Busy Day at FPM

UM/Indiana Delivering Roofing Sheets to Village Clinic in Kabumbuli

Things are hopping along the Congo River!

The El Dorado Nursing School has opened classes in its new building. Friendly Planet Missiology Team Leader Nurse Mary Kabamba has met with newly arrived women students, who are on FPM scholarships, to help them with orientation and to let them know that they will do better than even the men students. After that meeting, Mary has headed for the port of Malemba to meet our boat, the UM/Indiana, bringing cement for the maternity wing of the nursing school. The UM/Indiana is returning from its mission to take vaccinations for children to the Kinkondja Health Zone.

FPM Team Leader Pastor Joseph Mulongo has arrived in Lubumbashi and is meeting with FPM Team Member Pastor Maloba Mulume, the Treasurer of the North Katanga Conference of The United Methodist Church. Pastor Maloba has just finished sending Bishop Ntambo Nkulu (Chief Patron of FPM) off to the U.S. for the meeting of the Council of Bishops. (Bishop Ntambo will be preaching at the Duke Divinity School Chapel on November 10.)

Pastors Mulongo and Maloba are busy communicating with Zambikes in Lusaka, Zambia, to coordinate the border crossing of our first five mountain bikes from Zambikes. This is important and exciting, as these will be much stronger bicycles than we have been buying, and they will carry a local label.

Mulongo will also be picking up the first FPM motorcycle. This will give him dependable transportation from the village of Mulongo to Lubumbashi and back, a very difficult journey over the Mother of All Mountains. (Seriously, that's the name of the mountain.)

Stateside, Debbi is in San Diego (her home) growing FPM's social media network. Sarah is in Broad Ripple (that quaint Bohemian uptown neighborhood in Indy) creating a new catalog to get to you by Christmas. Emily is busy telling everyone at UIndy her story of Congo adventures. Taylor is in Washington, D.C. counting down the days until the birth of the first of our family's next generation.

Friday night, the United Methodist Women of Plainfield United Methodist Church hosted an evening to celebrate the completion of 175 straight days of Risk Taking Mission and Service as the Plainfield Church celebrated its 175th anniversary. During the meal, Mike, the Team Leader of the Fondo d'Congo, handed me a check for $1,500. This brings the total for the Fondo to $5,000. Thanks Mike! and Thanks PUMC!

Oh, and I'm neck deep in a very messy and still unreadable manuscript for a book that I'm calling, "La Route Rouge," or maybe "The Heart of Darkness Revisited," or maybe "The Last Missionary." Maybe its a trilogy.

Bob