Monday, March 15th, 2010

Monday, March 15th, 2010

We are still busy waiting for our transformers to be finished for the clinics. ZESA is being slow but have promised them for tomorrow, however, we won’t hold our breath. It was suggested by a friend that if we were to offer them a bribe we might get them faster, but we won’t do that. Two of them are finished and the other two are to be done shortly. As soon as they are done and installed (hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for installation by ZESA) then Geo Pumps can go out and get the electric boreholes up and working.

Saturday we went to Glendale, on the road to Bindura, and taught Bigboy and his family again. The kids english is not really very good so we are going slowly and also so that we can be sure that Bigboy and his wife understand everything too. We have arranged to go again this Saturday and also to church with them in Bindura on Sunday, as his vehicle should be running again by then. After we left their place on Saturday we decided to drive to Bindura to see exactly how far it is (almost 30 km). We stopped by the church there and saw the sister missionaries that just moved into a flat there and will be working in those two branches now. They were having a baptism of a nice young lady. We learned that on Sunday they were having a baptism of 38 people (28 convert baptisms and 10 child of record). Wow! Can you believe that? We knew that the branches there are doing well but didn’t realize! They have 8 branch missionaries that obviously are working very hard and now they will have the 2 sister missionaries as well.
Later on Saturday we met the elders and went to Lawrence’s place and helped teach the prinicples of the Word of Wisdom and Chastity. I think the missionaries were a little concerned about it as his girlfriend is pregnant and living there now since her parents chased her away. We talked about what they could do to make a plan to make things right. I think it all went okay but due to lack of money they can’t go see her parents yet. They need $68 for transport there and back and he needs to take a ‘token’ ($50 - $100) to offer her parents and agree upon what labola will be. Once that is done here then they are considered to be traditionally married. Lawrence is really understanding the things the missionaries are teaching him and he has almost finished the Book of Mormon. He has been to church every week but Doreen isn’t progressing as quickly. Her English isn’t as good as his and she is very shy and quiet.

Sunday we went to Kadoma for church. The headmaster from Danangwe Primary School, who lives in Chegutu (part of Kadoma branch) asked if he could come to church with us. He brought another teacher with him. We were there about half an hour early so that gave Elder Bullock a chance to explain some basics to them before the meetings started. The talks and lessons were really good for them. They enjoyed the meetings. I was super impressed with some of the branch missionaries. By the time the meetings were done both men had a November Ensign, a Gospel Principles book and an appointment for Saturday for the branch missionaries to go to their home. We saw them again today (Monday) at the school and they thanked us again for the good day.

Next week Bruce, our water guy, will go to that area and repair the 4 boreholes. He will be there for a few days because he will retrain some men there to take care of the pumps. We will go out too for a day or two as well because we would like to watch him repair the pumps so we can know more about how it all works.

At that school we are also doing a grinding mill. The community has to build the building for it and they have started doing that. It should be done in a couple of weeks (probably more!). We have to upgrade the transformer so that it is big enough to run the mill and we met with the fellow at ZESA in Kadoma yesterday to finalize that. We also took a church member to the project with us so that he could give a quote on doing the electrical work that needs to be done. The headmaster will get 2 more quotes as well.

Well we must go – we are on our way to Bindura to meet Pastor Mhike. We will go with him meet with their Provincial Director to get the permission to do water projects in that area.