{"id":2453,"date":"2014-07-18T11:01:33","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T16:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ekstrand\/?p=2453"},"modified":"2014-07-18T16:31:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T21:31:37","slug":"what-do-missionaries-do-fuel-delivery-carpenter-and-travel-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ekstrand\/2014\/07\/what-do-missionaries-do-fuel-delivery-carpenter-and-travel-agent\/","title":{"rendered":"LIFE IN CONGO: What do missionaries do?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those who ask, “What do missionaries do?” — “Varied tasks,” is the simplest answer.\u00a0 “Jack of all trades!” might be another.\u00a0 Recently, I played the roles of travel agent, fuel delivery man, and carpenter all in the span of one week.<\/p>\n

Monday a couple weeks ago I think I spent half the day as a travel agent working out arrangements for how Paul & Sheryl Noren would get from Cameroon to Congo since they were denied to register for their scheduled Kenya\u00a0Airways flight Sunday.\u00a0 A new DRC rule jumped and knocked them out.\u00a0 The new rule was that you have to have either a round-trip ticket or a 6-month visitor’s visa to fly into DR Congo.\u00a0 They had one-way tickets and 1-month visas.\u00a0 The 1-month visa has been adequate for entry.\u00a0 Once here, they were planning to apply for resident missionary visas.\u00a0 We’ve regularly done this.\u00a0 In fact, for our own arrival we only had 2-month visitor’s visas and entered with no problem.\u00a0 So on Monday, through text messages, phone calls and emails, we worked out that they could come with the SIL aviation plane direct from Yaounde to Gemena.\u00a0 And then I consulted with the others who were on the MAF Caravan flight from Kinshasa about whether it should go ahead as scheduled.\u00a0 And, I talked to World Vision about finding other passengers.\u00a0 In the end, the flight came as scheduled on Wednesday and Norens arrived today.\u00a0 We’ve also had to juggle some local travel plans.<\/p>\n

After playing travel agent Monday, on Tuesday I switched to fuel delivery man and carpenter.\u00a0 I loaded 2 barrels of diesel and took them to Karawa where the Norens will live.\u00a0 We needed to get fuel over there for them as it is either not available to buy in barrels or it is much more expensive.<\/p>\n

\"Fuel<\/a>

Fuel loaded in the truck<\/p><\/div>\n

I also worked on installing the new kitchen sink in their house.\u00a0 A fire last November had destroyed the cabinets which were then rebuilt.\u00a0 The kitchen sink installation was the last part to get completed.\u00a0 It didn’t get completely installed because some of the varnishing was not done and dry, but it’s almost done.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The hole in the countertop for the sink<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Checking<\/a>

Checking placement of the new kitchen sink<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Report This Post<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those who ask, “What do missionaries do?” — “Varied tasks,” is the simplest answer.\u00a0 “Jack of all trades!” might be another.\u00a0 Recently, I played the roles of travel agent, fuel delivery man, and carpenter all in the span of one week. Monday a couple weeks ago I think I spent half the day as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLIFE IN CONGO: What do missionaries do? - Ekstrands in Congo<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ekstrand\/2014\/07\/what-do-missionaries-do-fuel-delivery-carpenter-and-travel-agent\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LIFE IN CONGO: What do missionaries do? - Ekstrands in Congo\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For those who ask, “What do missionaries do?” — “Varied tasks,” is the simplest answer.\u00a0 “Jack of all trades!” might be another.\u00a0 Recently, I played the roles of travel agent, fuel delivery man, and carpenter all in the span of one week. 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