Elder and Sister Dille arrived this week. They are Medical Support Missionaries; Elder Dille is a licensed nurse. They will be traveling to Beira after the Maputo Zone Conference and living in the same apartment building as Elder and Sister Snelson. After Staff Meeting on Tuesday we got to go to the Chinese restaurant again! Elder Lake is the new AP with Elder Tanner.
This week we were able to check off another project – at least until the Distribution Center gets more Bibles and Triple Combinations. Each branch/group in the mission is receiving 6 new member family kits and each kit eventually will contain a Bible, Triple Combination, Gospel Principles, Hymn book, an issue of the Liahona, and The Family Proclamation. Even though all of the materials were not available, President agreed that we needed to get the project going. So, on Tuesday morning, Elder Miller and Elder Hall helped us carry boxes of kit materials down from the Distribution Center, 4th floor of the Maputo Chapel. As we went up and down these stairs, we think of the work-out we’d get if we had lived on the 3rd floor as the Wollenzien’s (Eleanor Wollenzien’s son and his wife) did while they were here on a mission as a senior couple.
We are thankful that we live in the apartment building we do, which has an elevator. On Wednesday, we put together the kit materials, dividing them into 20 boxes for the branches and groups in the mission. This project reminded me of the kit projects we’ve had in Relief Society in the past. The set-up time always takes more time than divvying up the materials!
On Thursday, we were at DHL 45 minutes before they closed
and sent off the 13 boxes of kit materials to Beira.
Beira Zone Conference will be on Thursday, October 3, and
the Snelsons will see that the boxes get to the missionaries who will give them to the
respective branch presidents and group leaders.
We’ll take the boxes of kit materials for the Maputo District to Zone
Conference, which will be held in Matola, on October 1.
Well, two of my petunia plants, out of four, have survived
and I decided I’d better get them in the ground somewhere or the last two would
die. I decided to take them to the Mission
Office. One of the guards is a great
gardener, too, and he planted the petunias for me.
My verbena plant is also part of the Mission Office garden. After those couple of days of near 100 degree weather, the leaves were turning crunchy. I planted it in the same garden as the petunias and I hope it thrives in the rich dirt there. The place turned out to be perfect, as we can see them from our office window! My zinnia plants are 6” tall and very spindly. Dad said, you can take Sandy away from the garden, but you can’t take the garden out of Sandy. While looking for a place to plant the petunias, I saw one of the mission office’s four Tartaruga (turtles). I also saw a big lizard on the wall. We almost got a picture, but it scurried away too fast.
This week I prepared two twenty-minute talks, one for the Saturday Relief Society Women’s
Conference and the other for Sunday's sacrament meeting Sunday. The Women’s
Conference talk is on the important of Relief Society in every woman’s
life. Sunday’s talk is on the Why and
How of Family History. While preparing
these talks I have felt guided to include the things I did. Dad helped me to translate them and coached me as I practiced pronouncing the Portuguese words. This is the first
time Sister Kretly has done a Women’s Conference. It was entitled "Mulher Virtuosa" ("Virtuous
Women").
Sister Kretly's part required a screen to project her presentation. When no one could be found who knew where the remote was to lower the screen, we got to watch the "pre-show", as Sister Thornton coined it. Young men stacked chairs on top of each other, then climbed up and attached white fabric over the screen mounting, using pens to secure it in place. Pretty creative!
All of the presentations went well, including my talk. There was a large group of sisters who attended. Can you see me in the group?
I hope you will look closely at the happy faces of these
young women and their mothers who attended.
They are a beautiful people.
On Saturday morning, Dad went with Elder Hobson on the 7-hour drive to Maxixe. Elder Hobson was
going to go with his wife, but she had a commitment to speak at the Women’s
Conference. Dad will tell this part of
the story in next week’s blog!
On Saturday, Sister Hobson took this picture of Jose Figueiredo
with his unopened mission call. Sunday
he told us he is going to the Angola Luanda Mission, reporting in
November. He is very happy and excited.
My family history talk went very well; many told me that my Portuguese is very good. Again, I am picking up more in my listening, but I think it must be strange to them to listen to me speak it so well and not be able to understand when they talk to me. Well, it’s frustrating for me, too! In my talk I invited the members of the Maputo 2 branch to come to the chapel on Wednesday night, beginning this week, to receive more instruction on how to record information about their ancestors. At the end of the meeting, the counselor in the branch presidency, who was conducting, repeated that invitation and urged the members to come and take advantage of this opportunity. So, it will be interesting to see how many come on Wednesday! I’ll bring my computer, have a lesson prepared, and I will also have a projector which I’ll learn how to operate beforehand.
Sister Hobson hosted a dinner for the sister missionaries
after Church. I helped by bringing a
fruit salad to go with her main dish.
On Monday, Sister Bulha, who is from Mozambique, will leave for the
Provo MTC to learn English for her mission to Zambia. Here she is wearing a dress made out of a colorful capulana.
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