This is a report that I sent to our coordinator in Salt Lake City regarding one of our training assignments to Kenya.
Following is an update as to what we have been doing for the past three weeks. We have been providing financial and membership record training (Financial policies and procedures for processing donations, and expenditures, LUBA policies and procedures, budget planning policies and procedures, and processing and maintaining membership records) We meet with small groups of branch presidencies, bishoprics, and clerks. We keep each training session to leadership from 3, 4 or as many as 6 units. We have finished the training in the Nairobi, Kenya Stake and the Kenya Nairobi Mission with the exception of 4 remote branches in the mission that they didn't schedule. We were told that the roads to these branches are very bad, especially when wet and it has been raining almost daily in some of these areas. We traveled from Nairobi to Chyulu, back to Nairobi, to Mombasa, back to Nairobi, then to Eldoret, to Kitale, to Kiusmu, then back to Nairobi. We have been traveling with President Jadmaire Ndivo, who has been very helpful to us and a good friend as well.
We have found that training in the smaller groups like this has been much better than large groups of leaders. The leadership in Kenya are good, humble brethren that provide great leadership in spite of the hardships and problems that they encounter. In some areas such as Mombasa with unemployment rates at about 75% of their branch members, there is so much pressure from the members for branch presidents to continue with fast offering welfare assistance indefinately. We counseled with them to use the power of discernment to make decisions in regard to welfare assistance, and to use the 'Needs and Resource Analysis' forms to help members to become more self reliant. They had many questions for us and we asked them questions about how they are following financial policies and procedures. We found that they are generally following church financial policies and procedures except for some minor exceptions such as providing receipts for expenditures. We introduced a form which would work as a receipt when filled out properly. We reinforced the 'companionship principle' when donations are counted , and when checks are written and expenditures are requested, etc. The brethren were very appreciative of our training, and thanked us profusely for our efforts.
We are now headed to Addis Ababa to provide training to their audit committee as well as financial training for the branch and district leaders in the Addis Ababa District. We will be working with President Biru, the District President and are scheduled to be there for about 10 days.
We were planning on traveling to Kampala Uganda to provide training for the Stake and the Uganda Kampala Mission. However, because of the political situation there (They are swearing in a new president on April 18th and there is protesting in the streets of Kampala, Uganda) As a result, Phillip Moatlhodi has asked us to return to Johannesburg when we leave Ethiopia.
Hopefully this report will be informative and give you some background as to our work here. We are enjoying our mission and find that the time is going by faster than we would like.
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