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.