More in July

July 11, 2011

We finally broke down and purchased a heater. 

We have decided to have the Elders over each Monday night for dinner and family home evening. That has really been great.

So we setup the heater in the bedroom and after family home evening we went to bed in the warm instead of spending the first half hour trying to get warm enough to go to sleep.

July 12, 2011

This evening was a very eventful evening. One of the sets of Elder got separated. The only one with a phone (Elder Mbao) is from Zimbabwe and speaks fairly good english but we were not sure what happened. He said they were chased by some kids. We didn’t know if that meant young men trying to rob them or hurt them somehow or just some kids playing and Elder Rapiya ran faster that Elder Mbao. He said he would go to the corner where they usually catch the dala dala to go home and call us to let us know what he found. We were on pins and needles for about 15 minutes. Then we got a call from the other set of Elders that we should meet them at the corner where we come to the main road from our flat. We had to have our neighbor move her car as she always parks behind us so it took a few minutes. We met them and they said to pick up Elder Mbao at the stop light. We did that and they decided we needed to go back to the house where they were teaching and see if he went back there. That took about a half hour because of it being dark, crazy roads, people walking (black people in the black of night are very hard to see) and cars trying to pass where there is only room for one lane. He was not there. Then we really got nervous. It had now been about an hour and a half. So we decided to go to their flat and see if he had just gone home when he couldn’t find his companion. That took another half hour and we were all praying that he would be there. Elder Ngapasare said he felt he would be there. And sure enough he was. Sister Rydalch gave him a scotch blessing and then a hug and we all felt a great relief.

Then we went back at our flat, 9:30 PM, no power, in the dark but glad to be home. 

July 16 & 17, 2011

We had our Branch Conference these 2 days. We had leadership training on Sat. and Branch Conference on Sunday. 

Pres. B. and Sister B. along with the AP’s from the mission office came. Several changes were made. The main one was the Branch Presidency. Pres. Rwiza was released and Bro. Spear was sustained as the new Branch President. He will be great. Not that Pres. Rwiza was not. But he was so busy with work and school that he had a hard time making it to meetings. Pretty much an every other week or sometimes every third week thing. He works at the airport. All in all it was a great 2 days. The only down side was that we found out Pres. Rwiza lost his job the day before. That’s a really sad thing here in Africa. Jobs are really hard to come by so we will be praying for him to find another. Although most of the members (and as far as that goes the people) here do not have jobs. Pres. Spear works once in a while for the orphanage where the volunteers from Utah work and his wife cooks for them.

July 19th we had Elder and Sister Judd from South Africa here for Financial Records and Audit training with the Branch Presidency. They were brought here by Bro. Jadmaire from the Nairobi office.

This week we had Elder transfers. July 20th we sent Elder Raymond off to Kilungu Hills and received a new Elder straight from the MTC in Johannesburg the next day. Actually they both went to Nairobi first and then their assigned area. The new Elder is named Harper and he is from Blackfoot.

We needed some drawers in our kitchen and shelves in our center area of our flat. We mentioned this one day when Bro. Spear was here at our flat and he said his brother in law did that kind of work. We had him over and showed him what we needed and when he got them built we went to pick them up. We met Ziada’s father, grandmother (100 years old), her brother and sisters and several nieces and nephews.

Then on Sat. we had another baptism service. Isaac Abraham and Jennifer were baptized. Elder Harper, the new Elder, did the baptizing.

On Sunday we helped the Elders teach. I think they must have had at least 6 or 8 investigators. There are 2 sets of Elders here and they all split up with different branch members and us to cover them all. And Pres. Spear had one in his office. And as usual the building was overflowing. We usually have about 10 to 12 investigators come. We can fit about 70 chairs in the chapel area and then we put chairs down the hall from the primary room to sit the children on. Then several of the children sit on people’s laps. We only have 88 big chairs in the whole building and 17 small. It’s quite a site to see all these people jammed into one room. Sister Rydalch has started playing the piano for meetings and she sits with her back pretty much out the door.

After that we were invited to an investigator’s home for dinner. 

We met at the home of the investigator's parents and it was quite a large nice home in African standards. They were so cordial and we had a great meal and a great time. The family ownes a tanzanite mine. We hope to go there one day.

July 25, 2011

Today we spent most of the day in training with the new branch pres., Pres. Spear. He is really a wonderful man. He has had trials in his life that would have caused most of us to just give up. But he is as solid in the church as Peter the rock! He will be a wonderful branch president.

July 26, 2011

Today we attended Kiswahili class, english class and helped teach more investigators. Then we went home and crashed as we are both sick with runny noses and stuffed up heads. Then about 4:00 we ran down town to get a package that was sent from Dar by FedEx. We kind of knew where the office was but weren’t really sure. After turning in where we thought it was we wandered around until a guard came and directed us to where it is. We thought the FedEx office was next to the UN building where they are having that trial about war crimes. We then found it is inside the UN building complex. It was like going into an airport. We had to sign in with all kinds of info. Then we had to dump everything in the tray and walk through the scanner, the whole ball of wax. But we did get the package. It took some fancy talking to prove who we were and again we had to sign all kinds of documents. Quite different than home.

Next weekend we will fly to Mwanza for some branch training. We are really nervous about flying here in Tanzania. We went out to the airport last week to make sure we knew where it was and we thought we were lost. It must be about 30 km from town.
Check back and we will let you know how it went.