Maputo, Mozambique

We spent this weekend in Maputo, Mozambique on assignment to train Stake Family History Directors and Ward Family History Consultants, plus Bishops who do not have a consultant yet.  We left Johannesburg on Friday morning at 10:30 am for the hour flight to Maputo.  However, we were delayed an hour in Jo'burg which caused us to arrive in Maputo an hour late.  We thought our training started at 5:30 pm but it had been changed to 5:00.  This meant that we headed straight to the church from the airport.   We had a member of the Stake Presidency meet us at the airport to drive us to church.  That was one exciting, white knuckle ride!  Yes, they have traffic lights.....but not on every corner.....you have to be fairly aggressive to drive there.  The city of Maputo is the capital of the country.  The downtown area we drove through showed signs of poverty but I am told that the city was better than most.  After dodging cars and pedestrians, we  made it to the church building.  It is a four story building renovated into a chapel.  We walked up three of the four flights of stairs to get to the room we would be training in.  It was all set up for us and we were greeted by the Stake FH Director and her two assistants.  As in South Africa, the people are warm and friendly and we enjoy their company very much.  I liked that the women kiss both of your cheeks in greeting.  The men shake hands, as normal!  We had requested a projector and internet and they had both.  However, we could not get my computer on-line with the internet due to a really weak signal.  My computer was the only one with the right connection to the projector.  After many, many tries, we gave up the idea of using the projector to help us to train.  So for the next two hours, Allan and I taught the basics of family history and the Family Tree on familysearch without the internet.  We discussed the "My Family" booklet, walked them through how to sign on and how to create a new account and how to recover user names and passwords.  We had some good discussions at the end of the two hours.  We were driven to our hotel to check-in and have dinner.  The hotel had a large buffet that night that we enjoyed very much.  On Saturday, we woke up to the sound of the surf mixed in with rain.  It rained pretty much all day.  For us, the rain was not a problem but it was a problem for some of those hoping to attend on Saturday and were not able to come because of the rain.  This time on our drive into the church, we saw a man get up from laying on the street.  He had a piece of cloth wrapped around his waist and nothing else! He was covered with mud and I felt so badly for him.  As in most large cities, you have the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy.  Because it was daylight we were able to see more of the area.  We drove by rows and rows of shanties with stalls for selling anything and everything just outside the shanty town boundaries.  Interestingly enough, we didn't see one person begging.  In Jo'burg, there are three, four or even more at EVERY intersection.  We had a fair turnout on Saturday for our training session. Friday we had about twelve and we had ten on Saturday.  We were in luck on Saturday, the Stake President was our chauffeur and he brought a modem with him that we put in my computer.  So, on Saturday we were able to project and had the internet.  We felt that our training was much more effective. Everyone seemed to enjoy the time we were there and they said they learned a lot that they had not known before.  So, we feel that our time was well spent and well received.   Right now, there are no family history computers in that stake.  We know that they will be getting two in the near future and we hope to go back to do more training once they have the computers up and running.  When we arrived at the church on Saturday morning, we met two young sister missionaries serving in Maputo.  We asked them what they had going on that day.....they said that they were having a baptism.  Problem.....they didn't have any water!!  My first thought was - with all this rain, if you wait a bit, you can have the baptism outside.  By the time we finished upstairs they had been able to get water flowing into the font and the baptism had taken place.  When they say you need to remain flexible here - they really mean it.  You never know what will be thrown your way :)

Below are some pictures of our hotel (The Southern Sun), our room and the view from our room. The skyline of Maputo was taken from the airport.

Lovely room.  We had just finished training for the day and were getting ready to go down to dinner.

The view from our room!

Coconut palms

This is Maputo Bay on the Indian Ocean

Four floors and we shunned the elevator as much as possible.

From the outside this part of the hotel looks like a castle turret.

View from the dining room.

The rain on Saturday dampened the outside eating area.

So, we ate inside right next to the window.  

Just me by the pool!

Hotel parking area and guard facilities.

Looking down at the main entrance from the fourth floor.

The skyline of Maputo from the airport.

LOVING THIS MISSION!!