What a GREAT experience. We took our truck in to have the fender repaired while we were gone and took the shuttle to the airport. That was great as Elder R. could just enjoy the scenery instead of having to watch the road, other drivers, the people walking on the road, the dala dalas and the picky pickys. We flew out of the Kilimanjaro Airport which is about 45 minutes from Arusha.
Small but nice airport.
Arived in Mwanza about 1:45 PM and were met by Abel our contracted taxi driver. We had a great time with him over the stay there. I think we even convinced him to meet with the Elders.
We spent the evening with Pres. & Sister B. and the Elders at the hotel.
We stayed in the Ryan’s Bay Hotel with Pres. & Sister B.
We spent Sat. training at the Mwanza Branch. The Primary Pres. doesn’t speak english so Sister R. had quite a time training with her. But it was great.
That evening Elder & Sister Byrd joined us as they were to do training on Mon. & Tues.
and our taxi driver took us around to see the city.
On Sunday we attended church with the wonderful members there in Mwanza. This is the branch that was just formed in May of this year.
Some changes in the branch presidency were made and we just had a great day with the memebrs there.
That evening we met a doctor from Tabora, Tanzania who was there at the hotel on vacation with some friends from Italy. He trained to be a doctor in Italy. We had a very long discussion about the church. We gave him a brochure on the restoration and our phone number. This evening (Sunday the 7th) we received a phone call from him. He wants us to come to see him in Tabora and tell him more about our church. That’s about 9 hours south of here. We told him we would have to get special permission to go there. But maybe on our way to Mwanza for our next support visit we can drive and take a bit of a side trip and go see him.
Then on Monday we attended the Employment Training done by the Byrds. That was very good. There were 10 members attending and we learned a lot. The church has a great program to teach members how to interview well for a job.
After the training we went to the Sukuma Museum. It is a museum - The Sukuma Museum is a community-based organization that promotes and celebrates the traditional and contemporary arts of the Sukuma culture. The Museum provides an interactive and educational environment where Sukuma elders teach the younger generation traditional history and arts, and younger generations are encouraged to develop and expand creative voices and new Sukuma artistic trends.
We also were able to see 2 large python snakes there.
The next day we attended the final training on employment and the Byrds left to go back to Niarobi.
We spent that evening relaxing at our hotel and enjoying the view from the veranda of our room.
The next day we headed back to Arusha. The airport in Mwanza is really something. Very small. The ticket and baggage checkin are both done in a little 20x20 room. Then you go through the scanner to a room with about 70 seats to wait for your flight. Then you walk about half a mile to the airplane and then up the steps of the airplane. The airplane holds about 50 people and is a prop only plane.
We arrived back at the Kilimanjaro Airport about 3:15 PM. Then the Shuttle to Arusha by about 4:30 PM. Picked up our truck and went home to crash.
All in all it was a GREAT trip.
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