Lukes Mission Blog

We traveled with the LDS Charities couple, Elder and Sister Pocock, through the pineapple farms, to a wheelchair handover ceremony in Mukerenju. (About 25 Kilometers from Nairobi.) It was held at a center for disabled people in the community. They were receiving 30 Tricycle type wheelchairs. The chairs are pedaled by hand.  Charities has partnered with The Association for Disabled People of Kenya, a company here. They employ disabled people and are making 100 wheelchairs a month for a year. (total of 1200) for LDS Charities.  The people were so excited to get the chairs.

We also met a young 23 year old woman named Stephanie. She is confined to a wheelchair but can not push it on her own because she was born with short arms with only a few fingers on one of her arms. Two beautiful angel teachers introduced us to her and told us that if she had a motor powered chair with a button on the arm she could push it and get around by herself. She comes to the school to help teach the children. They also said she has beautiful hand writing.  They want her to have a knitting machine, because she could operate it and become self sufficient and even teach others to use it. (There are so many needs here) They took us to the school next door to the center. There are 1300 “normal” students and 34 disabled students that attend the school.  We met the disabled students and visited their classrooms, eating area, and kitchen. We were impressed with the cleanliness and order in the classrooms. They also had projects on the walls that the students had completed. They even had two old Singer sewing machines that they use to teach the students how to sew. They showed us where they were building a dorm to house students that live far away. They have done remarkable things with those sweet students. The students recited a poem for us. Translated it said something like “We are special people and don’t mess with us because God created us this way and if you mistreat Gods creations you will feel his revenge.” The teachers said they taught them the poem so that they could stick up for themselves in the community because they are often mistreated.

The two teachers of the “Special Children”with Sister Pocock and Sister Luke.

Our trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo was an experience I don’t think we will soon forget. We flew to the city of Kinshasha. Just getting out of the airport when we landed was a challenge. A man named Antone, who helps the members with flights, met us there and helped us or we never would have made it. They speak French in DR Congo. We noticed on our ride from the airport that the streets were filled with people and litter and litter and litter. First Brother Kumangila took us to his new home. He said it was in a new subdivision. We met his wife, some of his extended family and an American couple who were living in the Congo to learn French and work. Then we stopped at the mission home. They told us about the bullet holes in the building from the last war. The building just happened to be in-between the headquarters of the two opposing armies and so has battle scars from two wars. Next we headed to the motel. We had to stay in one by ourselves. It was after lunch and we were hungry so we went down to the restaurant. We didn’t speak French and they didn’t speak English, so we had a difficult time communicating. The only thing they had for lunch was a meal for $25.00. We found out that things are very expensive there. I tried to ask them if they had the same menu for dinner and they said yes. When we went down to dinner they had a regular menu with several items on it. (They were all still very expensive.) There were very few people there. The next day we did our training at a meeting house. It went well even though we had to have a translator. We stayed at the same motel again that night and when we went down to dinner that night the whole restaurant was filled with people. We had dinner and when we walked around the pool we noticed they were busy decorating for Valentines. They had red table clothes, confetti, lighted hearts, and red Christmas lights all over. And a band was setting up directly below our window. At about 9 that night we looked out and noticed that there weren’t any people at their party. We felt bad for them after all the work they had gone through. And then we went to bed. A little while later we heard the band start to play and when we looked out the window there were lots of people dancing. The music had the same melody and beat played over and over and they sang/shouted/yelled along with the music.  This is a video sample of the music.  Enjoy! (We did all night long) The band played until 5:00a.m., which was the time we had to be up to get ready to head to the airport. Needless to say we didn’t get any sleep that night. With the help of Antone we made it through the airport. It seemed to me that everyone was yelling and arguing and the whole place was in chaos. The guards just grabbed people they didn’t think should be in the airport and threw them out.
We flew on Hewa Bora air lines (Swahili for Good Air) to Lubunbashi. It was a little nicer than Kinshasa. The motel had raised it prices so high (They like American money 2003 or newer only) that we were a little short on cash for all of us to stay there so we volunteered to ask the missionary couple (the Parks) in Lubunbashi if we could stay with them a couple of nights. They were happy to have us and we had a great time with them. We spent Saturday training. The electricity was out at the first meeting house we went to so we went to another. The electricity lasted for about an hour, and then it went out there, too. The next day we went to church with the Parks and attended two sacrament meetings and a baptismal service for three men and a young boy. The photo is of the Parks, the people who where baptized and the bishop. We were impressed with how beautiful and with gusto the congregation sang hymns. It is the first time I have sung “How Great Thou Art” in staccato. At the baptismal service it sounded like there were at a lot of people there singing, but when I turned around to look I was shocked to see there were only a few. There must have been angels singing with them. The church is growing rapidly in Congo. The two missionary couples have baptisms weekly. People just come in off of the street and want to be taught the gospel. We flew home Monday morning and arrived in Kenya about 4:00 p.m. We were grateful to be back. Kenya is fantastic compared to what we saw in the Congo.

We found a KFC in the Congo. (Katanga Fried Chicken)

Things in Kenya seem to calm down, then all of a sudden something will happen and the situation gets worse. Most of the violence is in the north, in areas such as the Rift Valley, Eldoret and Nakuru. We haven’t seen much here even when it happens here. There is still a large military presence and the short cut home through the park is still closed, but many more people are out and the traffic is horrible. We have met more people here and really enjoy them. This week we were privileged to travel with the LDS Charities couple, Elder and Sister Pocock, south, to the area they do a lot of work in. We visited a shamba (garden). This one has several acres in it. Each family is responsible for four rows. They can eat or sell what they raise. They also planted over 300 mango trees. It takes three years for the trees to get big enough to produce fruit. Then the families will share the money made from the mangos and the trees will over take the gardens, so they won’t do those anymore. Some of the families have done a good job, taking care of their gardens. Some have not. So they decided how they were going to take care of the problem. We also met with a man who is responsible for drilling the wells that Charities are installing. We visited with his wife and she told us about growing up near there and having to go for water. She said they were lucky because they had a donkey to carry the water but she would have to herd the animals to the water every other day to water them. That was as often as the animals would get water. It would take all day just to water them. While we were talking we watched several women come into the faucet on the chapel grounds and fill up a five gallon can with water and then but it on their backs with a supporting strap across their forehead. The women usually carry all the water but we also watched a man come on his bicycle. He was able to tie two five gallon cans on it. After we left there we went to a school in the area that Charities is looking at to see if they can help. The roof had blown off of two of the classrooms and the parents had gotten together and found enough usable tin from the two roofs to repair one. The floors were dirt and the windows were just holes in the walls. The children sit three at a desk and share one book. We visited a class of 11 year olds and they were studying Swahili. There were about 60 children in the classroom. We went around the room taking their pictures and then showing them on the digital camera what they look like. They don’t often see pictures of themselves. Then we visited with a 2nd grade teacher. She had the class’s lessons written on the chalkboard. They were studying Swahili, English, and Kamba. Most people here speak two, three or even more languages. To get there we had to travel four hours, most of it on dirt roads, with lots of traffic. The road is actually the main route from the Port of Mombassa though Kenya to Uganda, but it is being rebuilt. Imagine the worst bumpy, dusty road you have ever been on, add big trucks and crazy drivers and lots of traffic. This road is even worse than that. We only had a dozen or so near death experiences. So far traveling this road has been the most dangerous thing I think we have done here. (There are missionary couples here that travel this road several times a week) We had to stay over night down there and the only decent place to stay was at a lodge in Tsavo National Park. This meant we got to drive through the park and see wildlife. We took a few pictures of some of the animals we saw. By the time we got everything done, we were later than we wanted to be leaving for home and had to travel part of the way on the scary road after dark. Thankfully we made it home and we had a great time, thanks to the Pococks. They entertained us with great stories and showed us some wonderful sights in the area and on our “safari” through the park.