Update!

2009-02-16
After being completely submerged by forces beyond our control, we are surfacing briefly to write a quick update here in Zambia. The minute our training couple headed for home, our internet went down and stayed down until just now. As we waved goodbye to the Sanford’s, our responsibilities looked completely overwhelming, but when we found out our internet tower had been destroyed by lightening, we knew we were burnt toast. We remember telling our children that we would most likely have steady internet on this mission because as we understood it, Zambia was a strategic hub for the Zimbabwe mission. Strategic hub indeed! But why did we think someone out there in the great-mission-expanse would be tenaciously holding the internet lines open just for us? How naïve was that? It reminds us of when we were first in Swaziland and we found out that our bath tub was supposed to serve two purposes: for bathing and for washing our clothes. “Well,” we thought, “we will just have to find a laundry mat!” We searched high and low for a laundry mat, and now we just laugh when we think back about it. There are only a handful of washing machines in the whole country of Swaziland, let alone a laundry mat full of them!
President Andre Bester is our mission president. He and his wife, Joy, are from South Africa. A few days after our arrival, they flew to Zambia to meet us, and Rand was called and set apart to be a counselor to Pres. Bester. Prior to this, in the few days that we had been here, we had decided to tell Pres. B. that we were definitely not the couple he needed for this particular job; we would most assuredly make a disaster of it. The Sanfords had lived, breathed and loved paper-work, accounting, filing, money changing . . . and the detailed list goes on and on. . . and not only did we HATE it—we would be TERRIBLE at it! Well, it is not possible to tell Pres. Bester to his face that you can’t do a thing when he is the President over one of the most challenging missions in the world. No, we came out of that meeting with Rand having been set apart to do precisely what we were sure we couldn’t do. (We will see if the Lord ALWAYS qualifies whom he calls and we’ll get back to you on that!)
One of the areas of responsibility here is running a Distribution service for the 10 branches and 24+ missionaries of Zambia. It is a huge task, and Sis. Sanford had been making it work remarkably well with her system, but for me, I was the oil and it was the water . . . it wasn’t a mix. Sister Sanford sent an alarm to the Area Office and within a few days, the head of SE African Distribution Operations flew to Zambia to meet with Rand and me. When he reviewed the amount of product being ordered here, and he saw the stockpile of Distribution product that is on hand in the rented flat adjoining ours, he was amazed. He said he only had one slot left for a Distribution Satellite store in all of the South East African Area and that he would recommend that Zambia get it. We drove him to our two chapels here in Lusaka and found a room in one of them that would be perfect for such a store. Brother Marius Von Molldendorf was a Godsend. He helped us address many other concerns also; he wrote them up and delivered them to the intended recipients at the Area Office. We asked him if he was one of the three Nephites—he wouldn’t fess up, but we think he really is.