Nov. 14-20, 2011 This week in the office

Dear All, 20 Nov. 2011

This week has been spent in the office catching up on our normal responsibilities that piled up last week while we were in England. We always travel with our laptop, but sometimes we can’t get on line, and then there are certain functions that we seem to be able to do only with our computers in the office. That is the hard part about traveling knowing that we will have a mountain of work waiting for us when we get back to the office. The good part is that we meet some wonderful people and get a better understanding and appreciation for what they are doing and some of the challenges they contend with. This is certainly not a 40 hr. / week calling.

Last week we were working in England to package the 20 computers set the church is donating and sending to the Cape Verde Islands. This week we were busy making sure the paper work for this shipment got to the appropriate hands so the shipment could be sent. On Friday we got word that the computers were all on a pallet and had been picked up by the shippers. The next step is to get them onto the ship and on their way. Even when the computers are on the ship we won’t be through with this project until we have them into port, unloaded, and to the distributing organization. Then we must have verification that they have been distributed to the intended recipients. This will take several more months before we have this project with its’ accompanying paper work completed and off our plate.

We have also been busy preparing some project books showing what the church has been doing over the years for the people of Macedonia and Kosovo. These then will be given to visiting government official from each of these countries so that they can see that having the church in their country is good and beneficial for their people. This all sounds straight forward and simple, but the corruption and politics in some of the governments make this a very difficult process requiring years of work. Then when a new government takes over we have to convince them that we can help their people. If the government really cares about their people then the process moves forward, if they don’t then it slows the process way down. As bad as you may think our government might be, it is not as blatantly corrupt as many in these eastern countries, and a dishonest government makes the people ( in order to survive ) dishonest.

On Tuesday a humanitarian couple assigned to Moldova flies into Frankfurt. We will have them with us for only 3 days of training, one of which will be Thanksgiving. So actually it is more like 2 ½ days. We have their days pretty full with what we want to teach them, while still trying to be sensitive to the Jet lag (they fly in from the MTC) they will have. They fly on Friday noon to Romania to meet the mission president before they carry on to Moldova. Saturday noon another couple will arrive from England where they live in route to Albania, we will have them with us for a week. However they will have received no training in the church Humanitarian system and so there is much more that we need to teach them and help them learn and understand. To really learn and understand the system takes months to accomplish. So with this couple we don’t have jet lag as a factor, but being realistic about what we can accomplish is a factor. We will follow up with a visit to each couple after they have been in country for about a month. This will give them a chance to see what they understand and what their questions are. Of course each time we do something like this it becomes a learning experience for us also.

We thought we would include a photo of the calendar for 2011 to give you an idea of what our schedule looks like.

We wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving day, remember it is relationships you share with others that counts, not who wins the football game.
We love you all,
Oma and Opa