A list of all the good things happening ...

First, about two weeks ago Paul C. Johnson the commissioner of church education came to Cape Verde. It was big news - we rarely get that kind of a visiting authority here - so we wanted to involve as many of the seminary and institute youth as we could. That meant Elder Mathews spent days with a brother here in Praia trying to figure out how to make the church webcast equipment work. Success!! That night we webcasted Elder Johnson's talk to all the other islands. In Praia he spoke to a full chapel - actually an overflowing chapel. Here he is with his translator and some pictures of the full house.

Second, we had an amazing baptism a few weekends ago. We focus on baptizing families but families are often scattered or not complete here. So when we have a baptism like this one we get excited. This is a father with his 6 sons. All of the sons were baptized and the mother and father will be soon. I was able to get the white shirts and ties for them from some donations that were sent. The next day at church one of the sons sought me out and thanked me for doing that for him and his brothers. These young men are so gooood.

Third, we had the fourth stake conference of Praia just last week. They announced they had 36 missionaries serving and 6 more waiting for visas. Here are four who got their visas and left the week before conference to begin their training in Brazil. The Sister with the name tag had been serving as a "mini-missionary" in our mission just to help us out when one of the Sisters went home.

Mindelo Stake also has about that many missionaries serving and the Fogo District has even more. I can't wait to see what this country will be like when all those missionaries come home. It is booming now but then I think it will really take off. They are still learning so much and it is rewarding to see the maturing of the stake and wards we attend. The leadership is all still sooooo young but they are so humble and wanting to do the right things. They just need some more experience. Can you imagine being so stranded out here and never having seen how things are done and then be expected to do it right.The other week we found out that a branch in Fogo had called a brother to be the Primary President. Read the manual - it never actually says you can't call a man. But this is a little example of some of the things they still need to understand and learn. And by the way, the brother said yes and was doing a great job!

And last but not least. Our biggest news is that this week - just two days ago - we officially opened the island of Maio. It is the island to the east of the one we are on. It will be part of the Praia Stake. The Assistants went there two weeks ago with President Oliveira and rented two apartments - one for the missionaries that would be sent there (Elder Christensen, one of the assistants, and Elder Rice) and one apartment to be the church. It is amazing to me how ready these people are and how great our missionaries are.  The first day they arrived Elder Christensen was in a taxi with Elder Bruce (the other assistant) when they saw a man walking down the road. Elder Christensen felt this overwhelming feeling to tell the taxi driver to stop. He did and Elder Christensen jumped out and ran to the man not knowing why. When he got to him the words just flew out of his mouth, "You know who I am and you know why I am here." The man nodded and began to weep. He was a member of the church but when he moved to Maio, because there was no church there, he had gone inactive. But the Spirit had been calling him back and he had been praying to know what to do.  Wow! They have also had others come up to them and say they too are members. The "group" opens officially this Sunday and we hope it will be a branch in no time. We have spent days getting everything ready - missionary supplies, hymn books, sacrament trays, manuals for SS and RS and Priesthood,etc etc. This is us with Elder Rice trying to get all the stuff on the boat that would take the Elders back to Maio. First the missionary's beds.

 There go the mattresses.

 Now the crate full of boxes filled with missionary supplies and household items they might not be able to buy on this small island.

 I love all the safety regulation at the port - oh yeah I forgot - THERE ARE NONE! A while back, I almost got hit in the head by one of the cages as they hoisted it up. Holden pushed me out of the way - and just in time.

 Helping these Elders get ready to go reminded us of the experience we had Boa Vista just last February.

We went there because President was not able to go - it was when Robert was acting Mission President. Anyway we had people coming up to us in Boa Vista so excited that the church would be opening. Many were inactive for the same reason the man in Maio was. Others had listen to part of the missionary discussions and had not been baptized yet. They literally asked if they could be baptized now. Others had family members who had joined and asked to know more. Boa Vista has boomed. They had nearly 100 members at church last week.

This year around Thanksgiving (not that they celebrate it here) we will be going to Sao Nicolau - a northern island - and doing just what we did in Boa Vista and what the President and the assistants did in Maio. We will go with the assistants (now Elder Bruce and Elder Fogulburg) and gather all the members we can find and hold the first sacrament meeting.  We will also look for an apartment for the missionaries and a church site so that island can be opened. Once it is open then 9 of the ten islands of CV will be open!

We have been able to open Boa Vista, Maio and Sao Nicolau because of the huge influx of missionaries. Keep them coming! Our mission has double in size since we arrived. It has made for double the work in the office - double the accounting, double the apartments, double the mail, double the shipping to island with anything from cases of Book of Mormons to mattresses to washing machines, double the amount of missionaries traveling by plane or boat or haice - and it is catching up to these two old people. But we LOVE it. 

Do we look tired? If not we feel it!

Off to the Northern Islands

For some time now we have needed to go to the northern islands to install the CO alarms in the apartments and to bring the water filters they will need to last them until March. But the trip turned into much more than that. We arrived late on Thursday night. President had asked us to teach/train at the Mindelo Zone Conference on Friday. I spoke for 30 minutes and Robert for an hour. Then he asked Robert to speak for him at the Saturday evening session of their Stake Conference and to speak at the Sunday morning session as well. He did great at both. They asked me to bear my testimony at the Sunday one - with zero notice - but I did okay. It was fun to be there as this was the first Stake Conference they have had sense they were organized. And it proved to be historic as they called their first Patriarch.

This is the new patriarch and this young woman had just returned from her mission in Brazil the night before. We met her in the airport.

The children here love to have their picture taken so they gathered around in a hurry and begged me to take this. Aren't they cute.

That is a lot to do in 3 days as there are 10 apartments in Mindelo and they are scattered everywhere. And of course some needed repairs which we managed to do in our spare time. HA.

That is two missionaries walking down the road near their apartment. I would have never found it.
The only reason we had any success is because of the taxi driver the missionaries recommended. His name is George and he knew where every apartment was. They jokingly call him the other Zone Leader. He took us to each apartment, waited patiently for us to finish in each and then drove us to the next one. He even knew where the closest hardware stores were.
Here are a few picture of Mindelo.

On Monday we woke up early to catch the ferry to Santa Antao - an island we had never been too. The ferry ride was so fun as this ferry is an open air one and the view of the ocean and the two islands was beautiful

But the real beauty was yet to be seen. We rented a car and drove around the edge of the island to two apartments in two very remote towns, Ponto de Sol and Coculi. Did I say edge. Yes. But first we had to go through the mountain to get to the edge.

                                 

Then on the way back instead of driving along the coast we drove across the island back to  Porto Novo where we had started. The center of the island was amazing. We felt like we were in Colorado. Cool air, green mountains and PINE TREES. That is a sight you do not see anywhere else in Cape Verde. And did I mention we went over, around and on the edge of the mountains?

The next day Robert did some training at their zone conference and we had lunch with the 8 missionaries that make up this tiny zone. It was great. The next day we headed back by ferry to Mindelo. We took two missionaries back with us because of some health issue. The one on the left is serving here from Mozambique.

Once back, we did some more repairs on apartments, the purchasing of a new stove and other things they needed. Then with nothing else to do, and no hotel to go to, we just wondered around Mindelo looking at the sites - and finding an ice cream shop. We finally ended up sitting in the praça where we picked up the free internet to check our email and were able to facetime with Danielle. Randomly she was making 'purple-licious" cupcakes and we were able to see the purple dough on Ava and Ella's faces. I love technology! By late afternoon we were more than ready for George to pick us up and take us to the airport. That night we flew into Praia. It is always good to be home. That would be the big island at the bottom of the group. I loved this globe in Mindelo. I think they think these islands are a bit bigger than they really are.

Volcanoes and Hurricanes

We headed back to Fogo last week to follow up on the training  with the Elder's Quorums and on the apartment inspections.
The first thing we noticed is that it had rained in Fogo and things were getting green! Whoever named these islands must have arrived just after the rainy season.  Here is the picture of the first night we arrived.

But there was only one problem - it was still raining. It was just on and off but trust me when you are on the only road going around this island - which is part dirt, part cobblestone and hugging cliffs with no guardrails -you are paying attention to just how much it is raining. As we traveled on Saturday to visit apartments and participate in a District meeting with the missionaries in Cova Figueira, the rain wasn't bad.

Note the boulder in the above picture. That was not there the last time we passed through here. Maybe we should have been worried about more than the rain.

By Sunday it was a little worse and made for some interesting interactions as we had to go back and forth between the towns on the east side of the island a few times for training. Here is a picture of us coming up on our first town early Sunday morning.

And here is the view in the town right under the volcano. I was standing by the church when I took it. Those clouds looked eerie.

 There are a few slopes on that side of the island coming down from the volcano that are somewhat dangerous in the rain. They are where the past lava flows have made ditches in the side of the mountain in which the rain water comes down in a rush. (you know - the places I have spoken off in past post where cars have been swept off the road and carried all the way down the slopes into the ocean - true stories.) We came on one such place as the young men of the nearby town were trying to clean off the dirt and rocks that had washed down onto the road. It is a narrow road with a steep drop off on one side and of course with no guard rails. And it doesn't help that the tires of the car spin a bit in the mud as you pass over. We went through it 3 times trying to get back and forth to our different meetings. Obviously the worse had passed by the time we took this picture.

The above picture is an attempt to take a picture of the drop off and the ditch down to the ocean. It isn't a very good one as I am not too keen on hanging my head out the window when the wheels are spinning in mud on the edge of cliffs.
We made it back to the hotel at 6:30 on Sunday night. Long day considering we left at 7:30 that morning. I was ready to relax but no. That is when the rain really hit and it come with some serious wind. This was the scene outside our window  just before it really hit. Looks a lot different than it did the first night we arrived. We couldn't even see Brava or the ocean!

We don't have access to much TV here - nor do most people on these islands - so we didn't realize we were being hit by the beginnings of Hurricane Humberto. Most hurricanes in the Atlantic start with a tropical depression near or around Cape Verde and then move on to more open waters to become a real Hurricane, but Humberto was packing a punch already. We didn't know what it was until we received an email from our sweet Stake President in Kingwood the next morning. The storm stayed with us Sunday and Monday. I must have received 20 phone calls from missionaries all over the south islands complaining about water coming into their apartments - and they were all on upper floor apartments. The rain was coming in from the balconies that have little or no drainage and through the roofs. One apartment on the top floor had standing water in it from the rain was coming through the roof so fast. They only get a few inches of rain a year here so they build their homes and cities accordingly. The roads became ditches in such situations. The water was so powerful on some roads that the dirt under the cobblestones was washed away and the the very stones themselves tumbled down the streets.
We were supposed to leave Monday but our flight was obviously cancelled. The airlines put us up in an hotel. It was actually nicer than the one we we had been staying in so we couldn't complain. We spent the day walking around looking at the mess the rain had made. Here is a picture of it coming through a ravine in downtown Sao Filipe.

 We ran into the missionaries and they said they had been to the ravine too. They told us the people were so fascinated by the water force that some teenage boys threw a small refrigerator off the bridge to see how far the water would take it. Apparently all the way to the ocean.

The next morning they managed to get us home but oh what a ride. Fogo has a very tiny airport, with a very short runway and the wind was howling. You know you are in trouble when you feel turbulence and they haven't even started the engines. That tiny plane shook with every gust of wind. It was a bumpity ride but fortunately it only lasted a little over 20 minutes.  Praia never looked so good!
Those of you who know my fear of winding narrow roads near cliffs and of flying know I would only do this for one cause. It reminded me of the hymn, I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go Dear Lord. Remember the line -  It may not be on the mountain height or over the stormy sea? Well it has been!