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.