Last Part of November

It’s amazing how hard the devil tries to stop the work here. One of the Elders here was not feeling well and his phone was not working. So he made it out to the street to find someone with a phone he could use to call us. On his way back in he fainted and fell and broke his leg. We thought it was just a sprain but we took him to the hospital to check on his sickness and in the process they x-rayed his leg and found a broken bone. So we spent most of the day there with him in the hospital. Then we have had to take him everywhere to try to do missionary work. It was also the week of transfers and because we had 2 Elders go home that left only 2 here to keep appointments. We have a really good Branch Missionary so he tried to fill in and go with the other Elder. 

But he also hurt his little toe on one foot (I think it’s broken) and was having a hard time going with him. They walk everywhere they go here in Arusha and the walking is on very rough roads or trails and up and down as we are at the foot of Mt. Meru and there are a lot of ravines from runoffs. But we would take the Elders to the church and then while we were doing our things Elder S. would have investigators come to the church and he would teach there with one of the members. And the branch missionary would go out with the other Elder. So the work did go on.

And in the process of finding crutches (Can you believe they didn’t have any at the hospital?) we met 3 very nice ladies that are interested in meeting with the missionaries. So there is always a reason for things that happen.

Sundays are quite an interesting day here in Arusha. We meet with the branch leadership for PEC meeting and do some training. 

Then the meetings for the day are; Priesthood & R.S. first, S.S. second and Sacrament Meeting last. And of course Primary goes on for the first 2 hours. Sometimes Sister R. will be asked to take care of Primary when none of the leadership show up. That’s pretty hard when you don’t speak the language. We try really hard to follow what is being taught in the lessons, but we still do not understand enough swahili to tell. Sometimes if they have a question about something they will try to explain the question to us in their broken British English accent and we will try to understand and answer. Sometimes they ask us to read a part of the manual and then explain. We can barely read the words let alone understand what they mean. Sometimes they seem to really be having a good discussion and afterward we will ask what was discussed. And quite often it is not even close to the lesson subject. But the spirit is always really good in Sacrament Meeting.

The second highlight of this month was our Thanksgiving celebration. The mission president planned a get together for the senior couples. So we took off on Tuesday the 22nd for Nairobi. We needed to do some things in Nairobi so we went a day early. That turned out to be a really neat thing. We were assigned to stay at the mission president’s home. 

Here is the rec. center next to the president's home.

Before and after - when we arrived in Nairobi in May and this trip:

And down their street:

The new missionaries were arriving that day so we got to eat with them and sit in on their introductions. That was really something. They were all from Africa somewhere and really interesting backgrounds. There were also 2 Sister Missionaries in the group.

Then the next day we mustered up our courage and drove ourselves to the mission office and then around town to do the things we needed to get done. Driving in Nairobi is like stock car racing only more vehicles involved. If you want to get anywhere you just have to nose your way into the traffic from a cross road. They have stoplights on a few of the round-a-bouts but that doesn’t work when you have 3 lanes coming in from 4 or 5 side streets and the drivers pass on both sides and crowd in in front of you with the back of their car blocking the lane to the side of you. Then they stack up into 4 or 5 lanes from each incoming street. So the cars back up and when your light turns green you can’t move anyway.

But we got around pretty good. The highlight of the day was that we were able to find the KFC restaurant. It was like going home for an hour.

Then on Thursday all the couples met at the President’s home for Thanksgiving dinner and visiting. 

Sister R. prepared a center piece for the table:

This is the before and after of the spread:

We had a great turkey dinner and then Sister Beecher had planned some activities to help us get to know each other better. One of them was that we would stand up as a couple and tell TWO WORDS TO DESCRIBE YOU, TWO WORDS TO DESCRIBE YOUR SPOUSE, TWO PET PEEVES, TWO GOALS  YOU’VE MADE & ACHIEVED, TWO THINGS ON YOUR BUCKET LIST (Things you still want to do before you die!) and TWO THINGS THAT BRING YOU JOY. Then at the end we had a gift exchange. The one where you can pick a new gift or take someone else’s. That was a lot of fun.

Then the next day was a couples conference at the mission office. Wow, what a boost. Packed full of good presentations, spiritual thoughts and talks by several of the couples and great talks by the mission president and his wife. They also had a display table of some of the things couples are doing in their area.

Then the trip to get to the president’s home. We were stuck in a traffic jam for about an hour and a half. The only movement was when someone gave up and turned around to go the other way on the road. Then it took another 45 minutes to get to his home. We found out later that the president of the country was going through town so all traffic was stopped. Even without that when you leave the mission office anytime after 4:00 PM you will be in traffic jams for at lease a half hour. Normal trip to his home is about 15 minutes. That evening the couples had sort of planned to all go out to eat. But after the traffic jam and all we all decided to stay at home. We were lucky as we had turkey leftovers at the president’s home. There was also another couple staying there and we had a good time visiting with them.

Next morning we met the other couples at “The Nest” and all went shopping at a place that has several stores with souvenir items at really good prices. Sister R. just had a ball.

Then we headed for home. What a difference in the scenery now as compared to what we saw the last time we went to Nairobi. There has been a fair amount of rain and everything has turned green.

This is August:

This was this trip:

After the traffic in Nairobi we are always glad to be headed back to Arusha. The drive is very peaceful.

That evening we met the 2 new Elders and took all the Elders down town to find an ATM so they could draw out some money. 

Then it was back to our normal routine. The most exciting thing was that after the 2nd X-rays for Elder S., it was decided that he needed to go to Nairobi for the final fixes.

After our couples conference we have decided on a whole bunch of things we want to start here in Arusha. We decided that we should just pick a time to have music classes, self reliance classes, missionary preparation classes and how to teach classes. Then if no one comes we will just spend the time preparing our Institute/Seminary and Temple class lessons. 

We have had several members move out of our little branch and last Sunday it looked pretty sparse at church. But the members that come all the time are really strong. And with what they face to be active and come we feel honored and humbled to be able to serve with them.