Hello Family:
Well the most exciting thing that happened this week is that Debi and Margaret (Margie as she is known in the schools here) went home, they left Thursday. It was an all day ordeal taking them to the airport. We left about 1:00 pm and got back at around 9:00 pm. Traffic in Nairobi is bumper to bumper in the evening and it took about three hours to travel 20 miles.
They made it home safely so now Krista can have the baby anytime. The plan now is to bless the baby on May 1st so I’ll be back in the US then. So Krista the pressure is on you now. Let’s have the kid!
Work is still a challenge in the old plant but the new plant is doing quite well still. The Board of Directors is coming the first week of March so it will be interesting to see what they have to say. Another fellow is coming to Magadi for a two year assignment from Green River. He is a finance guy that I worked with for 15 years. He is a member of the church also so we will have quite a few things in common. He is real smart so we are different in that area. He graduated from the University of Utah (the top school in Utah) and then went on to Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie is one of the most prestigious business schools in the country. I taught one of his kids in Sunday school and liked him a lot, really a good kid.
I’m going to have to make more changes in the management here. The longer I’m here, the more I find there are only a few men that do all the work. I need to aggressively move the non-performers to areas where their damage is minimized. And in some cases that will be off the payroll. Some are good employees that are just in the wrong job. There are positions for them but they need to be moved for the operation to succeed. So the process will begin this week. The way I look at it is that if I don’t make the changes my boss will bring in someone that is willing to make the improvements. The plant is doing better but it still has a way to go to meet the profit expectations of the board.
So church was interesting today. I stayed up late last night preparing a talk and arrived at church today to find out a High Council member was going to talk. What a relief. I’ll save the talk for later, I’m sure I’ll use it sometime. I continue to be impressed with the young man that is the first counselor in the branch presidency. He is so committed and willing to do anything to make sure the branch succeeds. Made an announcement today that the other branch will be organized prior to stake conference in March. If they haven’t found a building to meet in they will use the building we are in and we will share. Apparently if authorization is given to form a branch and it isn’t complete within three months the request has to be made again. There are three or four splits going on in the stake now. The church is really growing in Kenya. There was a new senior couple that came to church today. Their name is Tuttle and they are from SLC. They are humanitarian missionaries; there are many opportunities here for service. I don’t know what their goals will be but some have come to put in wells to provide water to villages. You probably know what a blessing that would be to the people here to not have to carry dirty water for miles.
I was busy today doing interviews. One young man was interviewed to be ordained an elder. He is a recent convert and is really excited about the gospel. He is a student and is studying bio-medical, whatever that is. He will finish his studies later this year. Then there were two young women that wanted to get their patriarchal blessings. Really great young women, one is planning to get married to a young man in the branch (Debi, it was Sharon who is Joseph’s girl friend). Joseph is in the US at Harvard for a couple of weeks at a mock UN meeting. He is a pretty bright guy to. I feel a lot better about my Sundays when I get to deal with interviews and not welfare situations.
Run out of things to say and it is late so I need to go to bed.
Love you all
dad/paul
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