His People On Fire - Church History Training Seminar March 17-18 2017

Our advisers started arriving at the airport early on the 16th. We thought once all the flight bookings were done, Thursday the 16th would be an easy day of just receiving them as the shuttle brought them in to the Area Office. Wrong! Our first expected adviser's flight was cancelled and she came in on a later flight. then we found the 4 men from the DR Congo had changed flights and had come in about 4 am and had managed to call our shuttle service to get them to the hotel. One man missed his flight (we never heard how that happened!) and took the bus from Zimbabwe and didn't arrive at the hotel until about 10 am on the 17th. There were a couple of other hitches, but everyone made it. As I said I thought the 16th would be relaxed, but it turned very hectic!

Then we had arranged for one of our advisers who hadn't had the opportunity to take out his temple endowment to do that at the 3 pm session. The temple prefers a person be there 1 1/2 hours early so we had him up there in time. I came back from getting him settled and our DRC country advisers told me that a new adviser was going to get his endowment which they hadn't informed the temple of. We rushed around and got him up in time to do it - because this temple sees a lot of this type of situations and is very accommodating. We had to get them from the Temple/Area Office complex to their hotel and they were very slow returning so it was after 7 pm before we got home. But they were all thrilled to have had the opportunity to go the temple.

On the 17th we had our meetings at the Sunnyside Park Hotel, built in 1895. All went well with an excellent buffet lunch. Cherrie had a short presentation on reporting (and sending in their monthly report on time!) and Dave had a couple of short presentations. S. Mark Palmer, 2nd counselor in our Area Presidency and his wife spoke to us.  After the meetings we went with all the advisers to the temple for a session. One advisers was able to be sealed to his deceased parents and another one had her grandparents sealed. We didn't get home until after 9pm.

Sunnsyside Park Hotel

Elder & Sister Palmer

Leon Holmes

On Saturday, the 18th, we went to the area Office early to set up for our meeting. David and Leon Holmes made several trips to bring the advisers over. After a general session we split into 2 groups with Leon taking the newer advisers (13) and us having the more seasoned advisers with a couple of sessions being conducted by some long time advisers. It all went well. We had lunch catered at the office by the canteen crew. We ended about 5 pm and took people back to the hotel. A couple of advisers helped me put things away while Dave made a couple of trips. Then we took the last 3 advisers in our car. We stayed at the hotel so Dave could meet with Osvaldo from Mozambique on a project they are doing. I was able to visit with some of our lovely women. It was good and our advisers felt that they learned a lot and also made friends with the other advisers.

Our Seminar Group Photo

Everyone but Never and Everjoyce from Zimbabwe left for home on Sunday. They stayed to have some computer training on Monday and then left at noon. They are a lovely couple who are tremendously hard workers. I love their names, too!

Never & Everjoyce

We are glad the Seminar went so well - we had 23 advisers from 14 countries in the Africa Southeast Area. But we are glad it is over. We are still exhausted from the long hours before and during the seminar.