We've discovered when we travel that we don't get our blog added to.  Last Sat we did a fireside in Masaka, spent the night then headed back to Kampala the next day.  We went to Makindy Ward and met a lady who is the church's authority on international adoptions who also just happened to be visiting Makindy ward.  When the Vans left they had made arrangements for an adoption that no one knew how to accomplish.  They just left us in charge of a soon to be newborn that has no home but with a family in USA wanting to adopt.  We felt blessed to find someone we could trust to advise us.  What a miracle.

Yesterday was our Self Reliance/PEF fireside for Jinja.  It was our third and last one for Jinja district and we wanted it to go well.  We went to the church early to set up and wouldn't you know, the Jinja Branch President called in a panic because he was in the hospital with his wife who was in terrible pain.  The doctor needed her to go get an ultra sound at a distant clinic and he had no way to get her there.  We hurried to the hospital and somehow stuffed the wife, husband and her mother in the back seat of the truck.  Her pain was immense and we all hurt for her as Rand drove as carefully as he could over about 50 speed bumps to the clinic.  I think the doctors suspected a tubular pregnancy and sure enough that is what she had.  It  had ruptured and she was bleeding internally.  By then the wife was about to pass out and we had to do the trip all over again back to the hospital.  We were so thankful Sat. night to hear that she had done well in the surgery to save her life.  We will go see her soon but not today.  We think most the ward went to see her today.  She is still in terrible pain so don't know if she appreciated the company or not.

We didn't get the turn out at the fireside that we had hoped for but the content has gotten lots of great and encouraging compliments.  We feel that the district is learning to think like self reliant members of Christ's church and we are learning what needs to be taught.

These two are famous.  The one on the lest was burned badly some months ago and the one on the right nursed her back to life & health.  A miracle to see them together at the wedding Sat. night. 

Joann is one of our Book of Mormon reading ladies and she had all the local neighbors dancing up a storm at Mpumudde Branch.  We waited for the wedding couple to appear and when it got dark and the music was too much for Elder Brown we left before the couple arrived.  No picture of the bride and groom or the wedding cake.

Ugandan boy scouts, we had never seen any boys in uniform like this.  Turns out Primary School has scout troops.  These boys had just learned to do knots.  They had very few patches on their uniforms.  Didn't think to ask them if they had a troop number.

This is a wedding cake I made for a PEF student who asked me to do it 2 months ago.  Since then us missionaries have been asked not to do things for weddings.  It takes away from members businesses.  Since I wanted to fulfill my promise and not take away from anyones business I decided to teach Christine how to decorate a cake.  I taught her how to bake a cake a few months ago.  She did a pretty good job decorating the cake for the first time so hopefully she can get more business as a cake decorator.

This was a strange flower growing up through razor wire on the top of this compound wall.  Kampala now wears us out with exit interviews.  We have about 25 students and each interview takes about an hour.  One student lived half way home to Jinja so he asked us to meet him at the gas station in Seeta to do  his interview under a tree.  Wish I had thought to get a picture. 

 Fireside attendes at Masaka Branch.  Masaka is about 3 hours West and South of Kampala.  Opposite Kampala from Jinja.  We taught them about self reliance much like we did in Lira and Gulu.

Members often ask if they can have their pictures taken with us.  This sister had made a very lovely bouquet of satin roses and sewed them on her dress.  Her goal is to go on a mission as soon as she has been in the church one year.

Two weeks ago we had the two zone conferences we have here in Jinja with our new mission president.  With new management some things are same, some things different.

 Sisters Tanner, Casperson and Brown cooking up the chicken Alfredo dinner for the missionaries.

Our new mission president, Pres. & Sister Chatfield from Alpine Utah.  Elder Brown and have been on our mission longer than any other couple in the Uganda Kampala mission.  I guess we're the senior couple.  This was the Jinja Zone Conference.