First Few Days...

We had a great time in London and after walking around the city and not sleeping much on the flight the night before we had a good 10 hour flight and slept a good portion of the night.

As we were landing around 6:15am we watched the red African sunrise of our first day in Zambia. It was a cool, crisp morning and standing on the tarmac it was good to catch our first glimpse of the Lusaka International Airport (looked like a small warehouse). After getting through customs without any delays we made it back to the mission home and office to have a brief transition meeting with the outgoing MP. It was nice to see him off and be left with my own thoughts and to meet with the AP's for the first time.

I thought the meeting went really well. I had a much better sense of the mission and after offering some perspective on my thoughts about the mission I think they were noticeably relieved and pleased. I talked about our responsibility to teach and train the missionaries To make sure they had a good foundation of faith and knowledge and then to get out of the way of their having a direct relationship with the Savior. I talked about section 121: no power or influence... And that they would need to decide what type of missionary they wanted to be and that their loyalty should be to the Savior. I said we would need to have an accounting and that we had a duty to watch over and make some judgement as to how they were carrying out their work but that I didn't want to be looking over their shoulder or to be their cheerleader, psyching them up to do the work, etc.

I also talked to the missionaries, that is the leadership council, about creating their new mission theme. Very sweet, hard working, capable, bright assistants.

We had church today and attended two different sacrament meetings, and the remainder of one of their block of meetings, we have met the district presidency including having the president and his wife over to our house tonight, the branch leadership for both branches and several of the missionaries. The overall impression of the meetings was that these are very bright, and articulate members. Not relatively bright but among the most well versed and thoughtful members of any I've met. Good capable leaders and lots of challenges with limitations on resources and technology, etc.

We've just had a quiet couple of hours making phone calls and getting some leadership assignments taken care of this evening.

The house is nice; bigger than I thought. The office upstairs is a great setup and the office elders with the office couple are terrific. It was a great relief to see them so organized.

So I think we are off to a good start. No tears. I think I have been blessed in the last couple of months to more specifically enjoy each day. This is the day The Lord has given us and taking the time to just feel the joy of each day.