First Part of March

A rather slow couple of weeks as far as anything interesting happening. Just our mundane every day routine.

This is the “Big Rain” season as they call it so we have had some interesting downpours. Sometimes the drops on our windshield are the size of a silver dollar. It makes the trip up the hill to our church a real challenge. A couple of times on some of the roads up there we have had to go into 4 wheel drive to make it. One spot that we cross over every day on the way up there we even started hitting high center on if we were not careful how we negotiated it. We should take a movie of the water running down that spot. It’s like a river in the middle of the road.

This spot just before we get to the church is like a lake. As you can see, the sides are up and the center down and water does not sink here. So this spot gets really soupy. And our poor members have to walk through it.

This is the same spot on the road. Interesting situation, a breakdown right in the middle of the road. They actually had the whole wheel off, not just the tire & rim. You can see how narrow the road is. 

Not much chance of getting past. And to go back down the hill and around would take us about 45 minutes. So we just waited for them to get it fixed. They are really quite good at such things. There are at least 3 or 4 breakdowns on every road we travel at any given time.

We have been stopped by the police out on the highways several times to check our stickers and emergency equipment. And one of the things they check for is a hazard marker. A fold out stand up triangle marker for such situations. But when there is a breakdown out on the highways we hardly ever see one. They just pull brush onto the road in both directions as a warning.

Last blog we mentioned the crazy things they haul on motorcycles and such. Well, they have these little carts here that haul everything. And we mean everything! Here’s one that takes the cake.

The power here is really radical. It goes off almost every day. Sometimes for 7 or 8 hours. Well on one of those crazy power days the voltage went way up and burnt out our power supplies to several of our devices. Including our computers. One of the power supplied that we use is for our network system so we can both print to the printers we have and both get on the internet when we are able to hook up to that. That device is way old and the power supply is a very odd voltage. I checked on the internet and found that it would be almost impossible to get, even if we were in the USA. So we figured we would have to buy a new unit. Well when we checked on that we were not given much chance. And if we did find one it would probably cost 3 times what it would in the US. But the place we went to said we should check with their repair service. We thought, “that surely would not be an option”. In the US they would just laugh at us. The thing is sealed shut and would cost more for them to look at than it is worth. But we checked anyway. To our surprise they said, “sure, they could fix it”. And they did in about 4 hours. We were shocked. We think they deal with this power problem a lot and have just learned to fix the unfixable.

One of the highlights this month is that we had a missionary from our branch return. He came into the airport late at night so we had not been able to meet with him. We had a member from Dar Es Salaam here for some church business and we had decided to take him out to dinner. His name is John. The missionary had met him when he left and John wanted to get together with the returned missionary. So we gave him what phone contacts we had for him (that’s an interesting story for another time) and when we went to pick up John, there was the missionary. We had a great evening with them and got to know the missionary. He will be a real help to the branch here.

Sorry we don’t have a photo. We get too involved and just don’t think about photos.

One day after DDM the Elders asked us to accompany them to a meeting at a school. It turns out that some of the previous missionaries had made contact with some students at a boarding house for a local college. The head people at the college got news of that and they were pretty upset. We spent quite a while apologizing and trying to patch up the situation. They said we should have gotten permission first. And they wanted to know what we were teaching. They said they would come to our meetings and see what we do and then we could come to the college and make a presentation. Then they would decided if we could teach their students.

We had a little time on our hands so we decided to fix up our apartment a little. One of the couples, Beechers (the ones we went up to see in Dec.), went home in Feb. And they had promised us some of their stuff that they could not take home. So we decided to put some of the things up. We had also had our friend Joseph build us a bookshelf. So the day that was ready we picked it up and put up a rug that Beechers had given us. And Sister R. had found a set of Maasai neck things that she wanted to put up.

The bookshelf is on the left with the Maasai neck things above it and the rug on the right.

And guess who had a birthday this month?

At our FHE on the 12th the Elders sang happy birthday to Elder R. and gave him a Tanzania T-shirt. Sister R. gave him a chocolate bar. Yes, he still loves chocolate. Even though here the cost is about 6 times what it is in the US. And we had chicken cordon bleu for dinner.

When we stop at our little produce market they alway bug us to buy passion fruit. We finally broke down and tried some.

At our age we need a little more passion in our life.

The missionary work is really going well here now. We have an average of 12 to 15 investigators coming to church each week. We even had one of the investigators from last summer come back and bring a friend. He is the one that works with Tanzanite. He was out checking on a ruby mine and was talking with a Maasai man and somehow they got onto the subject of religion. The man asked which church was the true church and Sampson told him, “our church”. So maybe there is a chance with Sampson.

Sampson had called us earlier to notify us that he had a new baby boy. After church that day we went to see the baby.

The custom here is that the mother and baby will stay with parents for the first few months. Sometimes 6 months. So we went to Sampson’s parent’s home. That’s where we had been invited and went for dinner back in July. (blog title - More in July) His father greeted us like we were long lost friends. They are really friendly. And so proud of that new grandson. And Sampson is REALLY proud!

We have had several great things happen here this month. Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching are concepts that the members here really have a hard time with. There are no addresses and most members have no idea where the other members live. Or even have their phone numbers. So interaction outside of Sunday at meetings is almost non existent. 

We got a call from the Branch President one Sunday morning that his wife was very sick. So we drove up to his home to see what we could do. She was still in bed and could hardly sit up. The Pres. said she could not walk. We gave her a blessing and left. At church we talked with the 1st and 2nd counselors about how we should be concerned and do something to help. Then Sister R. mentioned it in R.S. And the R.S. Pres. picked up on it and said she would like to go visit there to see what she could do. That was a first as far as we know. She didn’t know where the Branch Pres. lived so we offered to take her the next day. BTW, we took dinner back up to them later on Sunday and Sister S. was up and getting around just fine. It’s amazing the faith these members have. 

Anyway, on Monday we took the R.S. Pres. up to their home and she and Sister S. had a really good visit. The spirit was really good. We think the R.S. Pres. got a glimpse of what the R.S. is really all about. We have learned to appreciate every little step the members make here. It’s a lot like we imagine the church was back when it first started in Joseph Smith’s time. We stand back and watch and have to realize that it’s like running the branch with Primary children in charge. They have never seen how the church really works and they just make tiny steps at a time.

Another great thing (and interesting) was the return missionary. The Branch leadership invited him into the PEC meeting on Sunday and he is really charged up about Home Teaching and getting the members out to visit all those inactive members that were so strong when he left. We think that may put us over the hump of getting Home Teaching started. The interesting part of this was when the returned missionary spoke in Sac. Meeting. He has served in South Africa and spoke english his whole mission. When he tried to speak in his native tongue (Swahili) it just would not come out. He had to give most of his talk in english. The members really laughed at that.