Thought it would be fun to share our new favorite u-tube attraction.  We like watching Alex Boye's "I will Rise" featured on the Meridian Magazine email at http://www.ldsmag.com/article/1/11631

Happy Birthday Jack Eagar.

Oct 20th

We sent out a request for good white shirts for the Missionaries that are being called from Uganda.  Here is an example of what their shirts start to look like.

The Missionary couples in Jinja have a tradition of having a "transfer dinner" every six weeks.  The single missionaries come to the church for a nice dinner and some sort of activity.  These are the only two sister missionaries right now in our district.

After the dinner the missionaries activity was to watch the Priesthood session of conference.  There are about twice as many African missionaries as whites.  

Here is the old and new.  The girl on the left is wearing what an American could be seen wearing.  Many women in Uganda like to wear the dress on the right.  It is their typical dressy dress.  Some women wear them at church.  The sleeves poke up at the shoulder to make it the unique Ugandan style

Rand and I were the hosts for this table of couples.  Pres. Jackson is mentoring those who want to start their own businesses.  He met with each couple then had them all out to dinner at "2 friends".  
On the left are Immaculate and Doug.  The couple on the right is Peter and Loyce.  Peter and Loyce bag water and sell it for much less than bottled water.
We never did figure out what the first couple's business was but they were having fun..
There English wasn't clear enough for us to understand.

These storks have taken up residence in a tree at the church.  There are several that are usually there.  I think the members think we are silly taking pictures of the birds all the time. 

Here is a close up

Took Pres. Palaasi home after church.  He and his wife are teachers at quite an exclusive school.  We drove up on the highest hill around to get to the school.  The compound where he and his family live have the most amazing views.

Pres. Palaasi told Rand about his pig farm.  He has a whole line of pens with moms & piglets

It was hard to get a picture of the pigs, just off the hill from the Palaasi's property

We've watched this garden from the time the lady dug the weeds and planted.  This past week she insisted we have some of her beans.  She pulled the whole plant and gave them to us to take home and harvest.  They are a pretty speckled bean that cooks up much quicker than dry beans.

Rand carrying home the bounty.

Sarah and Dan invited Elder Brown and I to their wedding.  They took the missionary lessons and wanted to be baptized.  Because they had never been married they were married on Sat. and Baptized on Sun.  We were unable to attend the marriage because it was held at the same time as the PEF fireside we conducted in Jinja Branch.  Wished we could have postponed the fireside because the electricity was off and we had a power point presentation for most of the fireside.  In the end we showed the movie of Pres. Hinckley announcing the Perpetual Education Fund to about 30 attendees from the lap top we placed on the podium.  The rest we had to do without the wording of the power point.  The reason we wanted that is they could read the words of what we were saying if they didn't understand our accent.

Back to the wedding
We were able to attend the reception at the couples home.  They placed a big tent out in the yard.  When we drove up in our truck we followed a very rough road about a block to the home with neighbors all along the way shouting and singing a joyous song they use for special occasions.

Much to our surprise Rand and the other Senior Elder were asked to speak.  I sure was glad that I wasn't as I was already overwhelmed.  In the end I said the blessing on the food.
Check out the fun decorations hanging around the tent.

Pres. Godfrey Kitambo is showing Dan and Sarah where to sign their marriage certificate

We have received lots of memos from the Mission President about how marriages must be done in order to qualify to be baptized and eventually go to the temple.  Here they proudly display their proper marriage document.

Sarah was pretty serious throughout the evening.  I kept trying and got a few with them smiling

Cutting the cake.  They had a hard time cutting through the frosting.  See the purple flower at the bottom of the picture.  That is the flower Sarah made at Relief Society the day I came to teach them a craft.  That was the first time I met Sarah.  She was so touched that I did that.  It was amazing to me that was all it took to be named guest of honor at her wedding

Sarah fed Dan some cake and now she is giving him a drink of soda.  (you really do need something to wash down the cake).  We were told that you should take the cake with two fingers only.  If you used three you were in trouble.  No one said what that was but it reminded me of Dad when he told us not to eat the point of the pie first.   They Kneeled down feed each other and then they kneeled down to serve their special guests the tiny pieces of cake as well.
It rained and turned very dark.  We were glad we had the tent.  Someone placed a kerosene lantern on the table for light.  At home something like that could be on each of the tables as a decoration.

William is the man in the center.  He is in our Book of Mormon reading class.  He is sitting by Dan and Sarah's four children.

Sarah is ready for her baptism.  She still has the fancy hair style she had yesterday for the wedding.  The hair is plastered down and designs in glitter is the color that you see.  It was very fancy.

Bro. Ballstead baptized two couples today.  This man lives two hours from the nearest branch.  We don't usually teach families that live so far away but this man and his wife insisted.  Rand was the witness and was holding the names of those being baptized.  Ugandans always say there last name first.  It is very confusing to us Americans.  The first name is often something simple like Dan or Susan but the last name (which they say first) is an African name that we struggle with.

Sarah has been baptized
Notice the ladder into the baptismal font.  I think someone started the water in the font and forgot about it.  Never seen it that full before.

Sat. night we were able to watch General Conference live from Salt Lake City.  It was so amazing to be sitting in a home in Lira Uganda with the Grundy's and watch almost as if we were there in person.

The announcement that there would be a temple in Tucson was thrilling beyond compare.  

The new age for missionaries who will be able to serve at a younger age

was a surprise and exciting also.  We have more missionaries leaving than coming which has left our Mission President concerned because of all the work here to do.

What a perfect answer.

The Grundy's in front of Adyel Branch.  This was a motel that we rent for the branch.  The chapel area is about to be rebuilt to accommodate the growth.  This branch was established soon after we came on our mission.

 Again we were able to watch Conference Sunday.  First we watched the Sat. afternoon session then Sun. morning was live.  It was 7pm here.  Great timing.  We feel so uplifted & inspired

One monkey was picking something off his brother/sister monkey as we passed them Monday headed home.  We took  many more pictures of these cute creatures.

Uganda is celebrating it's 50th years celebration.  As we got closer to Kampala it became obvious that something was up.  Police were everywhere and the national colors displayed much as we do the "red, white & blue" back home.

This scene is across the street from the Kololo building where we have a PEF office.  Our secretary, Ann said that things were getting crazy there and they would not be coming to work on Tue which is the official celebration.  The President of Uganda will be at the airport parade grounds which is behind this display of celebration placards.

This may be the round about that leads up to the airport.  Lots of banners as you can see.

This is Richard & Marian who live down the street from us.  They came over to check out what was wrong with our garden.  The guard watered for us while we were gone and did a good job but the butternut squash plant has a fungus or something that has turned the leaves a sickly yellow blotchy color.  Richard said he knew right what to get so Rand gave him 10,000 and he will find the right product to bring back tomorrow.  We have some very lovely squash if we can keep the plant alive another month or two when they are mature for picking.

This has been a great week full of new experiences.  

Wed. we did a High Councilman training in Kampala.  

We're encouraging them to make sure the wards they visit keep tabs on their 

PEF students that are behind.  

The day before leaving for Kampala the printer froze up when the power went off and we were in the middle of a printing project.  Some of the handouts had to be printed on the inferior printer at the PEF office in Kampala.  We did get the brand name of a printer the mission says does a much better job.  We'll be in heaven if we get that one sometime soon.  

We left Kampala on Thur and drove 4 and a half hours to Lira.  We visited there with with Pres & Sister Jackson four months ago when we first arrived in Uganda.  This trip we have been hosted by the Missionary couple assigned here, the Grundy's are doing an amazing job with the two branches here.  We met the first member of the church who came here and is now the branch president of one of the branches.  The second branch was established just after we got here and is growing quickly.  

Other churches have given the church members a lot of grief because they have lost members to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.  

This past Monday Pres. Jackson was invited to a meeting with the Minister to explain to the other churches about our church.  Sister Grundy talk about PEF and a Women's endowment recipient spoke.  The Grundy's reported to us that the meeting went very well and they expect to have less persecution.  These disgruntled locals were impressed with the report of the humanitarian efforts in Uganda  and the testimonies of the local members that did not compute with the gossip that had been spread.  Everyone was happy with the results. 

On Sat. we had a PEF fireside to explain the program to perspective students and more training for the two priesthood leaders.  We figured we'd have at least 8 at the fireside and maybe 20.  We had 34.    

First of the week Sam helped Rand get the movie on the power Point presentation.  Sam lives fairly close to us and cleans the truck every Tue.  He is the most computer savvy person in Jinja Branch.

This baboon was happy to pose for us.  He appeared just before the road to Lira crossed over the Nile

Next came some monkeys.  So cute and cuddly

All these are taken from inside the truck.  Not sure how safe you would be outside the vehicle.

My order seems to be baboon, monkey, baboon, monkey.  I didn't get them quite in order.  First we passed the baboons then the monkeys

While following the Grundy's from Kampala to Lira we had the privilege of dropping off this return missionary who just got back from Virginia.  She was very rare.  Most Africans are called to an African country.  When her family came out squealing as we drove up I started crying and just couldn't quit.  It was such a joyous reunion.

This little boy was the same age Kensie was when Andrew came home from his mission.  He wanted nothing to do with Juliette.

Brick wall at a school with a small window that looked out on our road that we walked on.

This is a picture of some of the students at the fireside.  The man in front is Pres. Moses.  We did a training later with him on how the PEF program should be run in his branch

Many of the men have shirts that look like this young man's collar.  They are thread bare but clean.

We got to attend this baptism.  She was so thrilled to be baptized.

                                      Happy Birthday Agnes & Ava Oct 1st

This Billy Goat and Grandma and Grandpa hope you two have a Very Happy Happy Birthday.  Send us lots of fun pictures of the day.  We love you both!

None of the goats are fenced like the ones we used to have.  Most roam free but these two are tied up.  They are suppose to keep the lawn and shrubs trimmed.

This little buy is suppose to be mowing the lawn. He isn't happy to be tied to the tree as you can see.

This turkey is trying to get the attention of the girls on the left.  When Grandpa calls to them they usually gobble back.

Grandpa found this centipede on our drive.  Neither of us were brave enough to hold it like
Ava did when she found one. 

This is Filder, the lady that we teach English to every Tue. at 4.  We got to the church and the missionaries did not have the church open so we worked on the tail gate till they got there.

This is Grandma's new friends.  Two are missionary wives and Mary, the district RS president.  She is the one that sewed my drapes and she has a daughter in PEF we are working with.  Her name is Juliann.  The other two are friends that I've introduced before, Sister  Crayk & Ballstaedt 

More of our new friends.  Grandpa and I are on the left.  Next comes the Jones, Edlers Crayk and Grundy,  Harris' Jacksons, Frosts, Sisters Grundy & Sister; Crayk, Beckels &  Scotts.