HEL-UP IS ON THE WAY

I saw these boys playing soccer at the church while I was teaching keyboard lessons.  As soon as they saw me start to take my camera out of my purse they quickly posed for a team picture as fast as lighting.  I hadn't even turned on the Camera yet and they were posing here.  The boy in front with the red shorts showed me how many times he could bounce the ball off his knee, he did it 175 times before he dropped the ball.  I recorded it with my camera. The other boy in the orange shirt wanted to break his record, and I have him filmed doing it 245 times.

How would you like one of them on your soccer team at home?

These kids came over to the church while we were having our YW/YM activity and the guard had to keep shooing them away.  Finally Sister Thayn gave them all balloons to entertain themselves outside the gate of the church.

I don't know why, but the children love to have their picture taken showing off, and the adults hate it.  I guess that is typical in every country.  I have to offer to pay the adults.

One the cutest things they do here is the pronunciation of their words.  They pronounce every consonant separately. So here at the activity we had some caterers that we hired to HEL - UP us with the food.

We hired a catering service to give the kids lunch at our Youth Conference.  These are the caterers waiting for their job to start.  It was a very hot day in the sun.

Our event was at the Walukuba chapel which has huge grounds and a nice outside basketball court where we set up the food, the sound system and the dancing.  The community uses it as a public park and so the church had to hire a 24 hour a day guard to protect it from all the vandalism.
We gave the kids at the activity a snack of doughnuts (or what they call doughnuts, and it is more like fried bread with a hole in it) and lots of juice.  We then had a very nice lunch for them of rice, potatoes, motokee with gnut sauce (which is kind of purple) beef in gravy, and chapata. They said that is the best food they have ever had at an activity. I think there was also some  beans but I can't remember, I didn't really eat the food because of you know, (the water is only filtered in certain places). I had cut up some pineapple for dessert for them also, which is what they consider a great dessert.  Later in the day we gave them a cookie and a banana.  The food for the whole day cost us about $1.25 per person total.  We did not do T-shirts or wrist bands or anything fancy for them like we would have in the states because there just is no money for anything in these small branches.  The kids don't expect anything even though we would have liked to do something.
The District payed for buses to transport everyone, so we told them we would pay for the food through the mission.  I got clearance from the mission president first before we offered, but when we turned in our receipts the financial secretary refused to reimburse us.

 Oh well it was worth it to see these kids have a little something, they have so little and they have probably never eaten this much food in one day before in their lives.

At Youth Conference.  We divided into groups and had discussions and then we met all together in the chapel for testimonies and talks.  

We all gathered at the lawn to learn some activities

We had some great Young Adult leaders, all BYU students here for a few months working with an international organization.  Lucky us they had all been EFY councilors at one time and shared their talents with us.  They organized the activities for the day and had a blast teaching them games and dances.  Afterwards the kids told us they had never had such a fun activity.

I am sorry you can only see the back of the District YW president, Sis Lafafa.  She is absolutely the most gorgeous lady  and her husband is the BP of Mpummede.  She works for the church and goes to Kampala every week for the whole week, so she comes home on the weekend and was conducting the activity

From this picture you see some funny hair colors.  It is quite the rage here for the girls to do a weave with string into corn rolls, or just wear the string as hair.  I told the ladies that the reason I can never remember their names is because they keep changing their hairstyles.  They use all colors of string in their hair, and sometimes they wear wigs.  Sometimes they straighten their hair.  They do all kinds of things with their hair. 

Don't even try to find anything as mundane as a name tag in Jinja.  After searching every stationary store I finally got some masking tape and used that for name tags.  All the businesses here are stocked with items that are second-hand, most likely overstock or donated items from manufacturers in the US and China.  Even canned goods in the stores are expired. There are so many items that we take for granted that do not exist here.  Name tags,.... and also I spent a day looking for O-rings for a flip chart for Primary songs.  Nope, no such thing.  I used the hooks off my curtains, and it worked great.  They look more like key chains sort of.

The kids here were so excited about the activity.

Another view of the opening exercises.  This chapel in Walukuba has been here for about 10 years and the members are very strong.

I know this is such a random picture, but it is so striking to me to see trees here.  They are so perfectly gorgeous that sometimes I wonder if they are fake, like how do they grow so perfectly.  Also the whole expanse of foliage is always so random and inexplicable.  Everywhere you look there is just one thing the same growing.  A tree, a bush, a bunch of grass.  I don't get it, usually if one thing grows, there is a whole patch of the same thing near it, but not here anywhere.  All the plant life is random.

These little bananas are very sweet and never go bad even when they turn black.  We buy them all the time.  I served them as a snack at the activity

I had to cut up all the pineapples for dessert for lunch.  I sure miss my Cutco knives.

we found this in the apartment when we moved in.  IT WORKS!  A little rusty but we use it.

showing off my missionary tan line

This is a great car wash....  Not sure what they charge, but it is full time employment for these entrepreneurs.  They love to scrub that red dirt into the paint job.

The only thing here that isn't expensive is the fresh produce from the farmers market.  I got all this for about $12.  The carrots are very sweet, and the pineapple and lemons are mild, not so acidic as we're used to.  I also bought 25 pounds of potatoes for about another $5.