First Part of September

We now have all the passports for our Temple trip. We sent the paperwork to the Mission President and received word that South Africa has it and is planning our trip. We are really looking forward to that trip. It will strengthen the Branch here so much!!

Things are really piling up now that we are approaching the end of our mission. We have so many things we want to get done and everything takes twice as long as we think it should. We received word that there will be a couple coming here to Arusha to replace us so that took a lot of pressure off.

We had one of our Sister Missionaries go home this half month.

Here is the group we call “The Girls”. She is the one on the right of Sister R. The other Sister Missionary is on the far right of Sister R. Then Monica, the Primary President, the Sister going home, Sister R., Tausi, the Sister waiting for her call and Neema our 17 year old leader of the Young Women.

 

Sister Phiri, the missionary going home, has really done well with the language. And we will miss her.

We took the 2 Sisters to the airport. Sisters have to travel together when they transfer. And these two had to fly because of a passport problem.

Then we decided to go on to Moshi for the day. We have wanted to visit the young man Elder R. baptized a year ago in August and just have never had the chance. The airport is about half way there, so we felt this was a good day to do it. He works as a guide for hikes up Mt. Kilimanjaro. We had a great day with him and his family.

This is an area where they are washing carrots in the river. 

He has one brother that is really interested in the church.

He came back to Arusha with us so he could visit his friends and attend church. We loaded him up with copies of the Book of Mormon and brochures on Sunday when he went back.

Our big event for this half month was the “Helping Hands” day. Each year here in Africa the church has picked a Saturday and they ask all the Wards or Branches to organize a service project. That day was August 18th. But we just had too much going on at that time so the Branch leaders planned it for Sept. 8th. They selected a Catholic hospital named St. Elizabeth to do the project at.

We were asked to clean up an area of the hospital that was not yet finished.

We did that and then went around to all the different wards and handed out gifts, (juice, soap and an orange).

Then we all went back to the church for a meal and social.

It was a great day.

The next big event was a visit from Elder & Sister Kellems. They are the Employment Specialists for the mission and a couple of neighboring countries.

They held workshops on Tuesday and Wednesday the 11th and 12th.

We had a great time with them! We showed them around town, 

ate out with them one evening at an Ethiopian restaurant

and just had a good time visiting and playing games in the evenings.

We had 2 new missionaries come this half month. They are both brand new in the mission.

We are looking forward to getting to know them.