Too well-fed

As we fly towards the end of this part of our lives I am ever mindful of the great blessings that have accompanied us on this mission.  The Lord loves his children wherever they may be located, this I know.  We have been blessed with so many opportunities over the past 18 months and we have been changed for the better.  The gospel is true and all the hardships that each one of us endure will be for our good.  I came across this quote from President Benson after he had returned after being called to go and serve in war torn Germany in 1947.  It was so appropriate if you just change Europe to Africa, you get a good idea of the struggle from poverty induced either by war or circumstance.

"To one who has spent the major part of the last year amidst the rubble and destruction of war-torn Europe, this conference has been doubly inspirational and appreciated. As I have looked into the faces of this well-fed (almost too well-fed, in many cases) audience, well-clothed, surrounded with all the comforts and blessings of life, I have found that my thoughts have many times drifted across the Atlantic to those of our brethren and sisters with whom I have been closely associated during recent months. I love them, my brethren and sisters, as I am sure you do."  I admit that President Benson may have been talking directly to me about being "too well-fed."  It may be because of war or just being a third world country, the struggles are much the same.  Where there is poverty, it doesn't matter the cause.  My hope is that I never forget how difficult so many in this world have it but still love life and family.  We have that in common.

This week was a random affair of many different things.  I just included some of my favorite photos from the week.  Because there was a District Council meeting we did not travel to Busia but instead went to Iganga so I could get to my meeting.  We have been there quite often and have many friends.

Cute Jamima.  She is the daughter of the Relief Society President, and her brother just left on a mission to South Africa.  She has another sister, Brenda, away is boarding school and another brother, who got one of the top testing scores in Uganda last year, so he is away to school on scholarship.  Her father is a police officer and is not a member.

This is baby Emma.  They call him the "brown" baby because he is light in color.  His mama is Margaret and is the YW President of their branch. He has two sisters, Shanti and Sherry.

We found some more pioneers around.  Nancy had some extra hats and bonnets so another primary got some new duds.

Uganga has huge sugar cane fields and the trucks are a real pain.  They crawl along the highway and create a huge bottleneck.  They load them up heavy and head to the processing plant.

A new creation.  You take a chapati and smear fresh avocado over it and then make your design with chili sauce and enjoy.  At least that is what I did and it was right on target (get it? I know, I know, I crack myself up too).

We took Jessy, returned elder from Iganga, to the dentist to finish some work that was started on his mission.

WAIT!  Hold the presses, this just in...coke zero will make you burp.  That is all.

How you transport lumber.

We were invited by a new member to visit his school, Royal Infants and Primary School. The school is one year old.  They have children attend from ages 3 to 16.  He is just renting the place and was hoping we could help with some of his expenses.  It is difficult for kids to get an education especially out in the villages. These new members, Keneth and Betty, have children attend who can't pay.  They just have big hearts. We will have a list of places that anyone looking to help donate to, when we get home.

Some of the prospective missionaries help earn money for their missions by helping teach at this school.

See the scowl? AH!  Muzungu's!

School had just started a two week break so there were only a few kids around.  They even let me ring the school bell.

The uniforms.

These are the school benches stacked for vacation.  Keneth picked out a tree, when he was ready to get this school started, and cut the lumber for the benches from it.  Nothing is easy here in Africa.

Sister Squire got right into the school teacher giving assignments.

The students gave her a gift as a going away present.  By there feet is some maze drying out to eat or to be ground into posho.

The latrine

The lady in the orange skirt is the vice-chairman of the school and sang us a welcome song, a hello song and then, as we are getting ready to leave, a goodby song.

Just a couple of buddies walking down the road.

One of our sisters had a eye infection so after three days of irrigation not working we took her to the eye doctor.

While waiting, teaching Sister Squire to pose.

Nancy had to teach at Jinja District auxiliary training meeting and got a couple of nice pictures.

This little chub is the one born a few months ago from Lugazi that we helped to transport back home when one day old.

Great news, from an earlier post about Cosmos, I had a reply about a non-profit group will design a 3-D hand that will open and close (e-NABLE).  Thanks Trey for the very helpful information and Elder and Sister Taylor are in the process of getting Cosmos on the list.  Enable designs a 3-D hand that volunteers with printers will manufacture.  This will be life changing for him.

Toenails the length of a football field

Our missionaries just finished another 90 day reading of the Book of Mormon.  I did not participate as I was doing a reading where you underline everywhere Christ or his teaching is mentioned.  There are hardly any empty pages without something underlined.  It was very rewarding to do this.  At the zone leaders meeting, one of the elders asked how they can stay upbeat and focused while on their mission.  President Chatfield used Moroni 10:22-23 in his answer.  It states:"And if ye have no hope ye must needs be in despair; and despair cometh because of iniquity.  And Christ truly said unto our fathers: If you have faith ye can do all things which are expedient unto me."

I have never read these verses in light of my personal feelings.  All of us "despair" at some point in our lives.  Often it can take over our lives.  These two verses help me understand that not having hope leads to despair and despair is because of some iniquity in our lives.  We tend to look outward when we are despairing but if we were to look at what iniquity could be causing us to lose hope and despair, perhaps we can repent and get happy once again.  Hope brings happiness.  Anyway, I like it.

It has been a rather slow week.  Sister Squire is always looking for somewhere to do a good deed.  She has been helping Joseph for the last few months with boots, food and sugar.  She decided he needed a total makeover and visited the local church leaders to help.  It ended up we had a member along with a member of the branch presidency and his wife come to help.  Let me introduce you to Joseph who is 75 years old.  That is pretty good in Africa.  We have met quite a few older folks but they are quite rare.

This is Joseph's feet.  You would think it would be a simple task to clip those toenail buggers off but it turned out to be a very lengthy process.  It seems toe nails take on a superman quality the longer they get.  His nails would laugh at our large toe nail clippers, scissors and razor blade as they would hardly made a dent.  If I had some wire cutters that would have done it but alas, I did not.  I finally went back home and got some leather-man type scissors and that finally did the trick.

Give them a good scrub and trying to soften them up.

Five workers (not all in the picture) doing the makeover and one bystander.

Sister Harriett doing the dishes and sweeping inside the house.  You would not have believed the condition of the plates he was eating off.  I guess that is why he has lived so long, very many antibodies built up over the years.

The toe nail clippers trying to clip away a the nail.

Two of us assigned to shaving off the beard and giving him a haircut.

After a bath behind the trees he was ready to show off the new Joseph.  He really does look so different.  He had to feel better with his new clothes, hair cut and toenails cut so he can walk.  Joseph, Joseph, where are you?

Cute girl alert - Leticia

This is kind of sad.  One of the cool things I get to do is interview all the pre-missionaries, in the Jinja area, and help them get their paperwork sent in.  Moses is a wonderful young man who is serving as an assistant clerk in the Jinja District.  He received his call and we are always excited to deliver them and then have them call when they open it to share where they are going.  He didn't have any family to share this with so we became his family.  I love these wonderful people. He is going to the Ghana Cape Coast Mission.

Martin is our woodcarver.  We have had him do many pieces of work for us and he called out of the blue and said he had a gift for us.  This is different because we have to bargain for the price of everything and in Africa you don't get rebates or take stuff back because you had the bad luck of it breaking.  Martin had carved this beautiful panel that said: "Elder Squire & Sister Squire thanks for your support God bless you."  You can see some of the very nice work they do in the background.

Ginny hen

These are six cooking stoves.

Another project for Sister Squire.  He followed me home from my morning walk and Sister Squire went out to visit with him.  He is 13 years old. His brother had left him and he was all alone.  She would feed him every day and bought him some clothing because he was wearing rags.  He came this week and said his brother had come back and they were on their way home to Juba in South Sudan.  Best wishes Fredrick!

Lots of pioneers in Africa

Whoa, are you kidding me, this is the last month of our mission.  I guess it is time I started to get to work!  We love it here but are excited for the chance to renew our love with family and friends in person!  But enough about that, we really try not to count the days down because it will happen way to fast as it is.

In the book "The Crucible of Doubt," another highly recommended book, I found this quote about prayer and how we sometimes are stymied as we wait and wait on the Lord.  In the book it is recounted how a young man had prayed in spiritual agony for years.  He finally wrote home and his mom gave this valuable feedback: “Enough of this nonsense. This is pure foolishness. Stop this at once. Stop praying with your knees, start praying with your feet.” And that was a sweet relief for me. It was complete and total liberation. I took her advice and decided “I’m going to stop doing this thing. I’m going to stop holding a gun to the Lord’s head and insisting on a sign. I’m just going to live my life as if the gospel is true.” So you must understand: what I did upon reading that letter, was that I made a wager. I decided to bet my entire life that the gospel was true. I decided I would wager my life that the Church is everything it claims it is and live out my life accordingly. So that is what I’ve done and what I continue to do. . . . The kicker is that in the course of serving and fulfilling priesthood duty, knowledge does in fact come. But for me it has come in ways that were unbidden. Knowledge for me has not arrived because it was beckoned, or because I said “give me a revelation.” For me it has come in ways I can barely describe, and never on command, and I’m not even sure that they’re sensory or palpable. But I can tell you . . . that I somehow crossed a threshold into an area that I think we can call something more approaching knowledge. When I speak with conviction about our church it’s not merely with hope and with faith but with something that is approaching knowledge. That I can tell you. But it’s never come on my terms and never come to me on my timetable."
Givens, Terryl; Givens, Fiona (2014-09-05). The Crucible of Doubt (Kindle Locations 2356-2365). Deseret Book Company. Kindle Edition.

I love it, "stop praying with your knees, start praying with your feet."  I know I sometimes think all I need to do is ask and then wait for the fireworks to begin.  Not so, pray with your feet and get to work will bring desired results over time, or perhaps, something even better.

Hard to believe that when September gets here, we will have been home for several hours.  If anyone knows of any jobs, that is where I will be, looking for work.  I hope changing my profile picture will let people know how serious I am.  Believe me, the front view picture would not express confidence in my capabilities. I can just see potential employers asking: "so, why the long face?"

In Jinja we had the yearly agriculture fair and they get over a million people over the week long event.  We were doing the hoes project for the first part of the week so we only got to provide help to the missionaries for two days (thank heavens!).  The church had a tent set up to share what we believe and get future contacts if they are interested.  You can see from this picture how many were there.  The schools ship all their kids in for one of the days and it was crazy.

Our tent.

We changed elders every day so they all had a day along with the sisters who took one day.

For fun one day we went to the reptile park right by where the fair was held.  It is at the source of the Nile and you pay a small fee to get in.  This is a leopard turtle and I fell in love at first sight.

This one, not so much.

I don't think this guy has ever seen a tooth brush.

As we were leaving a school group came around to see the animals.  Glad we were done first.

 
We found a couple of dusty donkeys on the way to the reptile park.  You have to get a picture right?

 

Glad we don't get these guys around our home.  It is around 2 1/2 inches across.

For pioneer day Sister Squire invited the missionaries, in the district closest to our home, to help her make bonnets and hats for the primary kids.  They had to model them after completion.

And this is the final product.  Usually there are around 20 in primary but it was a light day.

The humanitarian couples from South Africa came to train the Howards and wanted to go out and see the source of the Nile.  Off they go.  Samuel, the boat driver, is going to be baptized soon.  It is fun to see how many people you talk with about the gospel come to church, feel the spirit and get baptized.

Here is Cosmos, another one of our referrals, who we talked about in another blog post, and his finished product.  I hope we can find somewhere that could make him some "hands" so he will be able to start learning a new skill.  If anyone knows anyone (they don't exist in Uganda) you can let me know.  He received his settlement from the business where he worked and it came to a grand total of around $3,000 dollars.  Yikes

When a branch has a conference we go out and visit less active members to invite them to come out.  We see some pretty cute kids.

This is the family of one of our guards (he has since been transferred) who we really enjoyed.  John was out fishing on lake Victoria but it was nice to see his family.  This area is very poor.  You can see from the background they live a very humble life.

One of the less active members owns this business where he sells movies and video games.  He also has it setup where they can come and play.

Some of the locals helping me make it back to the vehicle safe and sound.

In the market at Jinja they sell just about anything.  We get all our produce here and if we wanted we could get these small fish to add to our meal.  Glad I am not a fish fan.

Another wedding and TWO cute girls.  I didn't ask but they may be twins.  We had a mission fast and one of the things we fasted for was to teach families.  Currently, the mission is teaching 205 families.  Never have we taught anything close to that amount in the past.  This wedding was from Mbale.

Another wedding this time from Lugazi.  This couple was baptized the next day.

Fight, fight, fight!  While out visiting we caught this action between two roosters.

A video of the same action.

This is Samuel (yes another one) who we passed on our way to the reptile park. He is 15 years old and was washing his laundry in the Nile.   We always share who we are and why we are in Uganda and invite them to chruch.  Samuel came to church and by chance we were at the Jinja Branch that day.  First time ever and so we got to introduce him to the missionaries so he can be taught. He has been to church the last two Sundays!

We were invited to a graduation party for the District Relief Society President's daughter.  All her friends that have graduated anywhere close to her were also invited and wore their graduation gowns.  It is like the introduction ceremony, a lot of singing and dancing.  We left early but it went until midnight.

 

How on earth can they sit like this!

This is one of our returned missionaries who is still looking for Mr. right. She is the Primary President in the Iganga Branch.  Her name is Ritah.  She is awesome!

The kid has some moves.

This is the wagon with no wheels I mentioned last week.