March comes in like an Elephant, Zebra, Rhino, Hippo....and it's gone!

Grab a pillow this is a catch up blog so be ready!

Elder and Sister Wollenzien Johannesburg Temple.
Yes this is us but to begin the very long Blog we want to say...
(Shauna I did not have a picture of you and sam on this new computer).



 Sam! Parabens!
May 3rd, 2012
Estamos Orgulhosos de ti. Sao um bom trabalhador! Voce pode realizar qualquer meta que voce deseja. Boa Sorte no seu futuro.
Nos te amamos muito.
Sua Mai e Seu Pai 

What A great Daddy and pack mule.

Sam and Brylee at Lake Alice

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam Carrying Brylee and other stuff.

 Sam with Tate and Brylee at the end of a day! What a dad!

                        So Here we are to the end of April. WOW!
               March and April came in like a herd of animals of  many kinds.
               What do we mean by that well let me tell you what we mean.

Dr. Little, Heidie McSweeny, her Dad and Elder Wollenzien

The first week of March we had a special meeting here in Maputo with many from the Health Ministry of Mozambique and representatives from A.A.P., Save the children, MCHIP, WHO,hospitals from Northern Provinces of Mozambique, etc.

Naldo (left) getting to know a woman in the ministry.

It was to discuss making HBB (Helping Babies Breath) the national standard for birth attendants in Mozambique. We had our specialist Heidi McSweeney and her father fly over to attend. They are the  Short Term Specialist Missionaries over HBB for Mozambique and Angola. There was a lot of ground work put into the meeting by many people and the meeting was good but the the best part was we had several conversations with some very important people who had a  lot of questions about the church and its intentions. Many thought we gave humanitarian efforts and expected something from them in return. They thought we expected them to join the church or give the church money. They were very surprised to find out we were to NOT proselyte at all during our humanitarian efforts. One of our best experiences was the meeting we sat in with all these women from different organizations asking us questions about the church. It was wonderful.

Well the meeting was a help in finding information about the needs in northern Mozambique which was our goal and so thanks to Heidi we have a project approved for the end of August in Quelimani, Zambezia, Mozambique.
We enjoyed Heidi and her father John so much and we will be glad to see them again in August.
The day they were leaving we left to drive to Johannesburg South Africa. We had  a Country Directors conference for a week.
Wow it was so different to drive from Mozambique to South Africa.

Country Directors Africa South East Area  March 2012 Johannesburg Temple.

I hate to describe it as I may offend the people I love so much in Mozambique.

In Johannesburg we stayed at a very nice complex close to the Church office buildings and the Temple. We attended classes on finance training and information about our specific Country Director call.
We were taught by some people from Salt Lake City and the Southeast area Presidency and Thabo, our Area Manager from South Africa.
It was a wonderful conference and we were able to talk out some big problems each of us are facing in our call to this area of  Africa. It  was so helpful to share our experiences and good for South Africa to hear our concerns.

A  nice garden and fountain in complex. Nothing like this in Mozambique.

We met some
wonderful people from each of the countries in our area which is south east Africa.
A cousin of John's, Brad Wilkes and his wife Karen, are country directors in Rwanda and it was fun to get to know them. We were able to go to the temple with our
entire group the afternoon of the last day and it was so wonderful to be in the temple again.
Each couple we met brought so much to the conference and we learned so much from them. We can hardly wait until next March.
We especially enjoyed our last day there. We were able to go on a drive to a game reserve area and were told we may be able to see some animals if we were lucky. We  gave it a shot. We left 4 a.m. and had a flat tire on the way but the group of people we were with made even the   flat tire in the dark a lot of fun.

John W and John B and sister Grey fixing tires.

Name of game reserve.

We rode in a van with Brother and Sister Grey from the middle of England and serving in Madagascar (they were originally called to MLS in Russia and while int the MTC they were changed to country directors in Madagascar...go figure) and John and Debbie Benich from  Kaysville.

We had so much fun. They were all willing to let John be himself and ride through the reserve with the doors to the van wide open and etc.

We were excited as every corner we took, of course traveling the dirt roads different from the rest of the caravan, we saw an animal around every corner.
Our driver was a great comedian and we spent all of  Friday enjoying Gods creations, lots of laughter and good company.
I will throw in a couple of pictures to enjoy as you read the rest of this horribly long blog. (Videos of animals at the end.)

Baby Elephant.

We just stopped...and waited...and waited.

This monkey wants the Banana dad opened in the van.

 The day we arrived home from South Africa our specialists or Short Term Specialist Missionaries  over Wheelchairs were here.
We have been working hard since we arrived in Mozambique to try and get this project going. The ministry of women's social has been so slow in getting the agreements signed  that will clear the customs fees for the wheelchairs to come into the country. You see the church will not pay bribes or fees like that. They canceled this project last year for this reason. This last December we were approved to try a project again starting from where we left off. It has been long and drawn out but  we know others are praying for these projects as one day when we thought for sure it would be cancelled again things just started to move forward.
We decided to just keep going and hope for the best.

You Know what this is .

 We arranged for 40 wheelchairs to be shipped in to use for the training. This, the church did pay for and then if the ministry of Health signs the waiver the other 260 chairs and walking devices will be shipped. Elder Dow just thought maybe if they see what happens at the training and giving out these 40 chairs they will know we mean what we say.  But then they have only 45 days to sign the waiver. This will be May7th.
 Elder and Sister Dow and 5 Clinical and Technical trainers form the US were here.
Tuesday we began our wheelchair project. The Dow's were a big part of helping us pull all the last minute details together.Cantol Pondja was the person representing AJODEMO our partner organization. But we also had to work with the Ministry of women's social action.

What in the World?

The training began and so for 3 days the trainers form the U.S. taught the technicians and clinicians from Maputo Mozambique how to care for and assess  persons who may need a wheelchair.
Some of the participants at the beginning were very hesitant about being taught and being in this type of situation but by the time the training was over they were so thrilled at the knowledge they just received and the opportunity they had to help  individuals in need.
The closing ceremony was a great opportunity for the newly trained clinicians and Technicians to share their feelings. Most were too shy but they elected spokes people who remarked about the very different experience they just had. They were thankful for the knowledge they had received and for the opportunity to serve the people who received the first 20 wheelchairs.
They were also very impressed with the trainers from the US who came and commented about the different feelings they had working with them.They were amazed that the training was so wonderful and done all volunteer. People here don't really know how to serve without pay.

Missionaries, and translators waiting for 40 wheelchairs.

We hired 3 return missionaries (all Mozambicans) to translate for the trainers who spoke only English. The participants were so amazed by these 3 young men from their own country. When the young men were introduced and thanked at the end of the training the participants all cheered for them.  We also found 2 inactive members of the church in this training and 2 men were very interested in having the missionaries come and teach them more about the church.

Elder Wollenzien carries in a long awaited wheelchair.

The greatest thing about the training (beside the orange T-shirt we designed)was the change of heart these very reluctant and very qualified Mozambique doctors had during the training. I saw the servers for the caterers and the return missionaries offer very helpful services to the participants who came already in wheelchairs.They really loved learning. They could tell there was a special feeling in this training and they all commented about it sometime during the training.
So I will include some highlight pictures but there is so much we learn by doing these projects and the process that we could never explain or show what it is like. You will just have to go on a mission to experience it.
Did I mention how grateful we are to be having this experience to work with the people of Mozambique?   And now we will wait until the 7th of May.

Cantol Pondja watches the chairs being unloaded.

Learning to assemble and size a chair for patients.

Learning the specifics about a wheel chair and size etc.

Trainers, Translators and Nelsa our Public Affairs person for Mo

The Trained  and translators in their T-Shirts.

4 recipients just enjoying their new life.

These newly trained are excited for Chelsy to get her chair. Zoom in and notice the tear running down Chelsy's cheek.

This man In wheelchair,dragged himself all the way across town to come to try to receive a wheelchair. Elder Wollenzien left and Cantol and his daughter Selita on the right.  We saw 2 others today come in dragging themselves. One was a lady who had stumps for legs but her arms had become her legs. She was so pretty.

This man's face says it all. Doesn't he look peaceful and happy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doqa-td5sj8
The MonkeysMVI_0269.AVI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdO-Reqwk8k
 the HippoMVI_0238.AVI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SKe8T-5Fak
Elephants for AnsleyMVI_0212.AV

So after the Wheelchair training (still in March) we had 2 handover ceremonies for a Clean Water Project which was started by the previous missionary couple and has actually been finished since last January. The two schools on this project have never had a hand over ceremony because of some problems which occurred and so since February we have been working on clearing up those problems the best we can getting the pumps and latrines for the schools ready to hand over to the school and Municipal.

Students at small school singing national anthem!

We don't want to go into much detail about this but we were able to pull off the 2 handover ceremony's

'James' is in this. The children starting to gather

One school has 7000 students and they seemed to have them pretty well behaved for 7000 children. The other school had close to 3000students. Mind you their students come and go all day. 3-4 hour blocks of school. So not all the children were there at once. Even though it looked like it to me. I never saw so many little Mozambique children. There was one fellow who stood out above the rest at one school. Very tall, wore funny gloves on his hands and the look and smile on his face was so familiar.  John and I were separated but we both saw this young man. When we got together I asked if he saw a boy who looked just like James he said he did. He pointed right to him. He wanted me to see him. We did not get a good picture of him.  It was so amazing the similarities to my Nephew James at 12 years old. 
When I first saw him I worked my way through the sea of children to talk to him. I felt this need to tell him he was a child of God and that Heavenly Father Loves him so much. As I got up to him I couldn't believe how he looked like 12 year old James. I almost started to cry but then I was being whisked along by the sea of kids so I quickly said" You speak English don't you?" (I had no idea) Amazingly he said yes and so I told him that He was a child of God and this God was his Heavenly Father who loved him very much. I also told him he was very special and to remember that Heavenly Father Loved him. And off I was whisked.
He just kept looking at me the rest of the program.I thought in my mind. Here is a child who happens to know English and you have about 3 seconds to tell him the most important thing you can tell him. What would that be? So I told him.

children gathering for ceremony at big school.

More students gather.Notice the school conditions. There are no desks inside.

At the big school of 7000 I was standing in the middle of hundreds of these beautiful children and they were all trying to get as close to me as they could at first I worried and John wondered if I would be trampled to death but  then a calm came over me and I realized this is one of my dreams come true. To be in the middle of hundreds of African children. One was crying because another pushed him too hard. I gave him a hug and he hugged me back so hard. I then said "Tudo Bem?" and He smiled and said "Tudo Bem!".

Parents and community for ceremony.

The ceremony was conducted by a great and very young counselor of a  Branch Presidency in the area. His first time to conduct something like this. It was good for him and the local people get to know who he is in his church.

Counselor in Branch presidency tall white shirt and Lady from municipal and Nelsa (P.R. Mozambique she is awesome).

women sing at ceremony

New Bathrooms at big school.

The new water source at the school.

We were glad to have these school complete. 
 And that was March. And let me recap April.
Oh The Best Thing Of the Month OF April was:
We finally Got Tate and Brylee and Loch's package.
Thanks Shauna and Sam. It was like huge pretzel fest.
We tried to make them last but they were soooooooooooooooosooooooooo GOOD!
Thank You Guys. IT only took 3 months but oh did we enjoy. We loved the valentine.It arrived on the 25th of April.April was full of trips to the ministry of health to get papers signed for our HBB project in Quilemani, catching up on paper work and lots of meetings with the ministry, Trying to decide if John has shingles or not, seeing face painting at a members birthday party, Meeting the Louthan's, working in the distribution center of course, Helping Hands service day,meeting the producer, editor of Mozambique TV (their public television station), watching conference and now we are getting ready to travel to the north to check on some existing water projects and to find another and to visit with the senior couples way out there. This mission is so huge. Long. The length of 2 of California. But we first have to see what happens to Johns shingles if they are shingles and not a parasite. 
And So it being the end of April I am finished catching up.
If anyone reads this great . If not I will have it for my journal. 
So here are a few pictures more just to look at if you would like to. 
Did I mention how much I love my companion? He is the best. Shingles or parasite. He is the greatest missionary. Everyone loves him and tries so hard to talk to him. We just don't like it when he doesn't feel good. He is such a tease and boy do people like him.
Did we also mention how much we love these people here in Mozambique and how grateful we are to be here. Vanessa, member one year just was called today to district calling. No one in family a member. The Senda family just returned from doing all they could to  travel 1with their 6 little children to be sealed in Johannesburg temple. They have nothing but now they have everything! They are the best family.
Those who have ears to hear let them hear. Many are the only member in their family. Ivalter is John's favorite little 3 year old guy. His mom comes to church every week and to every service activity and serves where needed all alone. So many strong strong people.


 

  

Face paining at the Castanheira's

Nicole, this is not what was meant by 'turn the other cheek'.

This cake. Oh My Gosh. Brielle the sides are solid Chocolate standing up.

 

More face paining. Just like home.

BATMAN!

The Louthan's. They are P.R. from Zambia. She,Vonda, was my cousin Susan's best friend growing up in Springville. So we meet in Mozambique. Like meeting Russell Frandsen from Highland at my door here in Mozambique.

We love the Hall's. THE OFFICE couple.

Helping Hands we cleaned a huge City park. It was beautiful when we left.

 

Vanessa and Albertina.Good Friends. One is member one year and called to District calling today. Only member in family. Albertina and her brother come every week to church and during the week help with youth programs. They come to church alone and with a big big smile. Albertina is the young womens president in her branch. Just called last month. Almost 20yrs old.

I taught them how to make a good jumping picture.