We were able to get the Internet hooked up on Monday, a day earlier than we’d expected.
We discovered the roof our building is a safe place to get some walking exercise in the morning!
On Monday evening, we had the Hobsons over for dinner, welcoming them home from their over-the-weekend trip to Maxixe. We had chili and cornbread. Since we didn’t have an oven yet, I learned you can cook cornbread in the Microwave. The corn meal here, since it is made from white corn, is a very light yellow, so the cornbread looked anemic, but it only took 7 minutes and tasted great!
Thanks to the expertise of Elder Banks, our washing machine and dryer were hooked up on Tuesday. Elder & Sister Banks are the Humanitarian missionaries who went home this week.
We love the email updates from and Skypes with our families! Here is a poem Klaesara wrote and sent to us this week:
In Mozambique
So you’re
arrived in Mozambique
With new
people to meet, and new things to eat.
There’s a
new experience every day,
Like how in
the world do people drive this way?
You might
even see an elephant who,
It seems has
wandered too far from the zoo.
Or maybe you’ll
show someone the way
To true
happiness: a brighter day.
I bet you’re
needed there more than you know.
And that
what you learn there will help you to grow!
We love you;
you’re always in our prayers!
Remember
Christ knows how to comfort your cares.
Love,
Klaesara
We’ve had a working refrigerator since Thursday afternoon (the first one froze everything!). We are so thankful for cold milk and unfrozen fresh vegetables!
We celebrated my Birthday by going to the Mission Office to
work with the files there. I brought banana bread, which I’d cooked in the microwave, for a treat for the elders to have
after Staff Meeting. It didn’t get brown
and crunchy on the outside (I do so like the end pieces on oven-cooked banana
bread), but it tasted good and it only took 4 minutes to cook! Thank you for everyone’s birthday wishes,
songs and videos! I love how technology
is keeping us connected!
On Thursday the mission purchased us a counter-top oven – so
now we have a fully functional kitchen.
President Kretly has given us some assignments to work on in
the Mission Office. We have hitched
rides with the AP’s, bring a sack lunch, and return home to fix dinner. They usually take the road (rua) that goes
right by the water. We’ll try to get a
better picture one of these days, but here is one that’s pretty good.
We participated in another “Helping Hands” clean-up project
on Saturday morning. Lots of members and
missionaries came.
At one point in the project I noticed this part of the sidewalk. What does this image say to you? It says to me, “Put your bottle caps here!” When things are cleaned up, it sends the opposite message: “Clean is Beautiful; Let’s Keep it Clean!”
The one young lady, Laudi, saw us working and stopped to help us. She is here in Mozambique for a month teaching all kinds of music at a primary school and will be returning to Argentina next week. She talked about how music feeds our soul! The older gentleman pictured is Brother Castelo Branco. His birthday was Saturday and he turned 83!
After the project, the Hobsons invited us to go dutch-treat to Mimmos, which was right across the street from the white modern building you see pictured below, for lunch. Even though the building on the right is old, it is certainly more colorful and a woman, on one of its balconies, noticed us looking up at her, and she waved to us! Mozambique people are genuinely friendly.
This Sunday we attended both the Maputo 1 and Maputo 2 branches.
I went to the Primary in both branches. I met a few of the children and learned their names and some of the leaders’ names while waiting for Sacrament Meeting to begin. Dad came with me to Primary for the last group of meetings. They asked us to introduce ourselves, and then, the leader had the children greet us in unison, “Bem vindo, Elder e SisterTidwell.” During their lesson, the teacher asked Dad to share with the children an experience about obedience! He did a great job!! We really enjoyed singing the Primary songs with the children. Especially touching was singing “Meu Pai Celestial Me Tem Afeição” (“Heavenly Father Loves Me”). It was one of the songs they were practicing for their Sacrament Meeting presentation. Here is a picture of the Maputo 1 Primary and a picture of little Heringues Pedro Yessa and his mother Margarida Sustino Yessa.
Being in their Sacrament Meetings takes us back to our New York City experience. At the beginning of the meeting the one conducting the meeting says, “Irmãos e Irmãs, bom dia!” The congregation responds with a hearty “Bom dia!” Every speaker does the same at the beginning of their talk! “Bom dia!”
Remember the bells we said we’d heard bells and we didn’t
know where they were coming from? Sister Hobson pointed out a church down the
street where she thought they may be coming from. However, the bells we had heard seemed to be really
near. They reminded us of the bells we
heard when we stayed in Mühlhausen, Germany.
Only the German bells kept ringing and they were so beautiful. Well, we continued to hear the bells at
random times. This week we solved the
mystery! It was Dad’s phone’s
ringtone! He had wondered why he had
missed calls when we hadn’t heard it “ring”.
Needless to say, we changed the
phone’s ringtone!!
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