May 1st-20th recap of Secunda mother's day zimbabwe temple trip Ughanda in SLC

This is a good time to recap all our regular Area Office meetings. Every Tuesday (When we are in town), we have a team meeting which includes: Sean (the SE Area PA Director), Elder and Sister Kyle (Assist. Dir.) and Sister Shupe (Admin). We discuss the Public Affairs events going on, discuss hosting opportunities, what our other SE Africa couples are doing and what help they need, organizational issues, newsroom and Facebook opportunities and give out assignments for the various weekly events.

Every Wednesday morning, Elder Kyle attends a visa meeting, which includes the area visa team, Elder Kyle,  legal council and Sean. They discuss the various visa problems with the SE area countries. Currently the Church is having problems getting missionary visas to enter several different countries and now South Africa has changed it's immigration laws, so it is more difficult to get visas than before. One of the countries no longer has any missionaries because of these issues. This group that meets weekly discusses actions that can help with this problem and each week they deal with any lingering issues or new problems that come up.

A good thing that happened recently is a trip to the United States by an important Uganda government official encouraged and organized by our Uganda Public Affairs couple, the Hansens. Public Affairs SE Africa and Salt Lake City agreed to host this woman in Salt Lake, to take her on a tour of the Church there and show her what our church is really about. It was a very impressive report on what happened in SLC when our guest arrived.

The guest was Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament and is the first female Speaker in the history of the Parliament in Uganda. Other Visitors included: Senior Protocol Officer, Principal Personal Assistant, Aide de Camp, Church member and friend of the Speaker.

Member of Uganda Parliament receiving gift from Bednar

The visit included: a tour of the Humanitarian Center; meeting with the head of  LDS Charities; having an outstanding meeting with Elder Bednar who had been to Uganda earlier this year (He presented her with a family values statue); a visit to Welfare Square; a visit to the Utah State Capital where the group met with Senate President Wayne Niederhauser;  a dinner with Elder F. Michael Watson and former Mission President of the Uganda Kampala Mission, Eric Jackson and his wife Kaye; a trip to BYU and the MTC;  a session at the  Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsal at the Conference Center; a visit to  the Hinckley Institute of Politics; a tour of Temple Square and a visit to the Legacy Theatre to see the Joseph Smith film,  among others.

Madam speaker was very complimentary of the friendliness, interest and warmth of the people she met in Utah. As she returned to Uganda, she took the time to send a quick note en route thanking all for the “time, love, and attention” she received from so many.

These trips always have a positive effect on our visitors and hopefully they understand that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wants to follow the Saviors example and help those in need. In Uganda they have humanitarian efforts there over the years that have affected thousands of Ugandans. Most of the time, top government officials are not aware of the thousands of hours of work and millions of dollars spent in their countries to help provide clean water, wheelchairs, eye care, vaccinations, neonatal resuscitation for newborns and so much more.

Sister Soko and new baby

On Mother's Day, I organized for the young women to write a note to their mothers that would go into a plastic heart (left over decorations from the wedding) and a note about Mothers being as precious as pearls (with a pearl on the card). I also took photos of each girl the week before and printed out small cameos of each. Those also went into the heart. We sealed up the decorative hearts and along with a plate of poppy seed bread gave one to each mother. There are not that many mothers in our small little branch, so the members also got poppy seed bread. Everyone was happy this day. My mother's day present was to do this for our Branch mothers, because they need to be appreciated for all they do...one of my happiest Mother's Days (except for missing my own children). The talks in sacrament were short, but sweet. Because of a shortage of members in this little branch, often the missionaries are called on to speak and the four assigned to this branch do a great job of speaking spur of the moment. They also bless and pass the sacrament and teach classes. They are learning so much by serving here. Sister Soko is the Branch President's wife and she had a new baby recently...I took photos of her with the baby and printed them out for her for Mother's Day. She leads the primary. She closed her eyes to show that me that she needed to sleep when the baby sleeps...Ha...not when you teach primary!

These are the cameo photos we took of the girls to give to their mothers. The girls really enjoyed making their gift and enjoyed giving it to their mothers. The two sisters in my class got to double gift their mom and she was all smiles as she thanked me for doing this for the mothers (Sisters are the two with the fake wood background - Dimpho is 17 and Morongwa is 13). The one in the blue was just visiting this day and is a young single adult that came into our class by mistake, but I told her she could stay if she wanted and she did. She even got to take a gift to her mother who was not there. Aren't they all beautiful!

We learned early on in May that a group of youth and adult members in Zimbabwe were planning a temple trip to Johannesburg on May 20th and we were instructed to videotape and take photos of the group while there were here. This was to be a co-effort with another department that has been assigned with creating African photos and videos that can be used here in Africa. They have also created a Southeast Africa web page called https://www.africase.lds.org There are great inspirational stories from members all over Africa on there. We arranged for an intern's husband who is majoring in videography to tape the youth at their various activities while they were here. Sister Nielsen who does the Liahona conducted the interviews so they could be taped. We haven't seen the outcome yet, but I got to talk to part of the group who came from Harare. They were getting ready to go home and telling me what a great time they had. Many expressed a desire to stay longer. Many adults and youth were attending the temple for the first time. We were asked to record the event, so that other youth groups would see the video and want to do a temple trip as well. One of the Zimbabwe women that I spoke to said she hopes that trips like this will show the youth that the world is bigger than the town they came from and make them want to experience more of it, but most of all she hopes they now have a desire to get married in the temple and come back and visit often. There were 35 youth and 65 total members who came all the way from Zimbabwe by bus. We heard that they had a GREAT time.