For those who ask, “What do missionaries do?” — “Varied tasks,” is the simplest answer. “Jack of all trades!” might be another. 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 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 Airways flight Sunday. A new DRC rule jumped and knocked them out. 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. They had one-way tickets and 1-month visas. The 1-month visa has been adequate for entry. Once here, they were planning to apply for resident missionary visas. We’ve regularly done this. In fact, for our own arrival we only had 2-month visitor’s visas and entered with no problem. 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. And then I consulted with the others who were on the MAF Caravan flight from Kinshasa about whether it should go ahead as scheduled. And, I talked to World Vision about finding other passengers. In the end, the flight came as scheduled on Wednesday and Norens arrived today. We’ve also had to juggle some local travel plans.
After playing travel agent Monday, on Tuesday I switched to fuel delivery man and carpenter. I loaded 2 barrels of diesel and took them to Karawa where the Norens will live. 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.
Fuel loaded in the truck
I also worked on installing the new kitchen sink in their house. A fire last November had destroyed the cabinets which were then rebuilt. The kitchen sink installation was the last part to get completed. It didn’t get completely installed because some of the varnishing was not done and dry, but it’s almost done.
The hole in the countertop for the sink
Checking placement of the new kitchen sink
