Thanksgiving Week 11-27-09

We are truly thankful for all the blessings we have! I know angels have been round about us as we’ve driven. We’ve been blessed with safety and with the chance to work with amazing people. The new Branch President is diligent. He studies the leadership manuals and wants to do a great job. I know he will be fantastic and will continue to help the branch grow. I would like to be out and doing more, but we continue to work to get settled in. We shop a lot.

We have workers in the house continuing to fix things. We got a new faucet and it doesn’t leak quite as much. We may have the washer and dryer hooked up by now. We went to the Kisumu telephone company and for a considerable investment they will bring us a land line and internet service. Mid week a man came to check out the line to and into our house and figure out what else we needed for service. As we were leaving town on Wednesday, they called to say we could come in and pay and they would connect.

The Missionaries showed us Violet’s internet café. She is a church member. Her café is a small, open sided unit in a row of small shops in a shopping district. We can drive in on the dirt and park in front of her place. (we block the entire path) and it pleases her very much as it adds status to her.

We continue to shop—it’s a delight to find yeast, we found Snickers Bars! We heard there was oatmeal… but had to search 2 stores to find it. Granola was about $9 for a pound… so we figured we could make our own. We need to shop for scissors, tape, cookie baking sheets, stirring spoons. It’s amazing what you need to set up a household.

Wednesday we set out early for a trip to Nairobi. We pulled off the road to take this picture. You can see the edge of the window in the picture. The baboon is CLOSE.
When we left Nairobi 11 days ago and drove those 8 hours to Kisumu, I thought I’d never want to make that trip again. I’d just stay in Kisumu until I expired. But the trip to Eldoret was a good breaking in period and both Tom and I are much more accustomed to what it’s like to drive here. I’ve learned that if you have to run off the road into the shoulder, even if there’s a drop off, it’s not so bad. The truck makes it. We make it. If we hit a pot hole or a speed bump… we bounce, but we survive. I have no idea how long the vehicles hold up, but they are very particular about regular maintenance. I suppose this is why. You see, if you have a choice between hitting another car or the shoulder or the pot hole, it’s not such a hard choice. And I discovered that “Stress Away” the Young Living essential oil blend is really marvelous at calming the angst that crept over my body at the thought of driving. And Tom really is a good driver.
This is a typical roadside market on our way to Nairobi.

This van is a matatu and can hold a zillion people and tons of stuff on top.

So Wednesday morning we set off for Nairobi for a Couples gathering and instruction. It took us 6.5 hours. We passed great scenery again. Saw baboons and zebras, village markets, and the unbelievable Nairobi traffic. Fortunately it was less intimidating than the first time. Frustrating, yes. Slow, yes. But we’d learned the rules of the road: Go with the flow—regardless of lines on the road or traffic signals. Pick your way—whose ever bumper pokes out the furthest has the right of way. Big always wins over small. And since nobody really wants to die, those passing on blind curves are very experienced at dodging back into line. We did take several “diversions” dirt roads that sort of paralleled the road while they were working on the road. Do you know they had speed bumps on the dirt road??? I guess the ruts, the sharp rocks, gullies, and ridges weren’t enough to slow us down.

You may not notice in the photo below, but both trucks are coming our direction. With at least one more car behind the truck on the left passing as well. This is "Chicken" Kenya style.

We are staying in Nairobi with another missionary couple—the Randalls. They are so gracious. They do job placement and training for at least two missions and so travel a lot. They left for Uganda on Friday. However, before they left, they helped us find a printer, scanner, copy machine.

Thursday we went to the Office to check on some materials, then went to the “bird Nakamatt” (It has huge pelican like birds nesting in the trees there) and got a bed spread, towels, and a pillow. Then, in the afternoon, we went to President and Sister Taylor’s house for Thanksgiving. Each couple brought something and we, indeed had a feast. Then we had a spiritual feast as we talked about the article by Elder Clark that spoke about coming out of Babylon. That some of us lived in Zion, but had a summer house in Babylon – pride, selfishness, or other worldly things that we chose to cling to or occasionally to escape to. The talk suggested Zion was the pure in heart, those that loved others and had no poor among them.

We discussed the obvious poverty here in Africa and the Lord’s plan for Zion that would help people help themselves and gain self reliance vs. giving them fish. The Lord’s plan was the welfare system of giving tithes and fast offerings and having the bishop or branch president, under inspiration, help those truly in need. They said many people ask missionary couples for help with truly pitiful stories, and some of them are even true. The counsel is to pay a generous fast offering, and allow the branch president to fulfill his calling to help those in need. Several people have asked us for jobs—house cleaning etc. And we did have a member come and wash and wax the floors and clean the carpets and upholstery. He did a good job. It made the dining room floor quite slippery though. Things get a film of dark dust quite quickly here. I don’t know if I will have a cleaning lady, although several have asked. And we will have a car washer probably once a week or so—for about $3. It gets so dusty. And here in Nairobi, large birds left their deposits. Gee—they are pretty to look at, but have drawbacks. Here are birds in the trees at the "Bird Nakamat" store.

Today we spent half the day in the mission office. We met with the records people and got print outs of records, rolls, membership, etc. We also met with the facilities maintenance and found that we will get chairs, chalkboards, a CD player, desks, tables, a podium and other things really essential for a branch—even 250 chairs! That way we don’t have to move them from classrooms to chapel each week. We ordered some keyboards so I can start teaching a beginning piano class and we even got a small keyboard for the chapel. Hurray! And since we had only 22 hymn books and over 100 people, we got more of those and more of a variety of other manuals. And the conference Ensigns came and there were enough to take to the ward members. Plus Book of Mormons… I now understand why we have pick-up trucks!

In the afternoon we went to the Sirat Center in an upscale part of town. They had lovely shops and we were told that was where the Europeans and Indians shopped. We had lunch there and actually felt like we might be back in the United States! It was a bit shocking to see so many white people. They had an African Craft fair and we wandered and were persuaded to purchase a few things. Tomorrow we head back to Kisumu.

Amazing Day Sunday 11-22-09

Today the branch leadership was reorganized. The Mission President, Pres. Taylor, came to interview people and prayerfully learn who God had chosen to lead this congregation. Because he was interviewing in the morning, we had Primary, Relief Society, and Priesthood first. I went into the primary this week. Wow! These children are so reverent. Even the little 2 and 3 year olds who were in opening exercises and sharing time were well behaved. For sharing time, older children shared scriptures they’d memorized and then they were discussed. When they young children went to essentially the nursery, it was just a bare room. No toys, no pictures, just mats on the floor for them to sit on. They sang songs, did activities like marching while they were singing, and listened to stories… with no visual aids. Really sweet, cute kids!

At sacrament we had about 120 people! Last week it was 87, the week before less than that. We had 50 investigators this week—people who wanted to know more. Sometimes they think they are coming to a rich white man’s church where they will be given things. There are so many needs here in Africa that it could easily bankrupt the church and, indeed, every other nation in the world… and I’m not sure it would be enough. Part of the solution is changing habits and thinking patterns. However, the Lord knows these people and loves them. He wants to bless them. I am convinced that as they grow spiritually, the Lord will bless them both spiritually and physically. The scriptures say that there is no physical or spiritual with the Lord, all is spiritual.

They are good people, trying hard to do their best. They are so new in the gospel that things we take for granted are unknown to them. Our calling is to help them learn leadership, delegation, gospel principles, budgeting, the programs of the church, welfare, etc. Imagine if I were sent to the wilds of Africa. The things that any child knows would be foreign to me. Each step would have to be explained and learned. Sometimes it’s easier for people just to let someone else do it. Tom said, “I will teach them to walk, but I will not be their walker.” That is the only way that will lead to ultimate success. They are eager to learn and these will be the leaders of generations of faithful saints in Africa.

It’s been a good day, but a long day. Water dripped down the kitchen walls from some unknown source this afternoon. Now, tonight we have no water—either from the city faucet or the storage tank faucet. Bummer! I hope it’s better tomorrow and I hope the plumber can resolve this problem.

It’s getting familiar! 11-21-09

Progress has been made this week. I am getting accustomed to driving here and no longer shriek if we have to go onto the shoulder of the road to avoid potholes or oncoming traffic. Indeed, sometimes the shoulder of the road is smoother than the road itself. I am also getting accustomed to passing bicyclist and other traffic with inches to spare.

We continue to deal with the water. We learned that the right faucet is for city water (when it’s running) and the left faucet… normally the hot water faucet… is for the water from the holding tank. It usually runs… but not this morning. We actually have NO hot water. That changed today, however! The electrician came and installed a shower head that heats the water before it comes out. Hurray!!! Hot water! We have been heating all our water with a 1.7 liter electric tea pot. It’s a marvelous invention. It heats water in about 3 minutes. We use it for heating dishwashing water, laundry water, face washing water. And we took several baths with water heated from that little tea pot. Before the water filter system was installed on Thursday, we would sometimes boil our water to drink with it.

I am learning that sometimes good enough is much better than trying for good. We put water in the tub for a bath and it was somewhat rusty looking. So we drained it to add fresh. It was VERY rusty!! And so were the next 8-10 tries. Ultimately we got back to sort of rusty and were pleased with that. It took from Saturday to Thursday to get the kitchen faucet changed so the filtration system could be hooked on. The faucet leaked. It still leaks. But I’m a little hesitant to ask for improvement. I could be without a kitchen faucet at all for a while.

People here are wonderful. Really genuinely helpful and kind. Brother Morrice went looking for a dresser and book shelf for us. The native price is always much lower than the Mazinga (white, foreigner) price so we sent him to look in the market place. He found a great deal for us and we went to pick it up. We met Bro. Morrice at a gas station outside of the market place. He lead us, on his bike, through a maze of stalls. As we drove down the narrow rut, I was afraid we’d drive over the feet of people sitting along the side. People kindly moved bikes, boards, and other things out of the way so we could pass. I thought, no truck has ever been into the bowel of this market… and then I’d see a car or truck parked off to the side and so I took fresh courage that we might indeed get both in and out. We went past the furniture building shops with people planning wood (with no safety guards), mounds of wood shavings, and the bones of upholstered chairs and sofas. Finally we stopped and got our dresser. The book shelf person wasn’t there, so Morrice said he’d deliver it on his bike! And he did.

I wanted to go food shopping at the market, too. So Morrice took us to the woman he shops from. We got carrots, potatoes, bell peppers, garlic, green bananas, sweet potatoes, and two mounds of African Greens. The seller gave us instructions on how to cook them—de-stem the leaves, boil for 10 minutes, fry some onions and tomatoes, then add the cooked greens with some oil. It tasted pretty good—a lot like spinach plus onions and tomatoes. All those vegetables came to 250 Kshillings—a little over $3.

Thursday we drove to Eldoret, about 130 km away. It took 2.5 hours to get there. The roads invite a “leisurely” speed as slow traffic, potholes and “diversions” keep Tom an alert driver. A diversion is when they are repairing the road and so you simply drive around the repair on the shoulder of the road. Also, Kenyans love speed bumps!!! Every little village you come to has maybe 4-6 speed bumps before, during and after the town. Some are double or triple bumps. Maybe 1 in 10 is marked. We are getting better at seeing them BEFORE we go over them.

The drive was lovely! We went up into the Nandi Hills, through sugar plantations and tea plantations. It was green and beautiful. The camera can’t catch the rolling hills with more hills beyond and the crisp white clouds in the sky. The road was winding and every curve brought beautiful vistas. We carried one set of elders up with us, and another back down. We spent the night with the Littlefields in their beautiful 4 bedroom house with its own personal 24 hour guard, gardener, and carwasher. We went for Zone conference on Friday and had missionaries attending from Kisumu, Eldoret, and Kitala—about 28 in all. It was a spiritual feast. We have great people here. We had to leave a little early to get back to Kisumu before dark. [I will try to put in pictures later. at the internet Cafe they are SO slow to load.]

It’s not a good idea to be on the road after dark. Bikes don’t have reflectors, dark people don’t always wear white, cars have bright headlights, and cows, goats, and donkeys graze beside the road and sometimes wander across. In one town even in daylight, a bus was stopped, waiting for an errant goat to decide to get out of the way. We did get home (barely) before dark. Alas, our set of missionaries had left their apartment keys in the Eldoret Missionary’s apartment. So we had company Friday night to Saturday morning. They are good elders. They’ve been very helpful getting us settled. We were glad to help them out.

This morning (Saturday) we had leadership training for the leaders in the Kisumu branch. About 80% of the leaders have been members less than a year. The branch is only 4 months old. But the people are wonderful; spiritual, humble, open to be taught and to learn how they should lead and fulfill their callings. We talked about learning line-upon-line. How the Lord will take you from where you are and help you grow if you have desire, are humble, and obedient. About how we will make mistakes as we learn, but Heavenly Father knew that would happen and gave us repentance so we could change and improve. When we divided, Tom took the presidencies and I took the others and talked about being effective teachers—teaching with the spirit and using Elder Bednar’s counsel to 1. Identify key principles, 2. Call to action, 3. Promise blessings. It was fun to search the scriptures and have the class members find these things.

So life is good. I’ve relearned how to hand wash clothes, but hope to have a washer and dryer early next week. We’ve learned how to use an internet café and while their services are slow, they are much better than nothing. We hope to get a land line and DSL next week. However, in Kenya, everything takes longer. It just does. Get used to it. Today when we shopped, we actually felt competent as we searched the shelves for the customary things. What a joy to discover yeast, raisins, dates, and peanuts. Now if we’d just remembered to buy a can opener. Sigh. Did you know a powerful elder and a screw driver can do amazing things?

Oh! And we got curtains up. I can’t tell you how homey that makes things. No more black windows. We do have effective screens and so have not had much problem at all with mosquitoes. Somehow the measurements translated pretty well, but we ended up with the requisite number of curtains for the windows plus about ½ again as many. Fortunately I had not ordered for the office/guest bedroom and so we have nearly all the curtains we need for that room. I like the fabrics I chose. So things are good.

We think of you, even though we have not written much this past week. I hope to be able to upload this blog and the one written last Sunday. Thanks for your prayers.

The Church in Kenya11-15-09

This is the primary class at church. They are SO cute! Then, the next sunday we had almost double that number.

Today we attended our first church meetings. It was AWESOME!!! In many ways it was like being in our home ward. The relief society president’s name was even Maureen. There were 86 in attendance and 30 were investigators. One of the speakers gave an excellent talk on obedience. She quoted many scriptures. The second speaker was a gentleman who had been baptized two weeks ago. He gave an impressive discourse on tithes and offerings. Elder Fox and I and Elder and Sister Littlefield were asked to bear our testimonies. We were asked to sit up front.

Sacrament is held on the 3rd floor. It is an open patio with a tin roof. The priests kneeled on hard tile floor to bless the sacrament. Our voices in song carried over the neighborhood—these saints can really sing! And the crow of roosters and occasional road noise added to our services. We sing accapella. The leader sings the first few measures to set the tone, then says, “Everybody sing,” and we all begin singing at the beginning of the song.

The Sunday school teacher taught from the Gospel Principles book and about half the congregation left to attend the investigator’s class. I think they’ve had about 25 baptized in the last month or two. In Relief Society, a new member again gave the lesson. We practiced singing a Relief Society Chorus for next week’s Branch conference. We could hear the primary children singing during our Sunday school class. How fun!

I am trying to learn names. So I am taking pictures of people and having them write their names down. Many have American sounding names—Carol, Jacque, Elizabeth. Some are like Hesbon Odhiambo Opon. Some of the names here are “Click” names—you have to make a “Tock” or “Kiss” sound and then some letters. Elder Celea is really Elder “Kiss sound”lea with the kiss sound coming from the tongue right between the teeth.

There is a great spirit here among the saints. They love the Lord. One new sister said, “The other churches left me hanging. They couldn’t answer all my questions.” I am impressed with the depth of their understanding of gospel principles—even members who have only recently joined the church. The missionaries must be doing a fantastic job of teaching! They are great and have been very helpful to us. The missionaries here are from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and many other African nations… as well as Nevada, and Utah.

These people are wonderful. This will be a great mission.

The Kisumu House

The house in Kisumu is truly lovely. We have this downstairs apartment. The rest is the church meeting house. Our home has herringbone wood parquet flooring. It is light and airy with 10 windows in the living room alone. We have an entry into the dining area, a large kitchen (With plaid countertops and cupboard fronts) and a very large pantry. We have an office/spare bedroom and a master bedroom with the bathroom off that. It has a tub with a shower coming off the side of the tub. It has doors to the outside off the living room, office and kitchen (The kitchen door goes to an enclosed patio) and off the dining room into the church area. The building has sat empty for a time, but this 3 story multigenerational home was originally owned by an Indian family. The church meets in the rest of the bottom floor as well as the next two stories.

This is our livingroom.

Friday a truck moved things from Nairobi and the Missionaries helped set up the apartment. We have a sofa and two chairs, TV and DVD player, dining room table and 6 chairs, washer, dryer (not yet hooked up) Stove and refrigerator, bed box springs and mattress, end tables and a desk and filing cabinet. It was nicely arranged with some area rugs when we arrived.

There are multiple locks on each door and we are in a fenced compound with a night guard. While people are very kind and friendly, many are in amazing poverty. There seems to be a great division between the haves and the have-nots. The haves are in secure compounds with guards. The have-nots are in shanties. And there is a fluid sense of ownership. If something is lying out, it becomes the property of the person who sees it.

This house is MUCH better than camping. Still, the water filtration system is not hooked up so we must use bottled water, or boil it. And for some reason the hot water heater doesn’t work, so we only get cold water. And for some reason, last night the cold water quit running, so we couldn’t flush the toilet. On the plus side, Tom discovered a pump that was off. The water is pumped to tanks on the roof, then gravity fed to the faucets. The water worked today… but now is off again. And, when the cold water was off, we discovered that the house is plumbed for hot water to all the faucets and the tub (but not the shower… it needs an inline water heater to give hot water.) Many houses in Kenya have hot water to only one place… or none at all.

We went out late in the afternoon to get the essentials. We bought plates, utensils, a knife, an electric tea pot for heating water (It works well!) a fan (oops, it has to be wall mounted, so we lived through the 80 degrees plus humidity without it.) And we got enough food to last til Monday. We hadn’t eaten most of the day—we thought we’d arrive earlier than we did—and were so tired and exhausted it was hard to think straight. We’d planned to order curtains for all the windows, but went to the wrong store. So we have paper taped over the lower halves of the windows.

The windows have 3 parts—an outside window, bars or a heavy wire mesh imbedded into the cement of the house walls, and an inner double screen. Both the screen and the windows can be open which allows a nice air flow. We close the screens at dusk when the mosquitoes come out. We haven’t had a problem with them, but we do take our malaria pills daily.

Trip to Kisumu

Friday we saw out household good packed... sort of packed... into the truck.

Saturday we left early for kisumu. Going out of Nairobi we passed slums and along the way there were villege markets. We saw some fantastic scenery on our way to Kisumu. Early on we saw some baboons and several small herds of zebras. We passed millions of donkeys, goats, sheep, and cattle grazing alongside the road with a herder nearby. We saw tea plantations for miles.

We passed the great rift valley which is full of small farms, and people walking to and fro in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. At wells there were crowds filling 5 gallon barrels and doing laundry. Then for miles in each direction we’d see people hauling water away—on their heads, on bicycles, carrying and walking. The scenery varied from fairly arid to lush.

There was no need to mow, however, every uncultivated area was neatly clipped by various grazing animals.

While some of the ride was a white knuckle experience, much of it was lovely and interesting.

Driving in Kenya

On Friday we were given a new 2009 Nissan 4 door pickup and told to follow Elder and Sister Elam home. Mind you, they drive on the left with the steering on the right. It’s a stick shift and so Tom has to learn a new shift pattern and do it with his left hand. Also, left side driving means a whole new set of reference points in the truck. If you forget and go back to the common street guide lines, you are half way into the left lane—a problem if there is no left lane and a drop off on the shoulder. Now, throw in the craziest driving this side of Taiwan—no rules, the biggest and fastest gets the right of way, everyone is crowding in to drive, cutting others off, etc. And we are to just jump in and do this.

Elder Fox did amazingly well! Sure we clipped mirrors with a Matatu—one of the thousands of local van-taxis, successfully avoided a truck stopped with a breakdown in the middle of the road, and avoided either losing Elder Elam by having dozens of cars merge in front of us (because there was 6 inches to spare) or to run into the back of Elder Elam’s truck.
All and all, it was a successful trip.

Saturday we made the journey to Kisumu. Elder and Sister Littlefield lead us there. The only problem was, they had never traveled there from this direction. One time we took a road that got narrower, then suddenly turned into a rutted, dirt track with village venders on either side. We crept past a truck loaded with sheep. Elder Littlefield asked directions and we returned the 40 Kilometers to the last traffic circle, where we had not circled to the correct road. Here are some of the hazards of Kenyan driving:
No shoulders with a drop off of 6-18 inches.
Potholes 6-10 inches deep anywhere on the road.
Narrow roads, no striping—center or side lines.
Trucks broken down right on the road. They put out branches or rocks as their “flares’ to let you know they are stopped.
22 wheeled trucks that go 10-15 mph up hills.
Cars and vans that pass said trucks… and each other at the same time. You can have 3 cars abreast across the road. This can be done on a blind curve. It is the Ultimate Chicken. We saw several motorcycles run off the road this way.
Motorcycles, bicycles, donkey carts loaded with jugs, sugar canes 10 feet long (sideways), sacks of potatoes or carrots, etc. going down the side of the road that you have to pass as well.
In the cities, pedestrians throng roadsides. They do not have the right of way, and are very quick to get out of the way. (Good thing, one time I said, “Wow, that pedestrian got out of the way fast.” Tom said, “What pedestrian? I was looking at the white car coming in from the right.”)

We were preserved! Eight hours later, we arrived in Kisumu. Safe, sound, and tired.

We are in Kenya!

We arrived late Wednesday night. Gradually we are getting accustomed to the 10 hour time change. We tend to fade about 4 pm and wake in the middle of the night for a couple of hours.

The country is beautiful. The people here are lovely and we have enjoyed getting to know the other missionary couples. The traffic, however is abominable! Today Elder Fox drove the truck for the first time-- getting accustomed to a stick shift on the left side--driver on the right. Driving on the left side with pedestrians crossing the road, matutus (minivan taxis) and busses crowding the road. It's beyond description. I think I lost several years off my life side seat driving-- "Watch out for the ditch!" "That bus is cutting in!" "Did you see how quickly that pedestrian jumped out of the way?" (Tom's reply:"What pedestrian? I was busy watching the white car cutting in from the right."

Today we also went to lunch at a native place and ate green mashed potatoes with corn, Sukumawiki (Spinich kind of stuff), Ugali (white cornmeal paste), roasted mbuzi (goat meat), whole fried fish-eyeballs, tails and all (I didn't eat those), and veggies and fruits. It was all quite good. The goat was tough.

Tomorrow we head for Kisumu.

Great time at the Mission Training Center

We have had a great time here. A spiritual feast. Here is Tom-- now Elder Fox studying in our room. We had classes all day long. We learned so much and the spirit is so strong. We really feel blessed to be here.

My sister and her husband are going to Switzerland on their mission. They play the alphorn and practiced each evening. In the background you can see the Provo Temple. The Alphorn is a mellow instrument but it's sound carries. We enjoyed hearing them play. Sometimes a group would gather to listen.

Here is our Senior Missionary group. We all arrived on Monday. Some are education missionaries going to teach. Others are office missionaries, record preservation, medical specialists. They are going all over the world. They were so awesome to get to know. Even though we've only known them a week, we will miss them.

Saturday was our preparation day-- to do laundry, run errands, etc. We went to the Provo Temple to serve the Lord. We also met with our friends the Lunds. They were our mission President on our last mission.

Tomorrow we will begin our trek to Kenya. We fly to Los Angeles, then to London. We arrive there about 11am. I'd like to sight see, but we may be exhausted. We fly out of London Wednesday morning and arrive in Nairobi about 9:30 Wednesday night. We may be off line for a week or more before we get internet connection. We will fill you in as soon as we can.

What do we do and why?

Our purpose as missionaries is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.

There are about 2300 missionaries here training to go everywhere in the world. Most are young men and women. We have met some from Canada, Hungary, Pakistan, Taiwan, England, and Russia. We have classes each day teaching us easy ways to reach out and show God's love to people and give them a message of hope. As we go from class to class, some of the young missionaries will stop us and ask if they can share their testimony of Jesus Christ and how His gospel has been restored once again to the earth. They may share it in Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, or German, but each time they do-- even though we don't understand everything-- the Holy Spirit whispers that what they are saying is true.

We are busy from 8am until about 5pm. Today we spent time in the call center, where people who have watched an ad on TV call to request a free Bible, Book of Mormon, DVD of "Finding Faith in Christ" etc. It was fun to take those calls. There are so many good people out there. In the evenings we have several hours of reading and studying. There is a fantastic spirit here.

The message we bring is pretty simple. The same Gospel preached by Jesus Christ has been restored back in its purity in these last days. God speaks again through living prophets. He has answered the questions of: "Where did we come from?" "What is our purpose here on earth?" and "What happens to us after this life? What I love most is that God has a plan for us-- a reason for our being on earth and a step-by-step plan for us to return to live with Him. This is a way to find joy, hope, and peace now and in the eternities. Is that not a great message?

We've arrived at the Mission Training Center!

Tom and I arrived at the Missionary Training Center on Monday. We spent a few days with Deborah, and also a night with our former mission president. Had an awesome visit. Here we are at the training center. On the left is my sister and Tom's brother (who are married to each other.) They also are going on a mission-- to Switzerland.

This is a great spiritual experience! I love being here!