3 - 9 March 2014 CafeDoSol,Flood,CatBus,Zefanias,game

When we did our grocery shopping today, we also shopped for food for the 5 new missionaries who were arriving from the United States this week.  In addition to our regular stop at Premier, we also shopped at Shop Rite.  Sometimes Shop Rite has produce that Premier doesn’t usually carry.  We also got to go to the “9-8-6 Deli” and we purchased corn tortillas, taco chips, ham, and some artichoke ravioli that we’ll try soon. The Deli is the only place we have found that you can get good ham. We also stopped by the “plant building” near the mission office.  A man was weeding the wall garden while standing on a scaffold.  That’s got to be a difficult job as he has to be careful not to pull out an entire plant!

One of the sister missionaries came to watch a video her family had sent to her for her birthday.  Her family sings together all the time, so in the video her family sang the song “Less of Me” (originally she thought by the Statler Brothers). The words were so catchy that I looked it up on the Internet.  I found that the song writer was Glen Campbell.

Let me be a little kinder
Let me be a little blinder
To the faults of those around me
Let me praise a little more

Let me be when I am weary
Just a little bit more cheery
Think a little more of others
And a little less of me

Let me be a little braver

When temptation bids me waver

Let me strive a little harder

To be all that I should be

Let me be a little meeker
With the brother who is weaker

Think a little more of others

And a little less of me

Let me be when I am weary

Just a little bit more cheery

Let me serve a little better

Those that I am striving for

Let me be a little meeker

With the brother who is weaker

Think a little more of others

And a little less of me, less of me

After staff meeting we went to lunch at Café do Sol which we really like.  They have kind of a Café Rio menu plus a few other offerings. We like to share a Vegetable Burrito; it is just enough for both of use.  They also have milkshakes!  They’re not as thick as in the United States, but they taste delicious! 

As we were eating we noticed the huge black cloud overhead.  Soon after we were back in the office a huge long rainstorm began. 

With so much rain and no storm sewers of any consequence, streets flood.  It flooded the street in front of the mission office!!! 

The sidewalk cleared enough that we could walk to get to the car to get home that evening.  The red soil here is very fine, so a sidewalk with wet silt is very slippery.  I forgot that momentarily until my foot slipped when I took my first step down the sidewalk.  I thought I was a goner!  There must have been angels next to me, holding me us, because I recovered my footing and made it to the car by walking on the wet grass.  I was so thankful!

We are now in the midst of the rainy humid season.  For example, we are having temperatures in the 90’s and humidity in the high 80 percentile.  With high humidity the temperature feels hotter.  If it is 90º F and 90% humidity, it feels like 121º F!  

We had a very busy Wednesday.  After our day at the office and then teaching our Family History lesson, we stopped for a few minutes at our apartment and then we went with two missionaries to teach an investigator family.  The missionaries were teaching about Family History!  It was a great experience to participate in a lesson with the missionaries and to visit in a Mozambican home.  I had the opportunity to explain more about the Minha Familia booklets they had received and teach why we do Family History.  The missionaries have offered to take us again on teaching visits.

To travel to their house we had to go on some very rutted and flooded dirt roads.  The elders told us about a unique kind of fish that come alive during the rainy season.  They are able to live for a couple of years underground.  When it rains enough, they burrow up out of the wet soil.  I did a quick search on the Internet and this type of fish is called a Lungfish – the African Lungfish.  Sounds like an interesting fish to research … 

Elder Tidwell and I wanted to get a picture of the "cat bus" that we sometimes see in the city. It is a school bus that is a van decorated to look like a cat!  Well, we usually zoom by it so fast that we can't get a good picture of it.  We saw it parked at the side of the road once and got a picture of the side of it, but we wanted to have a picture of the front of the bus so we could send it to some of our grandchildren.

We let the Office Elders and the Assistants to the President know that we wanted to get a picture of the cat bus.  They knew exactly the bus we meant!  So, for many weeks they were looking out for the cat bus, too. 

One night this week when we were getting into the mission van to go back to our apartment.  One of the Office Elders, Elder Douglas, was the last one to get in and all of a sudden he said, "Camera!  Quick!"  Elder Tidwell had just taken another picture so his camera was out, and he gave the camera to Elder Douglas.  We looked down the street and we saw what he had seen and why he was so excited - it was the cat bus! 

Elder Douglas flagged the bus down and the man stopped driving so we could get these really great pictures of the cat bus to send to you!  Thank you, Elder Douglas!

The cat bus has a horn that goes "Meow" but the horn was broken that day, so we didn't get to hear it.  Maybe another day we can record it and sent it the grandchildren!

Friday we bid Matilde good-bye and wished her well as she and her family go next week to the Johannesburg South Africa Temple for the first time. This is the first family we have seen follow through with their commitment to prepare for and go to the temple.  We have helped them get the information for their immediate family and for their parents’ families so they can not only obtain their own ordinances, but also extend blessings of the gospel to some of their deceased ancestors.  On Monday, the family will travel 9 hours on a bus to Johannesburg; Tuesday and Wednesday they will be in the temple.  We are so thankful for them and this blessing in their lives!

On Saturday we attended a wedding and the couples’ baptism.  While there we got to talk, in English, to a couple who were investigating the Church. They were interested that the Branch President who performed the ceremony also had authority from the government to perform a marriage. They had recently been married and they had a wedding by a government official and then by their pastor.  They were surprised that they could stay and witness their baptism. After the wedding ceremony, the Branch President asks for a representative from someone from the groom’s family and someone from the bride’s family to say a few words of commendation and congratulations.  The bride’s aunt spoke in a local dialect so the Branch President translated for her.  We not only took pictures of the bride and groom, but also of the cute babies!   

In the chapel garden we spotted this beautiful butterfly.  Those of you with a butterfly book, please look this up and tell us it’s name, okay? [It's now 6 April 2014, and since we wrote this post, we got one response from someone we didn't know affirming that this is the Dark Blue Pansy Butterfly (Janonia oenone) or Eyed Pansy.  Kelsie counted the "eyes" on the butterfly's wings and got 10!]

Who would have guessed that the first person in the Maputo area to fill out their Minha Familia booklet (they were given out at District Conference 2 weeks ago) was one of the guards, Zefanias, who is investigating the Church!  Good job, Zefanias!!!

One the way home from Church we saw children playing a game, similar to Jacks, played with small pieces of tan-colored tile and a dried round green fruit for a ball.  We stopped to watch them and asked them what the name of the game was.  It is called “vondo” (this is in a dialect language, not in Portuguese).

Ship and clouds