"Pole kwa jua!" or "Sorry for the sun!"

 Jambo!

     It's almost my birthday, so I got a shoutout in the mission president's letter to the missionaries along with everyone else who has birthdays in June lol.

    The people here are so cool. I know enough Swahili now that I know generally what they're saying, and they're so amazing. We met a new friend the other day, Yuumba. We were just knocking on doors in an apartment complex. And we get to her door and we talk to her at her doorstep for a little but, she is obviously very surprised that there are two white girls that are speaking Swahili. Then she notices that we're both squinting because of the sun, and she's like "Pole kwa jua! Kuja ndani!" which is "Sorry for the sun, come inside!" This is one example of many many Africans who have been so hospitable to us.

      90 Percent of the Africans who we meet while tracting immediately are like "Karibu!" (Welcome!) and invite us into their home.

     There was this one Bibi (grandma) who kept muttering the word for "lies!" during a lesson about Joseph Smith, and then after, she was like "nakushukuru sana, karibu tena!" (I am so grateful to you, you are welcome to come here again!) Again, they are so cool!! I am learning so much about hospitality!!!

     When we were doing more English work at the start of my mission, EITHER people would say that they have already have a church they attend, say they are way too busy to talk right now, or just slam the door when we introduce ourselves. NO ONE invited us inside their home. It's unheard of with English speakers.

     Anyways, also I just love the phrase "Pole kwa jua" it's so funny. In Swahili there are 2 words for Sorry. There's samahani (which your would use if you bumped into someone). And then there's "pole" (pronounced po-lay) which is a word we need in English. You would use it if someone tells you their parent passed away. You would use it if someone told you they just lost their house. Or if they were sick. I just think it's a cool word. It's a "sorry" for things that aren't your fault.

Anyways, here is a picture of Sister Millard and I after a long day. Idaho is very very sunny. I miss the Midwest spring tornado season.

There's a magical member from our roommate's English ward who brought over a bunch of stuff for us!  She's so cool. So excited to eat the chocolate covered almonds!!!

Spiritual thought:

     I've always loved the verse in Luke 15 verses 7 and 10 where it talks about how all of heaven will sing and rejoice when one sinner repents.

      In the mission field, I love it even more because it basically describes us. My companion and I literally screamed with joy when we heard a voice message (at 10:45pm btw) from one of our friends that we're teaching who hasn't ever come to church say that he would be happy to drive others to church who don't have cars, then stay for the sacrament! Same when a friend that we haven't taught in a while reaches out to us with her favorite scripture!

YAY! Missionary work is so tiresome, but for those moments, it's so worth it 

"No Soliciting!"

 Jambo!

Last week I was horrible at taking pictures so I'm hoping this week to make up for that.

It's week 2 of not having ANY English work because we dropped the English ward completely, and are solely focusing on the Swahili lessons. It has been so stressful for language study, but honestly this was the push that I needed to really figure out how to speak Swahili. I have many basic gospel topics down, and am pretty comfortable teaching them. The 3-5 Swahili lessons a day makes me get a lot of practice.

Here's a funny door sign that we saw while we were knocking doors the other day. usually people just have no soliciting signs and since were not soliciting we knock anyways, but this door had it all covered  

There was one time when we almost got kicked out of our favorite apartment complex area because we met the manager there, and she was like "It's actually illegal to solicit on my property!" But apparently this happens quite a bit, so my incredible companion explained that we're literally not soliciting, and we have paperwork to prove it.   So yeah. That was exciting.

This is a fun random hand soap container that a family had in their bathroom. It's really interesting to see the inside of people's houses, because they usually always have a lot of African cloth on the walls and windows, then they have random American trinkets or wall signs that are like the Utah "Live Laugh Love" font. 

I just think it's a kind of funny combination.

This is me and Sister Millard during our insane reporting/voice messaging people Saturday night. So So So many people who we messaged. Usually we report and do phone contacts in the car right after we get home from our last lesson, but that day we decided to make it cozy by getting into PJs and eat dinner, then report while pacing back and forth in the backyard like crazy people. 

We messaged about 35 people (all in Swahili btw) about going to church. We just do voice messages for all of our friends, because probably 60 percent of the adults we teach aren't able to read.

Anyways. If you see missionaries on the street, please be kind, cause so much blood sweat and tears, and messaging people nonstop from 8-10:30pm, goes into their job.

One last picture.

So our district (the group of missionaries working in our area) likes to leave pass-along cards on each other's cars with a note.  This was one that we got on our car with the first note, then we put it on the French trio's car, and then they put it back on our car, with each set of missionaries adding to the card in their language. 

It translates as:  Jesus loves them/ and you too/ goodbye!

It's because we all go to the same apartment complexes and so when we see each other's cars just randomly very often.

Spiritual thought:

"Now it is better that a man should be judged of God than of man, for the judgments of God are always just, but the judgments of man are not always just." (Mosiah 29:12)

As a missionary, it's stressful 'cause it's kind of like "It's YOUR job to get EVERYONE baptized and if you don't get even one person baptized, then they won't receive the full blessings in heaven". 

But I don't think that's right. If I mess up in a lesson, and the person never sees the missionaries again, God's not gonna hold that against the person, or me. 

God is just, and obviously missionary work is important to help people in their lives in earth, but it's definitely not gonna be eternal damnation for the people who don't get baptized, which I am so happy about.

Miracles, Poverty, and Joy...

Jambo! (Hello!)

This is my first week of doing ONLY Swahili lessons. (We had our area re-arranged after last week's transfer, so we are no longer responsible for an English speaking congregation, just Swahili speakers.) It is very very busy still. It's amazing how we just keep finding Africans who want to talk with us about Yesu Kristo, it's so fun! 

Miracles:

Many miracles this week. It's amazing to see how much God wants this work here to progress. Literally just Wednesday, we were talking with a girl about our age who is so excited to be baptized, and we were supposed to be teaching her about Christ's commandment to love others and to serve. It's going pretty well, then this fully formed sentance in Swahili comes into my mind, which is insane on its own.  I felt so strongly that I HAD TO SAY IT! 

"Tukitaka kuwa kama Yesu, tunahitaji kusheriki injili ya Yesu Kristo kwa sababu Kristo alisaidia watu wengi kwa sababu aliwafundisha wengine kusianana injili yake." 

(Which is basically "if we wanna be like Jesus, then we need to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others because Jesus helped many people because he taught them about his gospel")

So I say it, and then the girl starts talking about how she really wants to help us with our missionary work and knock doors with us and share her testimony with other people, and it was SO COOL!!!!  We were obviously like "Yes please!"  because she speaks Kinyerwanda as well as Swahili, which we really need!

Poverty:

Anyways, on a sadder note, it's been hard to see the amount of poverty of the immigrants here. We like to say in America that we have great infastructure for helping people get on their feet, but I don't think that's exactly true. 

The amount of people who are desperately and unsuccesfully searching for a job to feed themselves and their children is insane. So many parents we're teaching rely on us to translate food stamp paperwork and government forms, and even job interviews and orientations. Just today, we translated for a few friends for jobs at Deseret Industries. (It is a non-profit thrift and donation store our church runs. It also provides job training for people who would have a rough time finding work elsewhere. )  It took 2 hours out of our P-Day, but it was completly worth it.

Literally all of the African households I've gone to have no lights on at all. Ever.  At the start I was like, "Oh do they just really like the dark for some reason?" But it's because they want to save money. So even though all the appartments have overhead lights and lamps, they're never on.

Also, I've gotten an impressive callus on the side of my finger from opening plastic waterbottles that they all give us when we come to teach lessons. I'm not a real adult, I don't know if clean running water costs money, but it's just something I've noticed.

Spiritual thought:

Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established; and break forth into singing, O mountains; for they shall be smitten no more; for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.   (1 Nephi 21:13) 

I love this verse because even though there's so so many issues in everyone's lives, we are all able to find joy and peace in Christ. Even though I've only been out in Idaho for a month, I've seen so many people's lives and vibes completely change as they study and learn about Christ, and I think that is so cool.

Sorry that there are no pictures this week  ):

Lemme add one at least.

This is a matching game that I made up and drew on stickynotes for the kids lessons this week. They had so much fun. Also, I'm so grateful that most of the Swahili kids speak really good English!

Busy Days, and a Haircut!

 Jambo! (Hello!)

I skipped a week last week because it was so busy. We are so busy everyday. This is an example schedule from tomorrow (Tuesday)

6:30 Wake up and do daily planning, get dressed, eat breakfast, etc.
8:30 personal study
9:30 Lesson with a friend about God's love
10:00 companionship study (where we plan the lessons for the day)
11:30 district council
12:45 Lunch
1:15 Language study
2:30 Making miscelanious calls trying to get people jobs/housing/etc.
2:45 Lesson about the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ
3:15 Lesson about Temples and eternal families
4:00 Lesson about baptism
5:00 Dinner with a Swahili member family!!
6:20 Lesson (in English) about the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ
7:00 Lesson discussing Jesus Christ's atonement and the sacrament 
7:35 Lesson about priesthood healing blessings
8:30 Lesson about the Plan of Salvation
9:00 we get home
10:30 go to bed.

So yeah. That's kind of crazy once I lay it all out. I love the busyness of it, though. There's always stuff to do.

Also big news: TRANSFERS

Transfers are basically when missionaries get moved around to different places. One of my companions, Sister Emmanuel is going to Meridian. We'll miss her so much, but she will be so great over there. So it will just be me and my companion, Sister Millard. We are also getting our missionary teaching boundaries changed, so that we won't have an English ward as well as the Swahili ward, it will just be Swahili work, which is definitly going to make our language skills better lol.

Also even bigger news: HAIRCUT!!

I got my haircut today. Here's a picture of my companions and I infront of the haircut place, me with my very long hair before it got chopped off:

And here is me now. I love it so much:

My haircut today was terrifying, but it turned out SO GOOD.  Also, the student doing in was so scared lol. She'd never done a pixie cut before, and so she kept being like "AAAAAH" whenever she cut a large chunk of hair off. Once she was like "oops". A little scary. I would have loved to have it done by a real hairstylist, but one of the service missionaries owns the hair school, and he gives all the missionaries free appointments, which is so cool.

Also I think it's cool how much grilled fish Africans make. Apparently that's a thing. We met this lady just grilling whole fish outside, like everybody does it.

Spiritual Thought:
 I absolutly love being here in the immigrant population areas, because there's so many languages and it just amazes me how worldwide the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is. So many different languages and there are recources and books and confrence translations for everybody in their native language which is SO COOL to me. I love that our church is making such a huge effort for the blessings to be avaliable to everyone regardless of language.