3/17/14

3/17/14 Hey mom! I am glad you were able to have such a relaxing week. It looks and sounds like it was a lot of fun! We will definitely have to do something like that when I get back. It is funny how everyone has called that Derek would be the most like me for a long time. I think Luke will be one of the weirdest to see when I get back. :P How long ago did Bryant put in his mission papers? That is awesome! I am looking forward to hearing where he will go. I love going over to the orphanage. I really want to volunteer there when I get back, but I will have to start saving or something because of the airfare. I am thinking whenever we want to come as a family I might come like a month earlier and volunteer, because the owner of the orphanage is also a safari guide. He is building a new house for them now, where there will be a nice little room for four volunteers to stay, so I would get to be with the kids all the time, unless it was during school time. It would be loads of fun. So I still haven't gotten those spices. :P I don't know exactly how the mail gets to us here in Arusha though, because I haven't really gotten any mail in like 2 months. So for all we know it could be sitting in Dar where all the poach for Tanzania gets sent. We will see when I go there. Thank you so much for all you do for me! I love you so much! Elder Janda Hey there everyone! So the weeks here are really starting to fly by! I guess I will work backwards for the week. So yesterday was actually a pretty exciting day at church. Towards the end of first hour, which is priesthood and relief society here, a van rolled into the church driveway, which you can see from the classrooms. As the van rolled up, out popped a bunch of Wazungu! I guess they are here to help improve the treatments of cancer, and also to climb Kilimanjaro. It was a lot of fun seeing the members get all excited to see Wazungu, and also to act so differently around them. One of the young men who is preparing for a mission had a serious crush on this girl that came. The funny thing is the girl was 13 and he is 18. He was asking me to take a picture and everything and print it out for him. Then after church we went to one of our members for a lunch appointment. They fed us ugali and beans and fish and fruit, or ugali na marage na simaki na matunda. It was pretty good. There was no way that the four missionaries were there could have ever finished it. They are a super powerful family though and it was great to be with them. On Saturday we went with one of our members to the school he owns. His wife and three of his cousins are our investigators so we were going to teach them. We were only able to teach two unfortunately. One of them was named Zuwena. She was Zuwena when she was a Muslim, but now that she has converted to Christianity, she asked me to give her a new Christian name, so now she goes by Eliza. Anyways, she is our first investigator with a baptismal date! She should be baptized next month if everything goes according to plan. Unfortunately the members wife is having a very hard time accepting the fact that she needs to be re-baptized. She says she wants to be a member but she doesn't need to be baptized again, because they are all the same. We will keep working with her though and I know she will be baptized eventually. My companion has some medical issues so we spent quite a bit of time this week at the hospital and searching for medicine, so those are really the main things that happened this past week! If anyone has questions feel free to email me and ask! I love you all! Elder Janda