It has been raining much more than usual and these trees are all over town.  

Found a place to watch these cute monkeys when we go walking.  It is on the other side of the Kampala road along the Nile.

The view of the Nile where we walk

Rand trying to get a monkey to come closer

This is the view from our bedroom window.  These folks belong to a very noisy church.  They have been celebrating something all weekend.  They go day and night with singing, chants and drums and clapping.  This is one thing we won't miss when we go home.  It would have been a good weekend to have been gone.

Our trip to Kampala this weekend was cancelled because of a burial.  Sister Peace passed away of aides on Wed.  and many in Kampala including the secretaries from our office there and Bishop Babeeyo over CES knew her personally and wanted to be there.                                      So now we have experienced a burial.                                                                                              Sister Peace is a return missionary that taught the “Planning for Success” class that teaches young return missionaries how to qualify for a PEF loan. We had only met her once at the Njeru Branch.  She was infected with aides as a youth by a relative.  People in Africa that get aides became obsessed with taking as many people down with them as they can.  Very sad.  Peace was 42 years old when she died.  There are many who die of aids here and members of the church are not spared.  

This is the viewing in the Jinja Branch Relief Society room. The top of the coffin slides back so the  deceased is visible and guests are invited to walk by to view the body.    

Getting the coffin out of  the transport vehicle.  Not sure why they didn't remove the back seats and take it out through the back.

They announced for the Priesthood to come carry the coffin out to the SUV they hired to carry the coffin out to the village 

This is the front yard of Peace's village home.  Many from the city go back to the village to be buried.  The plantation in the background was breathtakingly beautiful.  Peace actually lived here with her Moslem husband.  The man on the right is the new Branch Pres. of Njeru branch.  His wife is the RS president and they have a darling little baby.  He was the one that dedicated the grave
(the dad not the baby).  The man on the left was in charge of music.  We sang hymns for over an hour.  I was hoarse before the burial program started.  The packages on the coffin were flowers.  The top of the casket was slid back here so that family and neighbors could come and see the face of sister Peace.

 The MC of the Burial was Richard.  He is Bishop of the Seeta Ward, Kampala Stake and he and Peace joined the church in Jinja 20 years ago.  They both served their missions in Kenya.   He has been to our house to help us with computer issues.  We really like him but today he spoke mostly in the native language so hardly knew what was said.  It rained steady till the time to move the coffin to the  grave sight.  We were glad that they had a tent to sit under.  It was about the same as the one they had a couple weeks ago for the wedding.  Many of the guests were sitting out in the rain.

Cute little baby of Pres Jackair of Njeru Branch.  He is held by Sister Peace's youngest sister.  After the Burial I asked Rose, the CES secretary if this was the usual attendance at a burial.  She said that because of the rain there weren’t that many.  I was amazed as I don’t know where they would have put one more person.  She said that thousands can come.  It is a time that the LCS local political representative come and campaign for whatever is going on locally.  It can turn in to a big mess if people don’t agree with them.  We didn’t have that probably thanks to the weather.

Once the casket is moved to the hole in the ground the men start mixing cement by hand.  Basically they are making a vault on sight.  They pour the cement over the casket once it is lowered into the ground.

Since we had the only vehicle at the burial we were asked to go get the rice for the refreshments. We dove over to a market where we parked under this tree.  It was covered with hanging nests and yellow birds.  

These yellow birds are the kilombera or weaver bird.  The nests hanging are what they weave.  They seemed to be entering from the bottom of the nest, we were fascinated.   Leaving the burial several hours later was very difficult.  The road had become extremely slick with mud.  Rand thought he had never had so little control, and he has driven on snow and ice.  We were praying the whole time that we would get back to the main road without damaging the truck.  We were taking several back who had missed work and needed to get back before they lost their jobs.

                                                  Saturday was the Jinja Branch YSA activity.  

We were in charge of helping with refreshments.  The kids are getting pretty good at planning, organizing and carrying out their own activities.  Sister Ballsteadt has worked with them for a year and most the time they do their assignment.  If they don't someone else steps forth to cover for them and someone else talks about how "we need to be more responsible". 

The refreshments for the YSA activity were hotdogs and marshmallows.  Most of the kids had never eaten a marshmallow

Edward is the young man in the purple shirt.  He is a guard at the church.  He was very willing to help us round up the briquets and roasting sticks.  He told us to park down the street while he went and negated a price on the items.  He wanted us hidden otherwise they would charge us mazonga prices.  We were happy that he was so willing to help.  

Elder Brown and I were in charge of the bonfires for roasting hotdogs and marshamellows.  We used tin foil on the church parking lot with local briquets for roasting.  Most African's cook over briquets normally so this was a piece of cake getting the hotdog cooked without burning it.   I remembered to get out the camera when the crowd had thinned a bit.  We had about 100 YSA at the activity.