Jan. 4th, 2013
I checked the email first thing when we got to the office this morning. We have been waiting to hear from Kimi and Mike. WAHOO, WE HAVE A NEW GRANDCHILD!!! We are so excited that Kimi and Mike are expecting a baby this summer. We are a little anxious because the ultra sound found a possible problem, not with the baby, thank heavens, but we know that with Michael’s blessing and our family fasting, everything will be just fine. How grateful we are for the power of the priesthood and the power of prayer!!
Once we settled down we got our LDS email accounts set up and now our computers should be ready to support all the work we will be doing while we are here. That means that next week we can really get started. We had two appointments with men from different villages today. One man was the city leader of his village, kind of like the mayor. He wants us to provide chairs for their community building. They have fixed it up, painted it and now they would like chairs to sit on. They have been sitting on mats on the floor. Most people do that here but he has spent some time in America and he would like them to have chairs. If they have surplus chairs at the Liahona High School we will see if we can get some for him. He also wants a new pump for their water well. Japan-aid put it in for them 3 years ago and said the pump would last for 25 years. He claims that the contractor did a shoddy job and now the pump won’t work. We told him he would have to go back to Japan-aid and get them to fix it, the church isn’t going to do that project. Alan had a really hard time with that one. He has such a big heart and he wants to help. He is going to have to toughen up a little, everyone here has a need.
The other man that came in was Sione, the man we ran into yesterday. He had filled out the paper work and came to resubmit the project. His village has saved money and purchased a $10,000 pump. The people in the village have purchased pipe and dug trenches to get water to their houses. They need our help with buying the water tank and the stand to put it on. They have one now but it is 30 years old. It has just about rusted through and if there is a major storm here the stand will fall and they will lose their water supply. They have done all they can to help themselves, we are really going to try to get this project passed and help this village.
When we got home tonight we walked over to the Mission Home and picked up our truck. It is a Toyota truck that runs on diesel fuel. That hurts, diesel fuel is almost $8.00 a gallon. We are hoping to get some kind of a budget for our humanitarian work. The mission won’t pay anything for the driving we do to check on the missionaries or to take them supplies. This mission is costing us WAY MORE than we thought it would. It is really expensive to live here.
