In the land of the potatoes...

 Jambo! (Hello!)

So much stuff happened, but I will strive to be concise.

I got to Boise on Tuesday. I met my district who are all Swahili/French missionaries in Boise. 

I met my incredible new companions. I'm in a trio with Sister Emmanuel and Sister Millard.

I think it's really weird being here though because I think I've only met 1 African American so far. When you see a black person walking about, there's probably a 95 percent chance they're an immigrant. Some have citizenship, but all were not born here except for the kids under 10. I feel so weird whenever my companion shouts "Jambo" at a black person as we're walking, and they reply, saying, "Jambo, habari?!" It's so funny. But it would be so awkward if they were actually African- Americans, but none of them have been so far thankfully 

It's so cool how many immigrants there are. We meet Swahili speaking people when we're just hanging out at the library. We saw three Rwandan bibis (grandmas) sunbathing and chatting in their awesome colorful dresses and headscarves on a lawn. Random kids, running across the street, yelling at each other in Swahili. Last week, we went to Walmart to pick up meds, and we met a Congan refugee in line behind us. She was not interested in the gospel. But she was excited to have someone to talk Swahili with.

Also, african families are SOOO big. There was a guy we found on the street who was like "Nina bize kuongea sasa kwa sababu nina watoto kumi nyumbani" which is "I'm too busy to talk right now because I have 10 kids at home". And that's basically a normal number. So whenever we go to someone's house to teach one person, we end up teaching 2-7 people instead. So the eternal families topic is quite popular. That's the default after "God loves you and He has a plan for us".

This is us yesterday when we were celbrating getting done with door to door knocking on Sunday. Sister Emmanuel likes to balance Book of Mormons on her head when her hands get tired lol.

One of the families we're teaching is getting baptized soon, and the mom makes these beautiful felted islander flowers (The family is from Micronesia). And all three of them came to sacrament meeting yesterday with them in their hair it was so cool. Anyways, she gave us each one.

 

One of our favorite things to do is to give people banana bread. We've seen so many hearts be softened because of the spiritual power of banana bread. Here is a picture of a pass along card with our number, and some bread that we left for somebody. 

Spiritual thought:
I really love the verse in 2 Nephi 33:6 which is "I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell."

It's just such an uplifting, simple verse, and even though we don't exactly believe in hell, I love the phrase "my Jesus", and it's a happy verse, and I love those.

Farewell Utah... Hello Boise, Idaho!

 Jambo! (Hello!)

    I'm currently at the airport, about to fly to Boise!  Finally! 

The Mission Training Center has been wonderful, but I'm excited to go into the field. There's a lot of things that I learned at the MTC. Here is a list of my top three takeaways:

1. The Book of Mormon is awesome. For the last few years, I've really been focussing on the Bible, which has been wonderful. The Bible has so much facinating stuff in it, but The Book of Mormon is "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" (Kitabu cha Mormoni ni:  "Ushuhuda Mwengine wa Yesu Kristo"). 

      It testifies so strongly of Him and His character, and has so many awesome stories about the faith of Native American individuals. My companion and I studied Mosiah chapter 4 and we both highlighted basically the whole chaper because it's so full of awe inspiring teachings.

(An assignment to share a Book of Mormon verse in Swahili that we did a couple weeks ago.)

     2. I really like dressy clothing.  As many people know, before my mission, my go to outfit was jeans and a t-shirt, or if I was feeling fancy, maybe even a long sleeved shirt!   But being here and having to wear missionary attire everyday has it's benefits. I'm so glad that Sister missionaries are now allowed to wear dress pants. So exciting!

     3. Time is a lot nicer to you if you keep a gratitude journal. I feel like with SOOO many things in the past, if I didn't like the expierence, it would go slowly, and of course when I'm enjoying somethings, it feels so short. But I've done a lot of gratitude journalling over the last 6 weeks, and I've noticed that it's been opposite. 

One of the biggest things I've been grateful for is the awesome people in my Swahili learning group.  They're so happy and positive and it was so much fun to go to class for hours a day. Here's a picture of me and my amazing companion, Sister Bickham:

Currently I'm sitting at the airport with a bag of snack mix and a Bluey coloring set, so I'll be pretty busy.

Spiritual thought: Yesterday, I made a playlist of hymns that I really like for the plane, and I highly recommend people to go listen to "Consider the Lillies" by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. It's such a pretty song and I love the message.

Quarantined. "Whomp! Whomp!"

 Jambo! (Hello!)

     Last week I mentioned to a few people that I was feeling not good due to allergies. That sickness got worse and worse until I finally went to the MTC health clinic and got checked. I had the flu. (Influenza B)  This is one of my roomates and I at the clinic waiting for our test results. She was sick as well.  We are both clearly very excited:

     We both tested positive, so we packed up our suitcases and moved to the quarantine dorm building until our fevers and aches were gone.

     Most of this last week was spent in quarantine, which was honestly really good, because yes, it prevented me from getting other people sick, which was awesome, but also, I got to sleep whenever I wanted, which was AMAZING. 

Also, the food was always warm, unlike some cafeteria food. It was a little odd though, when they would put your meal bag outside your door in the hallway, and then knock on the door, then you had to put on a mask and quickly open the door, get the bag, and close the door. It often felt like we had leprosy. This is the room:

Luckily, when I got out, my comp and friends came to save me and take me back to our dorm.

    So that was Friday last week through Tuesday morning. We went to a BEAUTIFUL temple this morning. It was probably the prettiest temple I've ever seen. The Provo City Center temple. Here are some pictures of the outside:

And here are some interior images:

Spiritual thought:

During quarentine, I had the opportunity to do a lot of general conference talks. Like, a LOT of them. I mostly listened to the old ones like between 1971-1990. There was a talk that I absolutly loved in April of 1989 by Marvin J Ashton. Basically his talk was on worthiness and how people self judge worthiness, when WE shouldn't be the ones judging, because that's God's job. Like how judging other people unfairly is bad, it's just as bad to judge yourself harshly.

A quote that I liked from it was "worthiness is a process and perfection is an eternal trek".

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a weekend filled with amani and furaha (peace and happiness).

Kwa heri!