Last Part of February

Wow, what an interesting couple of weeks. 

We just had to snap this photo of a man on the back of a “Piki Piki” (a public transport motorcycle) carrying a sheet of plate glass about 6 feet high.

It’s amazing the things they carry on these motorcycles. We think we have mentioned this before but we will again just in case. If you want to see enlarged photos just double click on them.

We spent the first few days getting ready for our “Open House”. 

And in the middle of that we had a new Elder coming in. His bus broke down at the border and we spent most of the day trying to figure out how we were going to get him here to Arusha. By the time the bus station notified us that they had no solution, it was late and if we went to pick him up we would be driving in the dark. We really don’t like to do that. But as it turned out he was able to contract a taxi to bring him. It is about an hour and half drive. We still ended up going downtown to get him at 8:00 PM. He was a pretty nervous Elder by then. The streets downtown at night are an experience you would have to experience to appreciate. Most of the people here walk and there are no street lights. Black people walking at night do not show up in your headlights so we take it really slow.

The members were really nervous about the “Open House”. They had never done anything like this before. They had a hard time coming up with a name that meant what we wanted understood by “Open House”. They finally decided it should be call “The Day of Invited Guests” (siku ya wageni waalikwa). We had Brother Kibanda translate all the instructions into Swahili so the leaders could rehearse what they would say. We had several meetings about the “Open House” and we felt they were really quite ready. 

They could not accept the idea that we would just have people come in and go around from room to room and see what we do as a church. The Branch Presidency insisted we have a sit down meeting at the first for the dignitaries. We finally agreed to that. We spent several days hand delivering letters of invitation to all the dignitaries in town. I think there were about 45 letters delivered. An interesting thing about that letter was some of the words. When we typed in the swahili words that Bro. Kibanda had written, we typed a couple of them wrong. It was hard to tell where one word ended and the next began. Then Elder R. thought we better put the words into Goggle Translate just to check them. One sentence was “Kanisa hili lina furaha kukualika kwenye onyesho la taratibu na mipango ya Kanisa”, which says, “This church is happy to invite you to see procedures and programs of the Church.” But we typed the word “kukualika” as “kuku alika”, which changed the meaning to poultry show. So we almost invited people to a poultry show rather than an open house.

But after handing out about 300 invitations to people all over town we felt we were ready for the day. We posted several signs to show where to turn to the church.

Sister R. made about 200 rosettes for the refreshments. No one here had ever seen a rosette.

Here are the Elders and some members that came to help.

We thought only the leaders would come to explain their organizations. But almost the whole active Branch showed up. Kids and all. Only one dignitary came and he came late so the meeting before didn’t happen. We thought we would just put the chairs away and let people walk around. But the Branch Presidency said we had to have a meeting. So after about an hour we finally gave in. 

We played a couple of videos the church has produced here in Africa to tell about the church. Then they insisted we have “kujitambulisha” (self introductions). We thought Bro. K. would just introduce everyone. But he wanted all the missionaries and leaders to introduce themselves. This is the custom here. So we ended up with about an hour of introductions. The dignitary talked for a long time. And a lot of his speech was preaching.

The day turned out quite well. We had about 15 or 20 non members come. One was our good friend that we have been trying to get to come to our church for 8 months. She asked a lot of questions so we hope she will allow us to teach her family in the near future.

We have had a new member here asking us to go with him out to a village north of town to see a problem there. It seems there is too much fluoride in the water and it is causing bone deformities. Mostly affecting the legs & hips, but sometimes the head. It also seems to be stunting their growth. It was an interesting day to say the least.

This young girl on the right is 15 years old. The young man on the left is the son of the member who took us out there and he is only 11.

We met a man there that is 99 years old. He served in World War II.

Another highlight of the month was a visit from the couple that came to see us in Idaho Falls before we left. They are serving in Dar Es Salaam. We really enjoy having them come see us.  

We visited the Snake Park with them. We had a really good guide and we learned a lot about snakes and other reptiles.

Sister Noll even got Sister R. to sort of hold a snake.

Then they rode the camel.

And on the way back we stopped at the Cultural Center to look at some Tanzanite. This stone is worth about $1400.

We had several great visits with them, ate out and even played some dominos. 

Elder Noll is a counselor in the Mission Presidency and was able to interview our potential missionary (Sister Tausi). She is so cute. She turned 21 on the 24th of January and has really been pushing to get out on a mission. (The one on the left).

Our Sunday meetings with Elder & Sister Noll were especially good. The attendance was up and the spirit was great.

We closed out the month with a visit from the Assistants to the Mission Pres. We had a great Family Home Evening with them and our 4 missionaries. Rather crowded in our little apartment but great just the same.

It has really been fun helping our young lady preparing for a mission with the paper work and all. We have the missionary class on Wed. at 3:00. And at the lesson this week we had a young man that was baptized the end of August show up. He has not been out for about 4 months. And no one in the branch knew where he lived. It is pretty much impossible to find people here if they don’t want to be found. There are no addresses so if they don’t answer their phone you just can’t contact them. We were so happy to see him return. I think the sprit has just been working on him and he had lost the feeling he had when he was baptized and wanted that back. We had a great lesson with him and Tausi, the sister preparing for a mission.

It is really hard when you don’t speak the language to be sure they understand what we teach. But the spirit filled in on this one and after asking them to feed back what they understood in their best english we felt they both had a spiritual experience.