The Miracle of Hastening the Work – Kum Ba Ya

       Let me tell you a little bit about the miracles of this mission. There are no white-boy or white-girl missionaries in this mission. Most of our missionaries are from Kinshasa, Madagascar, Cameroon, or other African French-speaking countries. There have never been single sister missionaries in Africa (not sure about South Africa).

 



President & Sister McMullin

        My companion, Sister Riendeau, is from France.  She moved to the United States when she was in her 20's.  She recently served a mission in Virginia and her mission president there, President Perry, was good friends with President McMullin (our mission president).  When President McMullin was called to serve as the mission president in the DR Congo, he called his good friend, President Perry in Virginia, to ask for advice and asked if he knew anyone who could help the Congolese sisters in the DR Congo mission to learn to read and write French.  Although French is the national language, there is much illiteracy because the people cannot afford to go to school.  French is not the language they grew up with, their native tongue is usually Swahili or Lingala.

           There is a new pilot mission program called Women’s Auxiliary Support (WAS) that President McMullin was able to use as a position that would qualify and justify single sisters coming to Africa.  Sister Riendeau and I worked together in the temple and she felt inspired to ask me to come with her.  During the prior year I had been down scaling and doing everything I could to get myself in a position so that I could eventually go on a mission.  I had no inkling of when I would ever get around to going, left to my own vices, but her invitation put my preparations into high gear, and I moved heaven and earth to get myself ready to go so that we could go together.

Preparing to come:

     One of the first things I had to do was to get my medical and dental in order.  Traveling to Africa requires a mandatory 45-minute consultation with the county travel nurse.  She explained about the country and the requirements for shots.  I ended up spending over $1,000 on shots.  I had shots for Typhoid, Yellow Fever, dTap, Hepatitis, TB test and I can’t remember what else.  When I was in the MTC and on the church’s international insurance, I was able to get the expensive Shingles shot paid for by insurance.  Also, a couple of days before leaving for the mission, we started taking Doxycycline to prevent Malaria.  We take a Doxycycline every day and will continue every day for two weeks after we return home.

     We arrived in Lubumbashi on December 10, 2013.  I’ve seen miracles and heard the stories of miraculous events of the other missionaries in the office.  The need here in the DR Congo is great!  However, the people are inspiring and they have a craving to learn and to be taught.  The country has big problems, and I will address some of these problems in subsequent posts.  The people want to learn and to better themselves; most of them cannot afford to go to school. 

L-R: Delphine, Brigitte, Sister Anthony, Rosalie, Sister Riendeau, Marie & Beatrice  Meeting with the Stake Relief Society Presidents of the five Lubumbashi stakes to organize French language classes for the Relief Society women.

      We started the French language lessons within a few weeks of arriving, and women came with babies on their backs. Sister Riendeau had to modify her lessons from teaching grammar and pronouns in present singular & plural tense to teaching the Congolese women how to write and pronounce the vowels then the consonants, then teaching them how to form and pronounce words.  They were excited when they discovered they could sound out words!  Some of these women had never written the number 2, or been able to recite the alphabet.  Of course, in some of the wards, Swahili is still prevalent, but that’s another story.  We have to use some of the more advanced students to translate from French into Swahili, and then back from Swahili into French.