DO YOU HAVE A BIBLE? OR SHOULD I WRITE YOU A TICKET?

The missionaries are not allowed to eat off the street, but they sort of don't enforce rules with Senior missionaries.  This is Elder Ballstaedt, he could not resist this Kiosk selling food.  There is a white root vegetable called CASSAVA.  The African's dig it out of the ground and lay it on the ground to dry it out.  Then they grind it into flour or meal.  It is the staple of their diet along with Maize which is kind of a field corn.  Sometimes they make french fries out of the cassava by slicing it really thin and frying it, and then adding just the right amount of salt which is what Rock ate here.  

This woman will sit here all day trying to sell her food.  Her little children will run around and play while she works here.  Her children went crazy when they saw us, they had never seen white faces before and they were afraid and excited and ran around yelling at us.

Okay, Rock bought four pieces of the fried _____for about a quarter American money.  He LOVED it.  Said it tasted like fries...

These children belong to the vendors on the side of the street.  They were showing off for us.

Being sillies!!!

He kept yelling; "Monsumba, Monsumba!!!"  (Notice me!!!)

This is Cephas.  He is kind of a hero today.  He is a councilor in the Mpumedde Branch and he does a lot of things to help people.  He opens the door for me when I come to teach piano lessons, and he takes care of the building.  He also works as a guard for the home where 4 of the Elders live in Mpumedde.
The reason he is a hero is because the water and power was off for several days.  The members who were supposed to clean the building could not find water to wash the building and clean the restrooms.  Finally late Saturday night Cephas got on the back of a boda and went to buy two gerrycans of water and rode the boda back to the meeting house holding two gerrycans of water while on the back of the boda.  He stayed at the building and scrubbed the entire meeting house from top to bottom by himself until the middle of the night with no power.  He is a man of great faith who loves to give service for Heavenly Father.

 Children are always at the side of the road wondering who we are

Oh here Elder Ballstaedt is showing off his meal he bought from this woman who has a little stand at the side of  the road.  YUM!!!

It is always hard to get a good pic while looking out the window of the car as we speed down the road. But I love seeing this; look how the women carry their babies slung on their back.  Those kids are going NOWHERE without mama!

Here is the furniture shop right there at the side of the road!  Never mind if it rains or sun beats down, this is "open-to-the-air" furniture that can breathe!  What's a little water damage? You will see hundreds of these shops along the roads.

This was our best memory so far of Kampala.  This traffic cop pulled us over because the driver of our car, Elder Ballstaedt thought maybe it would be okay to turn on a red light.
NOT!
This little gal pulled us over and gave us a tounge-lashing about the rules of the Ugandan highway!  We said we are so sorry, but we are poor little missionaries here to save the souls of the Ugandans.  She told me if I had a Bible to give her she wouldn't give us a ticket.  Then all the traffic cops came over and they all wanted a Bible.  I had just bought 2 that day at the distribution as well as a triple. It cost me all three books so we could get out of the ticket!
Yes we got her name and phone number and promised to send the Elders.  She was thrilled.

Okay can you tell why we love Uganda?

Ten minutes later Elder Ballstaedt thought maybe he could make a U-turn.  Wrong again.  Another traffic cop pulled us over and gave us a 15-minute lecture on how this was against the law.
We said we are sorry, and we are missionaries so we can't have a ticket.  She said; "ok, but you must promise to pray for me."  and then she let us go....
(The first girl was born in Gulu, and the second one was born in Mballe.  We have visited both cities and we told them how much we loved their city...  Which is true.)

This is the shop of Mathius.  He is the BP of the Bugembe branch, and he has a little shop where he sells electrical parts. You can see he is fixing the plug on my slow cooker which melted right in the outlet one day.  It cost me a total of $3 for labor and parts.  He is a very good man, and a very good leader in the church. We have gotten to be very close friends with him.  He works very hard to provide for his family and to take care of his church responsibilities.

BE SAFE

Primary children in Njeru branch.  This little boy  is the best helper ever.

They look so grown up but they are just primary children

He really wanted me to keep taking his picture.  Then I would have to show it to him on the camera.

Aren't they darling?  They sing "I love to see the Temple" really loud in Primary.  Then I passed out some pictures of the temples around the world and they were not really impressed.

This lady was downtown in front of her shop making dresses for her shop.  I asked her if I could take her picture and she didn't understand me at all.  So I had someone else ask her.  She was kind of grouchy about it, but I took it anyway. I gave her a tip of a few shillings. Then later when I came back to the car after my shopping at the market, she came up to me and told me I didn't pay her enough.  So Elder Ballstaedt took the money out of her hand and took it back.  Weird....how dare we give her a tip, if we can't do it right well then just never mind....

Hence the name of the post; "Be safe".  In Germany when the children walk out the door, their parents say: "Be Strong".  In Japan they say; "Be Wise".  In the USA as our children walk out the door we say: "Be good".  Here they say; "Be SAFE".
This is how most people get around, on the back of a "Boda".  The women sit side saddle.

They carry their stuff....

This is the unloading of the Banana truck.  Look at the heavy burdens they carry.  I don't know how many pounds this is, but a lot.

Getting the load situated on his back

Oh wait!.......This one is Elder Ballstaedt carrying my load at the market....His happy face tells you how much he enjoys the load.

Then they carry it off to the store.  Is this an Osha violation?

No problem

Home delivery at your service.

Well, Elder Ballstaedt didn't want to be outdone by letting someone else carry the load so he found these weights in the Elders apartments as we were doing inspections.  They are cans filled with cement.  Pretty inventive.

harder than he thought - would someone tell him he isn't a 19-21-year-old.

Carrying a load is not just for men, the women are constantly carrying stuff on their heads

Always hauling water in the gerrycans

Little children are always carrying loads

TRANSFER DINNER at our house Sunday night before transfers.  All the Elders take their shoes off because of the red dirt everywhere.  This is our front porch.

These are some great missionaries.  Notice the African Sisters actually wear sweaters.  I was actually melting from heat that day.

We had a great meeting.  This is in our small living room/dining room.  We love our house which is nice from African standards.  I made dinner for 30 people.  Navajo tacos with chili, Chapata bread, coleslaw, shredded cheese and a big bowl of my special salsa.

We had a great meeting planned by the ZL's.  Everyone gave their favorite scripture and talked about it.  Afterwards a few of the Elders helped me clean the dishes.  Now I am done with dinners for 3 weeks and we will have Zone Conference and this time i will have to do 3 meals for 50 people.  It's good, every church job I have ever had was a cooking job.

Every time we go to the market we take this bag and fill it up with produce.  It will cost about $20 to fill the bag.  There are some things that we don't even know what they are at the market, and we try to stay away from the grody fish part.  We stick to the veggies and fruits.

more primary kids

I am sorry that you can't see it very well, but if you look close you will see a monkey in the tree.  There were two of them fighting and running around so fast I couldn't get the picture.  This was at one of our favorite resturants that sits on the edge of the Nile.  They have great pita bread with humas, and thier hamburgers are almost normal.

These are my Njeru babies from primary

The big girls in primary

The open market where we shop

Elder Ballstaedt trying to find his money to pay the vendor

More of the market

This is a pretty bad picture, but i was trying to be discreet

This is the bean market

If you buy beans here you will spend an hour cleaning out the rocks and sticks before you can cook them.  But that is the only way you can buy them.  They are actually very good beans, so much fresher than the kind we eat out of our food storage.

ALREADY A MONTH IN AFRICA, WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

It is amazing the things you will see out on the street.  They transport everything on bikes or "bodas"  which are kind of small motorcycles.  These are also the main way to transport people.  

Boda drivers make their living by transporting things and people.  The gas is very expensive here, and they don't charge much to transport so I would say they only make a few dollars a day take home pay

There is always activity along all the roads we have traveled.  All my pictures are taken outside the car window so I can say I have missed some great ones, but maybe later

Often you see the children carry the "Gerrycans" full of water.  They are very heavy,  a 5 gallon can of water probably weighs 80 lbs.  Sometimes you will see children carrying two cans alongside the road

Missionary conference in Kampala.  We don't like going to Kampala very much, it is a crazy place to drive.  However, duty calls and there are all these missionary meetings to attend which are so wonderful because of what we learn and the spirit is go great.  Every Missionary conference requires a lot of food prep for all the missionaries.  We usually have doughnuts and juice for breakfast and then do a really big lunch.  There are about 150 missionaries and about 6 Senior couples. The Elders work very hard and are very successful.

Priesthood meeting in a new branch named Njero.  It has only been a branch for 6 weeks and they have already grown out of the building.  We now have 5 branches in the Jinja District

Three of these kids were baptized in the Njero Branch on Sunday.  We visited their home the day before the baptism.  They are all siblings.  The Woman in the striped shirt is their mother, she is not baptized yet.

just pictures snapped out my window

The children are so darn cute here.  But very shy

That says; "London Bridge"  Probably because they expect it to fall any moment

And did I say the babies are extremely adorable?

Primary Chorus in Jinja

Oh this was fun!  We attended an enrichment activity in a town called Mballie, about 2 hours away from Jinja.  There is a lady named Olivia who makes liquid soap and then teaches church members how to do it so they can do a little business to earn money.  This was at the class.  It is impossible to find containers to sell the soap in, so we save our water bottles and catsup bottles to give members so they can sell soap.

She showed how to mix the ingredients together, mostly chemicals that are hard to get here because you need a license to dispense them, but she has a certificate and she supplies them to members.

This is Olivia teaching the class.  She has all the ingredients on the board.  Notice most of the members there are men.  Trying to eck out a living is extremely difficult here, and they will try anything.  But the market is difficult because it is the poor selling items to the poor.  Most people cannot afford soap and do not use it or buy it.  But; Olivia's son paid for his college by selling bottles of liquid soap door to door.

If they cannot afford to transport their things on a boda, they use a bike.  The bikes do not have gears on them, they are totally man-powered.  The missionaries refuse to use the bikes because they are so hard to ride, requiring a lot of strength,but the African men carry large loads on bikes all day.

Sometimes I miss the picture because Elder Ballstaedt is driving too fast.  But this was going to be another picture of a load of sticks being transported on a bike

Another load on a bike

We buy everything at the open-air market.  It is fresh for the veggies, but let me tell you, I don't know how long those eggs have been sitting out in the heat even before coming to market.  I try to use the vendors who sell quickly hopefully the eggs are going to be fresher.  I can get about 30 eggs for less than 7,000 shillings which is about $3 US money.
For sure you would never make "over-easy" here.  Most likely we overcook our eggs a bit.

The fresh veggies are wonderful, but not genetically altered like in the USA.  So things tend to be smaller in size and have more seeds.  This is real organic living!  But of course we have to bathe everything in Clorox before eating anything.......

Boda driver with the two women who hired him to take them to church.  They sit side-saddle and have amazing balance while they sit precariously on the back of the boda.  Sometimes we have seen 3 or 4 kids on the back of a boda.  Sometimes there is a mother with a baby in front and a baby on her back!  We say a lot of prayers for people!