24 Feb – 2 Mar 2014 Beach,Birds,Records,ElderHales,Triplas

Monday we went grocery shopping with the sister missionaries because Hobson’s were out of town.  On the way to the store the sisters said they were going to the beach later and I asked if they had room for one more person, me, to go with them.  They said, “Yes!”   I can’t get enough of walking on the beach.  It was perfect weather, hardly any wind.  This is the Indian Ocean and it felt warm as I waded on the edge. 

As I walked along, a young Mozambican man came up to me and started talking, seemingly wanting to know some English words.  The sisters, I found out later, call these young men “crazies.”  However, he didn’t seem crazy.  I told him a little about the Church, since he wanted to know if we were another Protestant Church.  I explained that we weren’t Protestant or Catholic – we were the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and explained what that meant, in my best Portuguese! Sister Olander gave me these pictures a couple of weeks after this event, so I decided to go back and add this to our blog.

It was fun to be with the sisters!

 

I did a little bird-watching, too!  I saw a couple of Common Black-headed gulls among the Grey-headed ones and a huge gull that I found out was the Kelp Gull.  I, of course, looked for shells and I found some unique ones - among them my first keyhole limpet (a very tiny one) and a sea urchin, the second one I have found so far. 

When I walked by one part of the shoreline, I noticed the sand ahead looked wet and bumpy and it glistened in the sunshine.  As I got closer, I saw that the glistening came from the shells of tiny (about 3/4” in diameter) crabs “basking” in the sun.  When I got really close to them, they would scurry inside their little holes!  I hope to get a flip camera video of this another day.


Back home at the apartment, we relocated my computer table to a wall closer to the air conditioner.  The apartment isn’t very air-tight, so you have to be pretty close to the air conditioner to feel it!  I have better lighting on this new side of the living room.
Saw our first lizard in the apartment this week – a tiny little guy we captured in a bottle and then let go over the balcony!

During Staff Meeting this week, the AP’s were assigned to get together training for Zone Conference for the missionaries and a combined meeting for members on the Minha Familia booklets.  They are taking the information I gave to them and putting together a presentation using Prezi.  I am excited to work with them.  I don’t know if it will really come to pass, but one of President Kretly’s ideas was for Elder Tidwell and I to travel to Beira and be there for a week to train family history consultants for the branches in the Beira Zone and hold workshops for the members.  That would be exciting to travel to another area of the country.  We’ll see!! 

After Staff Meeting, Elder Hales took us to see the Ministério da Justiça Repartição do Registro Criminal building in Maputo.   It was very interesting to see where they keep thousands of paper records which are a sort of index of where birth records are in the Conservatories.  We couldn't take pictures.  We walked quite far to find the place, and on the way we noticed some black clouds forming. On the way back to the car from our long walk the wind picked up and the black clouds were ready to burst.  A little while after we got back to the office it was really raining and there was bright lightning and loud thunder claps!  Apparently the storm was part of a cyclone forecasted for the area!   It caused some minor flooding of some of the streets downtown.

On Wednesday morning a group came to spray the house for insects and other pests.  We had to be out of the house, so, Matilde, the housekeeper, helped us get situated outside on the patio with my laptop and Richard’s pile of papers.  Gladly the weather was pleasant.  We found out we had to be outside until 1 p.m.!  We watched lizards climb the garden walls and later watched the huge cockroaches try to flee from the deadening fumes! 

 

Wednesday Sister Kretly invited the sister missionaries and me to lunch at their home to celebrate her birthday and Sister Smith’s birthday.  The sisters were very interested in looking at the missionary scrapbook Sister Kretly had made for her husband when he was a young missionary in Brazil.  She also told about how she came to know President Kretly when she was about 16.

The first group of Triple Combinations arrived this week!  This is the first shipment of triplas we have seen since we arrived in July last year – and the mission had been without them for many months previous to that! 

When I am working at my computer in our office upstairs at the mission office, I often glance out the window.  Across the way I can see the clothesline of the house in back, which is on the same level as our office.  The housekeeper is often outside either hanging up or getting clothes from the clothesline and she always smiles and waves at me.  This week when I saw her I opened the window and asked her what her name was.  Her name is Fátima!!  Next time I see her, I want to ask if I can take her picture.

This week, Matilde told us that their family’s temple date is March 10^th!  The Jamine Family are counting the days and are so excited and thankful they are finally going to be able to go to the temple for the first time.

I began training another person to be a branch family history consultant.  Maria Betania is the new employee at the Maputo Distribution Center, so we meet before the center opens for customers on Saturday morning.  Maria speaks and understands English, so it is so much easier to teach her.  She is familiar with the FamilySearch.org site, too.

Sunday was the first day Maputo 1 and Maputo 2 branches met in separate buildings.  Relief Society, which is the first meeting, started out with not many people there, but by the end of the hour the room was full.  There are always sisters attending for the first time.  The gospel principles class, during Sunday School, is always a big group.  Sacrament Meeting was very well attended!