Hello Family and Friends:
It’s been a struggle to write this week; seems like there is less and less happening each week. But I know Mom would like to hear from me even if nothing exciting happens just to know I’m still here.
So I’ll start with “a boring update”. There are two plants here. One is celebrating 100 years in operation this year. That plant has been struggling to make soda ash for about 6 months. It has not had a maintenance shut down since 2007; so it is about 4 years over-due. It got to the point last week that we had enough product in inventory to meet demand. And there were so many nagging problems, we just said enough and shut ½ the plant down. We will work on the equipment from end to end and fix it so we don’t have problems every day. In June, we will shut down the other half of the plant and work on it. In August we will shut down the new plant for maintenance. Earnings last year were so bad that a maintenance shut down wasn’t done because there wasn’t money to pay for it.
The company runs its year from April 1 to March 31. So this is the beginning of a new year. After all the problems last year, it appears as though the plant met its financial targets. The past 4 to 5 months were good enough to dig us out of the hole we were in early in the year and turn a profit. The plant also shipped more ash that any other year. This was the result of the new plant hitting a production record. That sounds grand, but the plant was designed to produce 350,000 tons and we produced 185,000 tons so it was a good year but far from what the plant was designed for. This year we are targeting 250,000 tons. As we ramp up production, the Marketing group has to find more customers. So it will be an interesting manufacturing/marketing process.
Church continues to be interesting. There were about 55 people in attendance yesterday which is about the same number of people of people attending prior to the split. In this branch are many young single people and the other branch has many families. We are closer to the city center so there are a number of students and young working people. Organizations continue to develop. Extended calls and set apart people who will work with youth in Sunday School, Young Women and Young Men. There are so many young people here that are great examples to the youth. It’s amazing to see the Branch progress in spite of weakness in the leadership. Just goes to show the Lords work will continue to move forward in spite of those called.
The company changed its name this past week. It went from “Magadi Soda Company Ltd” to “Tata Chemicals Magadi Limited”. So there was a big program to mark the change. The company/plant in Green River also changed its name. It is an interesting process to see all the ground work that goes into making a name change. All the way from changing signs at the entrance of the plant, to letter heads, to business cards; quite an undertaking.
Anyway, I said there wasn’t much happening so I just proved it.
Home work for my kids;
Krista, give Z and E a hug from me. Looking forward to seeing them and blessing little E
Mya, tell the boys hello from grandpa. I sure miss them. Wish I could see them more.
Cherry, give C and T a hug from me. Looking forward to seeing them too.
Shena, tell S&D “bad dog”, and say it really mean (just like I’d do it).
Love you all.
Paul/dad
