City of Hope

Camp by the River

When ever we would drive out of Kinshasa towards the airport we would pass an area that was very dilapidated. The river bank was covered with lean-tos covered with plastic and palm leaves. There were hundreds of people and everyone was dressed in rags. The area looked very desolate even compared to the poor areas of Kinshasa. We wondered who were those people and why were they all gathered on the river in such terrible conditions. We asked several people and were told that these were displaced persons, or refuges, who had come to Kinshasa from the eastern part of the Congo fleeing the violence of that area. Many were widows, orphans and people who had been injured in the wars.
There wasn’t much sympathy among the citizens we talked to and they said that the government was taking care of them. Each time we would drive by my heart went out and I wondered if they had any medical care, how were they avoiding cholera and malaria, were they working or earning any money or were they starving. This was not an area you could just stop in and ask questions as it is not safe to tread into these areas especially when you don’t know the circumstances or understand the language.
Then last Oct. 25th Kinshasa was hit with the heaviest rainstorm that the area had experienced since 1969. There was a lot of flooding and at least 30 lives were lost. We were unable to travel to our assigned ward in the suburbs as the roads were impassable and everyone was trying to dig their homes out which had been buried or undercut by the washing away of the sand. We worked at helping some of the areas such as Laloux where we have a water project. They needed sandbags but we were limited as to what we could do as travel to the areas was limited.
As we took the road passed the refuge camp we saw that the camp was gone. There was nothing there. Apparently the flooding had washed this whole area right on down the Kalamie river and out into the Congo river. We started asking about the refuges and found out that the government had came with trucks and forcibly removed the refuges and had taken them to an area east of the airport and quite a distance from Kinshasa proper. We tried to find someone that was monitoring this group or anyone who might be helping them but found no one. We read on the internet that the refuges were in great need as they did not have shelter or food or cooking utensils as everything had been washed away.
We felt this should qualify for some emergency relief but could not find any agency involved in offering any relief. We were approaching the holidays and all the Red Cross workers, Doctors without Borders etc. had gone to their home countries for the holidays and not scheduled to return till the first of the year.
Now we could just ignore this problem but it kept nagging and we decided to approach the church for advise. We were told to find a partner to work with and find out what the needs were. Easier said than done as we had no idea how to get to this new area and we again were concerned for safety and always the language is a problem.
We called our friends at IFESH, an NGO out of Arizona. We had worked with them in supplying some humanitarian containers for a project they were doing in the eastern part of the DRC supporting a program to rehabilitate child soldiers. They have native Congolese on their team and we felt they might could help us. Kinge and Jeanne of IFESH agreed to do some research and see what they could find out. We learned that the government had indeed moved this group of people to the new area and given each family a plot of ground 20X25 meters. They had provided some police for the group to keep order and were starting to build them some shelters from 2x2 boards and plastic sheeting. IFESH had arranged for us to have a meeting with the presidents of three different groups who had been moved to this new area.
What we found on our first trip to City of Hope

The trip to the area is difficult requiring us to travel through a maze of communities or suburbs of Kinshasa, a trip that took about one hour. As we crested a hill we could see off to our right a haze of orange. That Jean said was the New City of Hope, so named by the government because it was suppose to give these people a new chance and a new hope for a better life.

City of Hope across on the other hill.

Farrell with Kinge and Jeanne of IFESH

This “tent” city was heart wrenching as the area had hardly any shelter from the sun, only a few trees. The ground is very sandy and poor quality. The people were sitting in the dirt with just lean–tos made of palm frons as their only shelter. There were the plastic covered shelters being built but the people had so many needs.
We met with the presidents of the association and discussed their immediate needs. They told us that people were hungry, they did not have medicine or a health clinic although Doctors without Borders was coming twice a week to offer some health care to those who were sick. They had no cooking utensils, clothes or other basic necessities as everything had been washed away in the flood. We asked them for a prioritized list of needs which they had already prepared for us. The needs were great but it seemed difficult to determine the best way to help as we knew we couldn’t do everything on their list. This is a picture of all those we met with.

Plastic tents built by government
Defining their space with stick fences and planting hedges

We received approval from church headquarters for the project 2 months after making the request. We knew we needed to reevaluate the situation as things may have changed and needs may be different. We met again with the committee at the City of Hope and found things improving. Many of the Tent houses had been constructed and people were starting to define their space. The needs were still the same and so we proceeded to get started on the hard part, getting the goods to the people. It would have been easy to have the church send us containers from humanitarian services in SLC but since we are unable to receive containers and the shipping is way out of site we have to find the supplies we need right here. We needed to find 1502 mattresses, 1502 tarps and 1502 blankets. I wish I could explain how difficult this is to do but we did have our IFESH partners who would help us and we set to work to arrange monies, transport, security, and the required amount of goods.

Barriers to success in the project.

1. The DRC is a cash society. The church finance department requires you to have a receipt before giving funds and prefer that you pay by check. Nobody accepts checks and this financial quagmire is a battle that Farrell worked on for 3 weeks. It alone is quite a story but too long to tell.
2. Difficult to get bulk items here in the Congo.
3. Transportation to the site is very difficult and impassible by large trucks.
4. We were naïve

Transportation was arranged well in advance and at the last minute fell through. The only road big enough for trucks to get through was impassible because a bridge had been taken out. A little miracle happened. We were directed to a member of the church who happens to have a trucking business and he wanted to help us by delivering the goods. He found a way to get the goods up to the city of hope by taking his trucks to the area of the bridge and unloading them, carrying the goods across the ravine and loading them on a smaller truck he was able to get through the back way. This required numerous trips by the trucks. We were receiving goods at the site all day during the distribution

The Minister of Humanitarian Services came and started the distribution by giving a speech and handing the supplies out to the community leaders.The community members danced and sang songs prior to the ceremony. They sang "Thank you Jesus for Papa Barlow and Mama Barlow" then they gave their tongue warbling shouts and danced some more.
IFESH spent four days at the site handed out vouchers to each family so that we would not have any problem distributing the goods on distribution day.
No Voucher – no goods. This proved to be very valuable as we had people from outside the area come in wanting to be part of the distribution and we had no problem identifying those we had come to help.
The day was hot and humid and where we were was very dirty. We loved being part of the distribution as we were able to show people that the church was serious about treating others with Christ like love. We met some wonderful people and saw many families blessed. We worked 12 hours on Monday and didn’t finish before dark so had to come back the next day to finish. Going home that first night was interesting trying to find our way through the craters and avoid all the holes and ditches along the narrow roads. Thank goodness we had a great guide.

Did we do any good ? We hope so. The ones that made you think so were the children who came with their voucher to get their blanket for their families and the mothers who had tears in their eyes and a great smile that would warm any heart. One mother, with a baby on her back and one in her arms told us, “Tonight me and my babies will sleep warm.”

This beautiful woman expressed her thanks and gave me the Congolese kiss on the cheek three times. she had dressed up for the occasion and was very grateful for the help.


An exhausting experience but one of great satisfaction. We continue to be overwhelmed with the generosity of the people who donate to the Church Humanitarian Services and the ability of those in charge to determine where these sacred funds should be used.
Someone got a little too much sun today!

A couple of days after the distribution we had members of the church coming to the office and calling on the phone to tell us they had seen us on the DR Congo National television showing us handing out the blankets and tarps and a great explanation of the church’s humanitarian program. Farrell had been interviewed by the TV and newspaper reporters at the ceremony. They asked him if the church was doing this service to get new members and he told them no that we believed that we are all children of our Heavenly Father and should actively be helping each other.

A man , a recipient of the supplies came by the day after distribution and told us he had been to our church before. He had wanted to play his guitar and sing with his wife for the congregation at Sacrament meeting but was told we didn’t have that type of music in our Sunday meetings but he was welcome to come and be a part of the congregation. He said he was somewhat offended and left feeling like he had a gift he wanted to share and praise the Lord and our church would not allow him to do that. He said when he saw us handing out the supplies he wondered, are they imbeciles, coming out in the heat and the dirt and personally handing out these goods or are they showing the love of Christ. He watched us and felt a wonderful feeling of peace and knew it was the Savior’s love. When he was handed his blanket, tarp and mattress he again felt that wonderful feeling and knew we believed we were truly volunteers for Christ.

He told us he was going to swallow his pride and go back to the church and listen this time because he felt he was missing something very important. We were so touched. This was important enough for him to come tell us that he had walked (no money for transport) all the way from the city of hope to our office to tell of his experience.

We're off to Luputa

The next 6 blogs are an accounting of our new water project in Luputa. We wanted to let you experience this wonderful region and get a feel for this gentle countryside. In the posting the first two posts got switched so the account starts with the second blog and then reads through chronologically about our experience. Enjoy the pictures as that is what it is all about.
Life in the Congo is a great experience and this trip was a keeper. Scroll down to "The Water Project" and then come back and read from the beginning.

There are roads and then their are roads but some roads should not be called roades!

Heavy loads for those transporters using bicycles

The trucks travel very fast thinking that if they hesitate they will get stuck. consequently the pedestrians hear the cars cooming and scatter into the tall grass and then peak out after you have passed. They are probably also trying to stay out of the way of the flying mud.


The scenery on our trek was amazing with the landscape of palm trees, lovely villages, beautiful farms all along our path. The roads were a different story. Have you ever ridden on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland? Well, multiply that by 3.5 hours and you now understand the rigors of our trip to Luputa. All along the road we passed women carrying babies on their backs and large bundles or baskets on their heads. Men had their bicycles loaded down with large bags of corn and produce taking it back to Mwene Ditu, pushing their bikes all the way. This trip, taking produce to Mwene Ditu can take a full week before they arrive back home and will earn them about $10. The young men in Luputa who want to go on a mission earn the required funds by making these trips. To go on a mission they have to come up with $240 for their passport and visa then the church funds the rest of their mission.

We arrived in Luputa in the early afternoon and went straight to the church, a nice rented building with an additional building for classrooms and offices in the back yard. We were greeted by the District Presidency, Pres. Benini, a gracious, gentle man who is a farmer. His wife runs a nursery school right next to the church. The members here want a new chapel and they are growing and need a bigger place but the cost of building out in this remote area is in the Millions and the church cannot justify the amount of money it would take to do this. We visited with the members who had come to greet us and the hundreds of children who came running as soon as they saw the white faces in town.

We had to check in with the government and register with the immigration office. We were greeted with much enthusiasm and everyone knew why we were there. They were more excited than we were that they were going to get water. We met some of the water committee and the government engineer who we had heard about from the Christensens. He had a baseball cap from a Pizza place in Nephi, Utah. When he came to meet us he had on his cap and remembered that it was pretty famous. We told him that the Christensen’s were going to take the picture of him in the cap back to the pizza place and make him famous. He loved that. You will find him in his Nephi hat in the picture with the Water Committee. He is wearing the red baseball cap but you can't see Nephi written on it.

The Water Committee

This is Relief Society meeting at church where the women are learning how to sew beautiful baby clothes. I bought little girl dresses and a sweater set for the new granddaughters. Very special and they were delighted that I wanted to buy their handiwork.



The bed

the shower

the water closet that doesn't work but then Leopoldville has been gone for a very long time. It is now called Kinshasa

We had arranged to stay at a Catholic Mission. It has a generator so we would have some electricity. Turned out we had electricity when we arranged for it and paid for the fuel to run the generator. The mission is a beautiful spot with a chapel, a school and living quarters. We were using 5 rooms in the mission which is all the rooms they had to rent out. The rooms were pretty bare, not clean and the beds were something else but we brought our own linen to cover the beds and mosquito nets to put over the beds. The Facilities were . . .a . . interesting as the toilets needed to be flushed with a bucket and the shower was a room with a drain so showering was out of a bucket. It smelled like the camping outhouse so we just pretended we were camping out and it worked just fine. We all shared one bathroom which meant we had to space our use but it worked and we were glad for a bucket of warm water every night to wash the dirt away. We had access to a dining room with a large table where we could fix our meals and eat.

The team, the Frandsens, Robert and us, had important business to conduct. We had to choose a site monitor for our project. The site monitor acts in behalf of the church as their representative to monitor the project and report back to us what is happening. Because this project is big and expensive we had to choose a very responsible person that we could count on to take care of our interests. We needed someone who could ride a motorcycle (his transportation to the project), work a computer (write reports and email them to us), use a camera and transfer pictures to email, use a phone responsibly and be honest and forthright in working with ADIR and in reporting back to us. Pres. Benini had 3 candidates for us to interview. We interviewed each candidate separately. One man was a farmer and needed the work but had no computer skills. The second candidate had a degree in Agronomy and had limited computer skills and he had a license to drive a motorcycle. The third candidate was a recently returned missionary, good computer skills and eager to learn. They all interviewed well but after we considered the three and prayed for guidance we all felt very strongly to choose the recently returned missionary , Daniel Kazadi. We didn’t inform Daniel till the next day, then we took him with us to see the water source. He was so very excited and somewhat emotional when told he was our new site manager. He later told us that he and his new wife prayed every day for a way to earn enough money so he could take her to the temple. He knew that this was the Lord’s blessing so that they could fulfill their goal.

Daniel Kasidi, our site manager.


We needed a little walk so took a stroll and ended up in the market. This is an open air market as most markets are in the Congo. People put together wooden stahls and sell their wares. We have never seen so many expert bicycle repairmen or so many bicycle parts than in this market. . I wanted to find a straw hat. It was very hot and I knew we were getting sunburned. We found this lady dressed very elegantly, selling in her stall. There were several women selling termites covered in oil to keep them from flying away. There were live caterpillars and they kept trying to get us to eat one. Elder Frandsen bought some for a boy if he would eat one and he pretended to eat one but never really did. We have seen them before roasted and the kids eat them then. Many of the bikes here are very old and I am sure I saw one just like the bike I got when I was 7 years old. I never did find a hat but we did get to see the train come in. There were several men and women sewing beautiful Congolese fabrics. The Congolese are known as the fashion setters of Africa and sewing is a real art. I must get a dress made before we return home.

That night we celebrated by eating our MRE’s and our bleach washed pineapple and counted our blessings.





Our first night took a little getting used to our accommodations but by the 3rd night we sat on the veranda and looked at the stars and fireflys and started planning how we could serve a mission and live in Luputa. The place was starting to grow on us. Luputa has a peacefulness, a serenity that is hard to find these days.

The Luputa Water Project

The Water Project:
The greatest problems in Africa can be directly linked to the need for clean water. Over twenty years ago a water engineer from the Congo saw great potential for capturing a natural water source up in the hills of the Kasi Oriental region and bringing it down through the small villages and into Luputa. It became a dream project that he would pursue with anyone who would listen. The Humanitarian missionaries, the Christiansen’s (our predecessors ), contracted with this engineer, Dominique Sowa of ADIR to do a 5 phase water project in the Kinshasa area. This is the water project we are completing at this time (Camp Luka, Laloux etc.) Dominique took the Christensen’s along with the church water engineer specialists Dave and Lena Frandsen to Luputa in February 2007 to see his dream project. Bro. Frandsen, a retired water engineer with a wealth of experience was elated with the project as it had many positives for such a remote area. (1) It was a quality water source (2) The project could be gravity fed ,eliminating the need for a pump, electricity or a well, making it virtually maintenance free (3) it would serve up to 200,000 recipients. (4) the project would take water over a route through 4 villages over 30 Km. The only problem was that the cost of such a project exceeded the cost of any previous water project the church had ever funded.

The Christensen’s and the Frandsen’s returned to Kinshasa and proceeded to write up the project for submission to the church. This is where the Barlow’s enter this wonderful story. The last thing the Christensen’s did before leaving the Congo at the end of their mission was to submit this project for approval. Now the long process of questions and research and reassurance started as the project went through the church Area Authorities on to Salt Lake City to the church Humanitarian Services to the presiding bishopric and then to the first Presidency. This was a long process and one which had its ups and downs but, in a way, very reassuring as we experienced the rigorous process that a project goes through before your humanitarian dollars are spent. The proposal was reworked and rewritten several times.

During this time Luputa natives were praying for the Lord to bless them with clean water. They have such great faith and know that Heavenly Father knows who they are and are aware of their suffering. In the first of December 2007 we were notified that the project was approved and we could proceed with the legal documents, the contract etc. When we notified Dominique Sowa of the acceptance of the project, he shed tears of joy. He said this is a dream come true, something I have dreamed for 20 years. No one was more excited than Dominique.

A trip was planned and the Frandsens and Robert Hokason, in charge of all church water projects made arrangements to visit the new water site. To start, meetings were held in Kinshasa with the ADIR staff. Contract issues were ironed out and agreements were reached. Now it was time to go to Luputa.
We wanted to celebrate with our Luputa friends. We scheduled our trip to Luputa for Feb 7-12. The head of water projects for the Church, Robert Hokanson, had never been to the Congo so it was only right he better come see where all the money was going. The Frandsen’s needed to come and recheck the site and work on the contract. Pres. and Sis. Livingstone (the mission President) had to go to a Church District Conference in Luputa and we had to get some hands on Luputa experience, pick a site monitor to monitor the project and participate in telling the villagers they were going to get clean water. We were quite an entourage heading for Luputa.

The trip was difficult and required we take our own food and water with us. We would spend the first night in Mwene Ditu, 3 nights in Luputa and one night in Mbuji Mayi The first leg was a flight from Kinshasa to Mbuji Mayi on Central Africa Airways. The plane wasn’t bad but when we landed safe and sound everyone cheered and clapped, kind of made us wonder if we should have been a little more leery of flying CAA. We were met in Mbuji Mayi by the branch Pres. who had arranged for us two 4W drive vehicles rented from a Catholic organization. Actually we only had one vehicle reserved with a previous driver Omer who scrambled to find us a second vehicle and a driver Alphonse. We had been warned that the trip was arduous and that the chance of getting stuck in the rainy season was very high.

Omer and his son Patience. Patience was the look out and the puddle measurer (literally. . . he measured the depths of the Grande Puddles.

Alphonse was our driver for most of the trip. He was new as a driver for the mission as Omer has driven the Pres. and missionaries since the time the Christensens came to Luputa. Alphonse found the Mormons to be a tad different than most people he has driven . . .Hmmmmmm.

Mbuji Mayi was much like Kinshasa but much smaller. We had to fill the cars with gas and get 75 bottles of water (1.5 liter bottles). We also bought bread at a bakery there. We were off to Mwene Ditu to spend the night at a little hotel. The church also has a small branch in this little town. The roads were mostly paved this far with the usual potholes that we know and love. Our hotel was fairly clean. We brought our own bedding to lay on the bed and we ate MREs for dinner. We took a walk before dinner and saw some of the town , gathering many curious eyes, a grundle of children and some great pictures of people. We had to flush the toilet with a bucket and shower from a bucket while standing in a tub but that is all part of the adventure.

In the morning we had granola, powdered milk and some great rolls left from last night’s dinner. We loaded up and were off to Luputa. Barely out of Mwene Ditu and we were on the red sandy roads bouncing from one end of our vehicle to the other. The vehicles had the front seat and the back was two benches on the sides of the vehicle facing each other. We piled our luggage and food behind the driver and four of us rode in the back of our car. We had the Frandsen’s, Bro Hokanson, actually by now he was Robert (that wasn’t hard since he is the same age as Mark and looks, laughs and utters puns just like Ben). Robert rode up front with Alphonse and the four of us got cozy in the back. I didn’t think I could stand the ride as I get so car sick but blessings come and I didn’t have a problem.