Sunday, April 19, 2015

Got Gender Issues?

Conference was great as usual.  I love to hear the prophets let the world know what we should be doing and the proper way to go about our lives.  I always try to pay special attention to what our Prophet, Thomas S Monson, is trying to tell us.  This year he started off with this wonderful thought.  "All of us commenced a wonderful and essential journey when we left the spirit world and entered this often-challenging stage called mortality. The primary purposes of our existence upon the earth are to obtain a body of flesh and bones, to gain experience that could come only through separation from our heavenly parents, and to see if we would keep the commandments. In the book of Abraham chapter 3 we read: “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.”

"When we came to the earth, we brought with us that great gift from God—even our agency. In thousands of ways we are privileged to choose for ourselves. Here we learn from the hard taskmaster of experience. We discern between good and evil. We differentiate as to the bitter and the sweet. We learn that decisions determine destiny."

Decisions determine destiny.  Wouldn't it be great if we were able to learn that at an early age and consider the outcome of every decision.  For me, I sure didn't give a lot of thought while in my youth and it certainly is something I have had to learn - still trying to learn.  What effect will doing something our conscience (holy ghost) is trying hard to guide us not to do.  Will the outcome be something that will help us to grow or pull us down to a level we would rather not go to and suffer from the hard taskmaster of experience.  I think as we begin to fear the Lord more than our peers we will find we will have joy and success because we will always make the right choice.  Not easy but joy will come never the less.

As we were driving to Busia on Sunday we saw these large crowds of people in the round-a-bouts and later saw several race cars driving along the road, weaving and racing in and out of traffic.  Interesting...



Another load of people going somewhere.  It was fun to wave as we passed them.


On Monday, the Jinja Zone had an activity where you shared a talent or did a skit.  Here the sisters had one dress up as an Elder.  She was sent home.  OK, she finished her mission this week and went home but my production seems a more exploiting way to present it.


Gender questions seems to abound.  Here we have a wife and husband doing a skit.  Cute.


Two beautiful sisters sharing a very nice hymn.


Two more beautiful sisters sharing a hymn.


Two handsome elders sharing a hymn.  Elder Peterson said he never sings but a mission lets you find many talents you didn't know you had.  They did great.


What, who are these cowboys?  Sister Squire always has some great ideas.


Oh yea, I am a singer!  Just look at her swoon as I serenade her.



The Easter eggs the kids sent with notes for us were put to good use as the Zone had an Easter egg hunt after the skits.


You will not see this anywhere in the USA.  A petrol truck with some riders on the main highway.


I had the opportunity to do an interview in our old Lugazi Branch and they had 37 kids in Primary.  The Branch only has 62 members.  Many "street kids" show up every Sunday to sing and get a treat.


Jiggers, yes we did another jiggers project.  President and Sister Chatfield had their oldest daughter and husband along with their 3 oldest kids come and do an Eagle project.  Sister Squire taught the school girls where they were using one of the classrooms for jigger removal a song.


After she got to the part where she did some kind of shimmy action they broke up laughing.  Cute


Another group of kids, another song.


The lineup of feet that will soon be cut to get the jiggers out.


First you scrub.


Give them a sucker to keep their mind off the cutting part.


And start cutting.  This little one spent over an hour and a half because of so many jiggers.  You can see the tears running down her cheek.


Finally, and this has to hurt, you put iodine on all the open cuts to make sure you don't get any infection.

 

Jared, Jo and their daughter Tess (President's family members)


The hygiene kits were the Eagle project.  He had over 100 kits to pass out to the kids.


The youngest of the two brothers is the future Eagle (Hunter) helping a younger boy with his kit.


They also had clothing to pass out to the kids.  You could really see a change when they got a new outfit to wear.


Three generations of very cute girls sharing in this jigger project.


This is the family that had most of the work done.  All but the baby on mom's back had to have jiggers removed (including the mom).  Check out the new footwear necessary so they don't walk on the dirt and get jiggers again.


President Chatfield with the horns on front.  He has almost caused several boda-boda wrecks as they whip around for another look as he drives past.


We had a challenge to the local kids to go up and smell the skeleton.  It still had that smell of something that died a while ago.  Sister Chatfield was in the car and honked the horn when one of the kids was smelling the skeleton and they scattered like cockroaches on a kitchen floor when the lights go on in the middle of the night.


 On the way to Busia we see this two story hut that is awesome!



Finally a couple of videos



After teaching them some of our songs they wanted to sing one of theirs.

 

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