Thursday, February 11, 2010

Good morning,

We have had a good week so far. Today we are stuck in the office because our truck is getting serviced. That is okay though as we set up appointment with people who want to talk to us.
Some ladies want to come in and talk about a 'sewing' project they would like us to look at. Pastor Mhike wants to come in and talk about 'doctrine'. He was in yesterday with some paperwork and a map for the water project we are looking at up in Muzarabani.

We are lining up some possible areas that need boreholes and we will get a visit from a 'water specialist' from USA to come and assess them with us and help us develop the projects. We are looking forward to that. It will really help us a lot. The specialists will visit Zimbabwe and also the humanitarian couple in South Africa. We will likely have them for a couple of weeks and then they can also assist us via email afterwards.

1 Feb 2010 - On wall of ZESA office in Kadoma

1 Feb 2010 - Another one

5 Feb 2010 - Elder Bullock picking an avocado

We took Bruce, our borehole guy, out to look at a place where we want to replace a 5000 lts. water tank and he gave us a price on what that will cost. On our way back we stopped at the school 'head master's' house and he wanted to give us some mangos and some green mealies.
Green mealies are cobs of maize that haven't had a chance to dry on the cob yet. We were given instructions on how to cook and eat it. So we tried it. It didn't have much flavor (not like the sweet corn). It was rather chewy too but ok, I guess. I don't think I will care if I have it again or not though. We gave away a lot of the mangos - they were the smaller ones that have a more stringy fruit. Everyone loves the mangos and we lots of people eating them right now. They are very good!!

Pastor Sikyani's wife passed away - she had a stroke 2 or 3 weeks ago. We went to the funeral. He told us to come at 2 p.m. and when we got there they were filling the grave with dirt. I guess he wanted us to miss whatever happened before that. There was lots of singing and clapping as the young men took turns shoveling the dirt back in. Then everyone was fed a meal of sadza, meat with a little sauce and some shredded cooked cabbage. We ate too. That is the first time we have done that. We ate it with our fingers like everyone else. They take a bit of sadza, roll it into a ball and make a little indent in it and then dip it into the sauce. *Before you begin eating they come around with a bowl and some water so people can wash their hands and then do the same thing afterwards as our hands are dirty from eating. The sadza has no flavor and the sauce and vegetables are a bit on the salty side but it tasted good. These people LOVE sadza!!
Afterwards we went and thanked the ladies who had prepared the food and got a surprise!! Check out the pictures to see 'what we saw'! YIKES!! I guess it is a good thing we had already eaten or ............. we might have declined the offer.

10 Feb 2010 - Ladies who prepared food for the funeral

10 Feb 2010 - YIKES! This was on the ground by the pot (goat's head and feet)

10 Feb 2010 - Ladies with Elder Bullock

10 Feb 2010 - Shredding cabbage

10 Feb 2010 - Lady eating a mango

10 Feb 2010 - Two little girls wanting their picture taken

We had a pregnant lady waiting for us at the gate when we came in a couple of days ago. We stopped and she came to my window (the ladies usually want to talk to me and the men choose to talk to Elder Bullock). The lady said, "Madam, I have a problem". We hear that a lot. I ask what she needed and she pulled out her papers from the doctor and they did say that the baby was breach. She told me she was 12 months pregnant because the baby was breach and couldn't come out. I told her that I have had 7 babies and that it doesn't work that way -- that she is NOT 12 months pregnant. She wanted money from us and we don't give money so she went on her way.

Last Saturday we were invited to Nield's for a birthday party for CeeCee. Her request was for Mexican food and it was wonderful. One of the best meals we have had since being here. They have a great family and we enjoyed our afternoon with them. We bought a couple of bouquets of flowers off the street to take with us. One cost $10 and one cost $5 -- too bad I paid the $10 first because I probably could have gotten them both for $5 as they were desperate to make a sale. O well -- they were beautiful arrangements.

6 Feb 2010 - Bouquets of flowers for $10 and $5. Nice!

6 Feb 2010 - Nield's yard -- gorgeous!

6 Feb 2010 - Bullocks, Reeve, Deppes, Lolly, Mayfields, CeeCee at Nield home

6 Feb 2010 - Nield clan and friends

Tomorrow morning we are going for a golf lesson (after we play squash at 5:30 a.m.) so that we can meet a couple that our golf friends know. They are hoping that perhaps we can get to know these people and friendship them. He is a retired Dr. and does some humanitarian work here too.

Our first appointment of the day has arrived so .... back to work.

~Later~

Hi, We had a good day today. This afternoon two young men came in. One said we had met him at the grocery store a while ago and talked to him and he came to find us because he wanted to learn more about the church. He is a police officer and his friend is looking for work. They were both about 27 yrs. old. One is married with a baby girl and the policeman is working on saving up the lobola so that he can get traditionally married about April, he hopes.

We taught them about the Book of Mormon etc. (1st discussion) and gave them a restoration pamphlet and a B of M each. The police officer had very good English and really understood everything well. It was good!

The lady came in to discuss her possible 'sewing' project and we will go out and meet her group of ladies tomorrow morning and talk with them.

They have a problem at one of the grinding mills. One person wants to only charge $.50 to grind a bucket of maize instead of the normal price of $1.00. They cannot make any money at that rate and possibly not even have enough to pay the electricity bill and the $50 they pay to the miller. This particular person is trying to get points with the people there as he wanted to be re-elected as the SDC chairman (School Development Committee). He did get re-elected yesterday! So, we have a problem. There is a grinding mill committee and they should all be making these decisions but...... The head master came and discussed it all this with us. We were all hoping the chairman would not get voted back. Anyway today Elder Bullock phoned the MP (Mr. Zhanda) that we really like and he really likes us and told him of the problem. He will meet us at the mill on Monday morning, hopefully along with the committee, and talk to them. He is well respected and they will listen to him (we just need the one man to listen, really). I think he will be able to solve the problem for us and set things straight. We are doing several projects in his jurisdiction so he will do whatever he can to help and he really appreciates all we are doing.

We talked to him about the problem the church had recently with getting items cleared through ZIMRA (tax people) - and he knows the head guy and is going to set up a lunch with him and the mission president and ourselves and see if things can't be simplified for us. That will be great it he can help us. Pres. Dube says he will be happy to buy the lunch if we can get these people together.

Elder Bullock has gone to pick up the truck from being serviced. All is well. We were hoping to get our talks written for Sunday but our day just fills up (with good things though, like discussions of the gospel).

Love to all, E/S Bullock

Our Mission

Hi,

A couple of days ago Kimberley got 2 cheques in the mail for us from Deseret Mutual Insurance (the co. that insures missionary couples). She also discovered that in November they credited our Master Card with over $2000. She called them and was told that we were released last March and that we never came to Zimbabwe. They have been charging our M/C each month for our health insurance and Kim has been paying it (and the credit was them paying it all back, since they thought they were charging us in error). YIKES!! She assured them that we were indeed here and was told that we need to call them to fix things. We will do that on Monday.

Jim called the Missionary Dept. this morning (late night for them) and talked to Bro. Seegmiller. He is also the fellow that we talked to there before we came (we had Grandma Bullock with us). It seems that the Missionary Dept. also has in their records that we were released in March and never came here. He will look into it and straighten things out.
We are having a good chuckle!! They did pay for our plane tickets here so.....????

Perhaps our being here is just an illusion!!! At least our superiors in South Africa know we are here.

Elder/Sister Bullock

a bit of news

We were just called into the mission president's office and Jim was
called to be the second counselor in the mission presidency and was
set apart. We certainly were not expecting that.
We still do our LDS Charities responsibilities but will fit this in
along with it. We will be doing more traveling and training and Jim
(oh - I mean, President Bullock) will be doing interviewing for
baptisms and such. We will have to get more organized and schedule
ourselves better.

Must get on our way home as it is getting dark. Just wanted to share
the latest turn of events.
Jim is feeling a bit overwelmed but he will do fine.

Love to all, President & Sister Bullock

weekend update

Friday, June 12, 2009
Today we were invited to attend a Thanks Giving Day Program at the St. Charles Mavhudzi Secondary School in the Goromonzi North District (about 60 km. Northeast of Harare). Elder and Sister Hobbs did an initiative there in about 2006 where LDS Charities donated desks and benches, textbooks, exercise books and ball point pens. It is a school out in the rural area with about 450 students. We, as representatives of LDSC, were treated royally. We were seated in the comfortable chairs in the center of the head table along with The Honorable MP of the district – outside under some trees. I will quote a paragraph from the program:

"Belatedly, this day’s programme is a babe of the Honourable MP, P. Zhanda, in which the school admittedly had shelved due to immeasurable challenges bedevilled by lack of resources – is on with much happiness. On this day I feel honoured to gratefully enunciate our inexpressible appreciation to our distinquished guests in their beneficient manner in which they have chosen to stand alongside our needy community."

We visited with the MP, Mr. Zhanda, and really like the man. The people love him and he seems to really care about them. He is a successful businessman in the area. He has a daughter going to university in Missouri (his wife was there visiting her). His sons have been to school in Australia and England. We would like to try and work with him some more for this community.

The Honourable MP of Gorominzi North Constituency

They are hoping we can help them get a grinding mill at a school there – where people can pay a little to grind their maize and the proceeds will go towards helping with exercise books and school feels for the children. We are going to write up an initiative and see if SA will approve it.

Their only equipment for their science lab

Broken school windows - typical

Most schools here have broken windows -- I guess it doesn't get socold that it is a huge problem!!

There was singing, dancing, poetry and a little drama to entertain us. Due to the MP arriving about 2 ½ hours late they did a lot of extra singing and dancing for us. We did really enjoy the day – we arrived at 9 a.m. and left about 3:30 (just in time to get back home by dark). After the program and speeches (one by Elder Bullock that they hadn’t warned him about ahead of time) there was a huge spread of food (paid for by the MP). They had rice, potato salad, coleslaw, chicken and some beef dish. It looked very good but we did not eat as one of our mission rules is to only eat what we prepare or at established restaurants. We had told them ahead of time that we couldn’t eat there and why (due to the cholera problems in the recent past we are very careful). I think it would have been okay but we didn’t want to chance it.

Banner for Thank you day ceremony

Roman Catholic Choir

School Choir (in their school uniforms)

Cultural dance

Drummers

Entertainment - great dancers

they have some great hand and foot movements

boys dancing - very good

Pastor Chris and his wife

The favourite drink here -- mix 1 part concentrate with 4 parts water

Toilets

Sunday, June 14, 2009
Yesterday we took a “preparation day”. We will try and do that more often as we do need a break now and then. We went grocery shopping – made the rounds to our fruit and veggie market, The Cheeseman – where we get cheese, some frozen fish and chicken, yogurt and we got some real cream this time. Later we drove out to Epworth to take a pair of shoes to Panashe, an 11 year old boy with size 12 feet! We didn’t have a pair that would fit him when we were there earlier in the week. He was very happy to get them – he threw his arms around Elder Bullock and gave him a big hug and said thank you, papa! (They do call us mama and papa a lot here).

They are starting a new branch of the church in Epworth (at a school) next week. We will try and go as we have had a lot to do with some people in that district lately. It is a high density suburb of Harare where a lot of needy people live. We attended the adult session of the Highland Stake Conference at 4:00 p.m. When we arrived home the power was off AGAIN! It came back on about 10:00 p.m.

This morning we attended the stake conference. It was very good and they had an excellent choir of about 140 people. Elder Taylor played the organ (keyboard) that they hooked up to the sound system and it sounded terrific. Sharon Spencer led the choir and we decided it was the Mormon tabernacle choir of Harare. It sounded great. They held the conference in the ZANU PF headquarter hall – had to do a ton of cleaning and fixing of the building to make it ‘conference worthy’. There were about 1000 in attendance. We sat beside some guests that Pres. Nield had invited – a lady that is the director Of ZACH (Zimbabwe Association of Church related Hospitals). She seemed to enjoy the conference. We, as LDS Charities, do a lot for ZACH, along with Pres. Nield. There was also a fellow there that was a director at a hospital. The talks were good – they have some good strong leaders here.

Mom – when they have the mission president training this month you could look up Pres. Dube – our new mission president. He is from here and is presently a counselor to Pres. Bester and also has been the head of CES here. I think he will be a good mission president. He already has some plans to help bring the church out of obscurity.

We came home and made some cream of broccoli soup for lunch – it was really good. We will go send off this email at the Mission office now with a few pictures and check for emails from our family.

Love, Sister Bullock

From Zimbabwe

Hi, Friday morning here about 10:30 - 8 hrs. ahead now that you are on daylight saving time. We met with a couple of different pastors this a.m. that LDS charities helps. (orphanages, etc.) We will go next Fri. and Sat, and see their places and meet the children. One helps about 200 children - most just come for school in the daytime and go home at night - they feed them 1 meal. The other one sounds like there are 12 children that live with them that they support as well as people in the community. They all have their gardens and rely heavily on that for food - corn and vegetables.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon with Pres. Neilds, who works with Deseret International and Unicef. He has done that for 20 years and is quite an expert at all that goes on here. A container has arrived full of medical supplies from the church. He showed us the process of taking delivery of it - papers to be stamped etc. We learned that it takes a lot of patience as nothing happens quickly here. He hoped to have the container here at our property yesterday but that didn't happen yet -- it was to be here at 9:00 this morning but we haven't seen it yet. It is a large railway container. He has 25 more coming in over the next little while. When we were at one place yesterday (for the 2nd time) the guy wanted him to pay $800 for using the container. Pres. Neild ask why, as it is Pres. Neild's container. The guy didn't quite no what to say about that. He said sorry and went back to his desk. After a while he came back and wanted him to pay $138 for storage. Pres. Neild ask why since they hadn't stored anything. Finally Pres. Neild went down the hall and talked to the head guy and he came out and told them to stamp the papers and that we didn't need to pay anything. The supervisor (lady) over the guy who was originally helping us was quite visibly not happy about that - but they gave us our stamped paperwork FINALLY!!

We will have 3 containers coming soon with wheelchairs - one for Zambia, 1 for Malawi and 1 for Zimbabwe. Each carries 250 wheelchairs. We are also getting a few other things as well - some
clothes, hygiene kits etc. I think we will request Pres. Neild's help when they arrive.

We order and buy the soap here in Harare. Also school scribblers etc. Whatever we can get here is good as it saves shipping costs (which are a lot).

Yesterday a young mother and her baby (with aids) came to talk to us. She wanted food. We don't have food to give. We did refer her to a place down the way that will give food to aids people. Bro. Neild was here when she came and we ask him to talk to her with us as we didn't really know what to do. He talked to her and told her that he could tell she was lying because her story wasn't adding up. I'm glad he was here to help us. We feel really bad for these people but he explained that they are very good liars and with time we will be able to tell who is genuine and who is not. She did have aids and looked thin etc. however he determined after talking with her that she is in medication for aids and is getting some help.

Monday two women came in and wanted to know if we could help them with something to keep the rain out of their residence. We talked and gave them each 2 blankets, water purification pills, soap and a little corn maize that the gardener had. We arranged for 1 to come back and weed and work in the garden for a while (we try not to give something for nothing, if possible). She did come back and then after her work we took her home so that we could see if there is anything we can do for their problem. What we saw was quite heart wrenching - I wanted to cry. Their homes consisted of a pole frame with some metal on the roof and plastic tarp wrapped around the outside. The plastic has deteriorated in places and when it rains they get water in. The floor was cement. It was about 10' x 10'. She has 2 teenage daughters and 3 boys. The other lady has 6 living in her place - a small baby as well. They cook outside on a bonfire. There was a whole village - all the same but most of their plastic walls were a little better. There are also some cinder block row houses there too about the same size - some had two rooms - some had roofs some did not. With 95% unemployment rate here, Pres. Neild says that there are quite of few of those areas. They do have their gardens though - thank goodness for that. Last year was bad for them because a lot of crops did not do well. This year the crops are better.

I think I told you before that all they eat is corn maize and a vegetable mix that they make. They eat that everyday and are happy with it.

We don't have any plastic we can give these ladies. We will keep our eyes open and ask around - luckily the dry season is coming shortly. It has rained quite a bit the past 3 days. The clouds roll through and it rains hard for a bit and then stops and the sun shines and then it rains hard again, etc.

The children at the Village

I wanted to tell you about the traffic signals here!! They are called 'robots'. Most of them do not work or sometimes one works going one way but nothing the other way. We have to be very careful driving through them. It is really quite a mix-up at most intersections. You just put your nose out and go when you can. Most people do not have cars so there is never a rush hour like at home but there is a fairly steady flow. Also the potholes are really a problem - we constantly try to miss them if possible. We saw a huge one yesterday.

When we got home last night the electricity was off (electricity is called Zesta here). We have a generator for our flat so we used that to cook supper and then we played a game by candlelight and went to bed early. It was still off this a.m. so we used the generator to cook our eggs and let it run for an hour to cool the fridge off a bit. It lasts pretty good if we don't open it. There was some frozen milk in the freezer that we thawed for breakfast but it was curdled. Yuck. There are several more packets of milk in the freezer so we will check them out. We may have to toss them.

The Turners that we replaced left quite a bit of food in the flat. They had stocked up when they had been to Joberg and up to Zambia last year when there was no food on the shelves here. (really! there was nothing to be had). They had to take vehicles and make food runs so that the 70 missionaries in Zimbabwe could have some food. It is much better now.

We spent our first night at the flat cleaning out the fridge and cupboards and organizing. She had the fridge packed full but must have forgotten about the stuff at the back because it was gross. We
threw a lot out and defrosted it. We also threw some stuff out of the cupboards too - however, Beauty, the house cleaner, was happy to go through it and took some. I was happy to have her do that. At least what was useable didn't go to waste. We still need to finish off some cupboards and see exactly what we have there.

We will go to the store today and buy some milk (UHT milk in cartons), oatmeal, eggs, and potatoes. We can buy the potatoes on the street if we want. They are okay.

I better get this sent off. Jim is helping do an audit for a branch that we help out at on Sundays (every other Sunday) as we have two. I will go check to see if the container has arrived yet.

Here are a few more pictures:

The Besters and Us

A bus system of sorts

Nancy under the Avacado Tree in our backyard

Love to all, Elder & Sis. Bullock

(see below for a letter they wrote on March 15 that I just posted. Kim)