Exit Stage Right

Wadsworths with their new pet, Jeffrey the Giraffe
Wadsworths and our neighbor, Gordy
President and Sister Evans with Elder and Sister Wadsworth

This evening at 5:00 PM, Elder John and Sister Judy Wadsworth drove out the gate of our compound, to the right of our front door with President & Sister Evans, their Mission President & his wife. They fly home to their home in Bountiful, tonight and tomorrow. By 10 or 11 PM Salt Lake time, they will be home on Friday the 4th of April. We will miss them! They have been our trainers & our friends for the past month. If you sense some sadness, it is real. Their assignment was in the Nigeria Lagos West Mission. The arrangement for them to be upstairs and us downstairs in the same compound is mirrored at the Church Service Center through the compound wall to the West of us a few steps. The two mission Presidents and their staffs are officed on the 2nd floor at opposite ends of a hall. The Information Technology wizards for the Church operations in Lagos, are the buffer office between them.

The Wadsworths were doing the Career and Self-Employment workshops. They have been entrepreneurs their whole life. Many businesses and many years later they ended up in Nigeria on a mission. They took what the LDS Employment people had put together and massaged it and adapted it to West Africa. We have worked side by side with them through two complete sets of workshops. For this last one, Linda and I taught the first two days and they taught the last day. We recorded it with a mini recorder our family gave us for Christmas. We took notes as fast as we could, both times. Today, we have been transcribing the recording into the typed version of our notes to fill in the holes. We did amazingly well by combining the notes we each took when we matched them up to the recording.

Now, we are on our own! The next group of departing missionaries will be our responsibility. We feel nervous about it, but are confident the Lord will magnify our puny abilities and use us to help the missionaries.

The Wadsworths had accumulated multiple things to help them and make them more productive while they were here. Linda purchased a small kitchen table and two
chairs from them. Two tall, slim sofa tables were also part of the package. I purchased an HP Printer from them so we can print pictures of the missionaries in our classes. Now I have to figure out how to run it. The total for all items, including a new black printer cartridge was N24,000. That's 24,000 Naira or $218 U S Dollars. They have been extremely generous with both time and money to help us out.

They took us out with the Elders from their Mission and Stake. They took us to a vegetable market where we purchase all of our vegies and fruit. They taught us how they make fresh salsa and home-made yogurt. They shared their exercise routine with us and showed us how to cut each others' hair. No big trick to mine, but Linda's is more carefully done. They have just absolutely seen to it that we could operate here and feel useful. We will miss them a ton!