25 January 2016

Hi Everyone, 

We had a good discussion with Joseph.  The Bishop wanted us to meet with him to teach him about the Temple but he works on Sundays.  We went to his apartment on Sunday late afternoon to talk Temple preparation.  I was able to discuss the law of tithing with him clearly and understandably in French according to Sandy though there were grammatical errors.  I felt the influence of the Holy Spirit there.  I think the Lord has great things for Joseph through faithfulness on his part.

We met with the Human Resource people at Mercy Hospital and they were quite positive about opportunities for Phlebotomists, CNAs and MA.  We are hopeful that  some of these will pan out in jobs for our people.

We had good discussions with Janvier, Joren and Jan this week at our apartment.  We enjoy dinner and a discussion.  It was particularly good to have Joren and her boys to dinner.  The boys are active, inquisitive little folks who really enjoy the visit. 

We have not yet resolved Joren’s apartment issue.  I tried to get an appointment with General Assistance to understand more about the program and how we can help Joren better but the GA people are closed and difficult to talk to, unlike the Refugee Assistance and Public Housing people we’ve dealt with.  We’ve asked Joren to make an appointment with her GA counselor and we will go in with her.

We had the missionaries at our apartment this week for pizza during the regularly scheduled district meeting.  The meeting was an all missionaries in the world broadcast from Salt Lake.  We heard from some high powered general authorities and it was good.

If you look carefully you'll see an image of the Zumwalt class destroyer which is the new stealth destroyer they are building at Bath.  I've read about this and the technology is very interesting.  This picture is taken on a bridge looking at the Bath works.  

We did apartment inspecting including Belfast and Bath.  In Belfast we ate lunch with another couple, the Seamons, who are in a remote location in Maine.  They do inspections and we meet up once a month for lunch.  Listening to their experiences reminds me of our experiences where there are very few resources out here and a huge number of needs.  If we had the resources of a Bountiful or Farmington Ward out here it would be great.  As it is, the missionaries bring in wonderful folks but they often bring with them a lot of problems requiring a huge number of resources.  The wards and branches are already limited in the resources they can offer.