Month: June 2020

Today they poured the cement floors and footings of the Distribution Center building by the temple.

Every day we see progress.  This is Hope.

We love to see the temple, we’ll go inside one day. . . .

Today was our last large Zone Conference here in the Cocody Stake Center.  We met with Elders from the 2 Abobo Zones and the Blankro District.  All of these missionaries live within the Greater Abidjan Area, so they are allowed to travel within the area to meetings.  We still have 12 Elders outside of Abidjan and 4 in Bamako who have not been able to come to these final Zone Conferences.    We are hoping to find a way to get permits to travel to where they are before Pres and Sis Binene depart.

Preparing for the conference.  Again, chairs have been spaced at safe distances, and everyone is required to wear a mask.

Elder Lewis is always taking care of the finances and accounts.

So this was my favorite thing today–watching these Elders (there are no Sisters in these zones) immediately go to the temple site to see the progress of our temple as soon as they arrived.  This is such an exciting and hopeful sight in so many ways

Ready to begin.  We had 28 Elders here today.

Here are a few of their beautiful masked faces!

Introducing the Bendixsens:

Lunchtime:

We continued this afternoon, talking about our mission culture, preparing people well for baptism and smartphones.

At the end, the Binenes shared their final testimonies and we sang “Called to Serve.”  We will really miss the Binenes.  They have been such fine examples to us of Christlike service and love.

After the conference, we gave out the rest of the emergency rice and the garments that were ordered.

Tired, but happy:

Packing up to go:

It’s hard to believe that we are coming to the end of this mission era with Pres and Sis Binene.  We are all praying that the borders will open soon so they can return home to the Congo and so the Bendixsens can come and join us.   John and I are happy to be here now, helping with the transition.

As we drove to the office this morning, I was excited to see our new neighbors have arrived.  We heard there were some sheep and chickens moving in next to our mission offices–and they’ve come!  I met the Ivorian man who has cleaned out an old building next to us to house his beloved animals.

These are his rams.

And these are his lovely lady sheep.

He also has one room full of chicks.

Too bad we are moving just as they are arriving.  I think these friends would be fun neighbors!

Meanwhile at the office, the mission van was being hosed out.  Car wash day!

Here’s how the temple site is looking this week!  The Distribution Center building is moving above the ground now and dirt is moving around the temple.

 

 

John is always happy to help with the issues that come up, like medical reimbursements.  These Sisters came today to get some help with a prescription.  He’s also preparing for the mission audit next week.

While he did that, I went to work with the new paper shredder we just got.  We have years and years of financial records to shred.  It’s going to take awhile to get through them all.

We have some other exciting news.  Our Mission Office is moving!  Both the Abidjan East and West Mission Offices and Mission Homes are changing locations.  The Mission Presidents and their wives are moving into new side-by-side apartments across the street from the Cocody Stake Center.  The Mission Offices will move into a new space next week.  We have to be out of our current mission home by the end of the month.

The Binene Family is moving today into a temporary apartment in Marcory until they return to the DRC Congo sometime after July 1st.  Pres and Sis Bendixsen will attend their Mission Presidents’ Training Seminar next week via Zoom.  As soon as the borders open, they will come and the Binenes will go.  These are all exciting changes coming soon to our mission!

These are the records that are too old to keep.

Meanwhile, back at home, the trash was picked up today.  By hand.

Today was our 3rd of 4 Zone Conferences.  It looks like all 4 will be held in the Cocody Stake Center while other buildings are being painted and maintained.  Today we met with the 18 members of the Dokui Zone.  This is a great zone.  Reverent, respectful and trying hard to be good.

We followed the strict COVID-19 restrictions, wearing masks and keeping a safe distance between us.  That makes it a little tricky to take pictures!

Our wonderful lunch lady!

This afternoon we had a good discussion about mission culture and things we do well and things we need to work harder on.

At the end of a long day, Pres and Sis Binene shared their final testimonies with us.  We will really miss them.

Temple garment orders have arrived for missionaries who ordered new garments.

I love the fabrics and I love the hairstyles.  I wish I could be so bold and fun.

Today was our second Zone Conference, following the same agenda as yesterday with our Cocody Zone.  It’s a wonderful thing to be with the missionaries and it’s an especially wonderful time for Pres and Sis Binene to teach and share their testimonies one last time.

Here are a few photos from today:

My favorite tie today:

It was pouring rain today as we made our way to the Cocody Stake Center for our first of 4 Zone Conferences, beginning with the Grand Bassam Zone.

Missionaries arriving in taxis.

Everyone had their COVID masks on and space around them.

This morning we had farewell testimonies from missionaries who have completed their 18 months or 2 years, but are still here, waiting for borders to open.  They are troopers!

We also had training from 2 missionaries, the APs and Sis Binene, who talked to us about Elder Packer’s classic 1976 talk, “Spiritual Crocodiles.”

Saying hello to Pres and Sis Bendixsen!

At 1:00 we had a lunch break.

This afternoon Pres Binene taught about mission culture and we talked about things we can do to make this an even better mission.  We talked about the positive and the negative and ways we can improve.   It was a great discussion.

Then we spent an hour or more continuing the smart phone training, preparing for when the missionaries will receive their phones.  We had planned for that to happen today, but we had no wifi and we’re still sorting things out with the SIM cards.

At the end of the day, Pres and Sis Binene shared their final testimonies with their missionaries.  It’s hard to believe that their 3 years are quickly coming to a close.

We had a full day and a wonderful conference!  These are great missionaries serving in interesting times.

Today we met with our district (smaller group) to go over the things the Zone Leaders learned last week in MLC.   We had a lesson on being obedient to the smartphone rules.  If you keep the commandments you receive the blessings.  Everyone received the insert for the white handbooks about the smartphones.

The APs and our Zone Leaders.