasa for a conference, to see the mission home and meet the other 3 couples in the office.  We flew to Pointe Noire, had an unexpected 3 hour layover waiting for more passengers to fill up the plane and then flew on to Brazzaville.  We stayed overnight at a really nice hotel and got on a small boat with about 10 people to cross this Congo River.  The city across the river is Kinshasa.  It has 12 million people, and now has 7 Stakes.  We were met at every stop by church leaders who made sure we got where we needed to go safely.

Elder Billings, on the left, has been called to start a pilot program for the church.  He was a teacher at Salt Lake Comm. College in construction.  He has been called to teach young men, returned missionaries, construction skills.  His wife teaches family history and researching family name to the members.  The students learn to make their own cinder blocks and how to construct buildings. Sister Gailey is trying her hand at cinderblock making.   They are actually building a building for the church here in these photos.  The church is trying to teach RM’s skills so they can earn a living and provide for their families.  There is one sister in their group.

This is one of the buildings they are building with handmade cinderblocks.  They can make up to 3oo in a day when they really get going.

Of course, I was most interested in checking out the plumbing.  Here they are pouring concrete that they mix by hand.

The next day Elder and Sister Moon took us on a field  trip to see what they are doing for humanitarian work in our mission.  We drove along a road for about 30 minutes out of Kinshasa to a water well project that the church did a few years ago.  As we drove we started waving to all the children along the way.  They started following and the adults had to part them for us to drive through.  When we stopped we started shaking their hands and they just mobbed us.  It was so humbling to see how they lived.  They were so anxious to touch us and have their picture taken with us.  I don’t think they really knew who we were, or that our church had provided them with clean drinking water.

Sister Gailey was hesitant to touch them at first, but they soon were crawling all over her and she was loving it.  They are so beautiful and loving.

We parked the cars and walked a little way down a path to where the well was.  There is a large tank built up on concrete legs that a well 120 feed in the ground pumps water up to.  It then comes down a pipe and underground and up to these spigots.  There were many women filling jugs with clean water and carrying it off to their homes on their heads.  We were told that water borne illness in the area has dropped by 40 % since the well was provided.  Before they were drinking out of ditches that were filled with garbage.

In the same area, the church has build some restrooms for  the people to use.  The name of the church is on the building.

As we loaded up and drove away, the children ran after us.  We left, never to be the same.

In Kinshasa, they created 2 new stakes this past year, bringing the total to 7.  There are now as many here as there are in Johannesburg, where the church has been for a lot longer.  This is a chapel on the main road to the airport.  It has been named the Nauvoo temple by the American missionaries.  It has parking under on the first floor and the chapel is on the 2nd floor.

This is the three outlying couples, who with us, live hours away from the mission home,  The Wheatleys, on the left, who are from Clinton, Utah, live in the Central African Republic in Pointe Noire, and The Whitesides, on the right, are from Layton and live in Yaounde in Cameroon about 4 hours drive from us in Douala.  We have 5 different countries in our mission.  Right now we have 8 missionaries living in Douala and they are from 5 different countries.

The Mbengue Family

We have been teaching Victor and Laure Mbengue and their six children temple preparation classes to help prepare them to go to the temple.  The father,Victor speaks English and translates for us.  They have three children of their own and have taken in and adopted 3 more.  They will all be sealed in the Johannesburg temple then end of March if everything goes well with the temple scheduling.  The temple patron assistance fund set up by the church which members contribute to helps with the finances for families to go for the first time to be sealed.  Without the assistance of church members in other parts of the world, most people would not ever be able to afford to be sealed as eternal families

This is the street we drive down to get to their home.

This is some of the children looking over the railing of their home which is on the 2nd floor.

These are neighbor children who come out to see us white people when we get out of our truck

This is a mother hen and her chicks on the street in front of their home.

 

Victor and Laure invited us and our 4 missionaries over for dinner.  They had 3 other people staying with them also, so they had to feed 15 of us.  It was probably their food budget for the month and Sister Mbengue had to have spend the whole day cooking.  Laundry is also a full time job for her.  They wash their clothes by hand in a bucket and hang them out to dry.