Another Great First- The Full Block of Meetings Begins

Sundays in Burundi are just the best days. This week we had another historic one. As a branch we were now authorized to hold a full block of meetings. Sunday we held the first Relief Society, Primary, Priesthood meeting and Sunday School in the history of Burundi. It was just wonderful!

Each organization needed a little shadow leadership on the part of the missionaries, but the great new members did it! Imagine being in a block of meetings with almost nobody, including those conducting, who had ever been in any of those meetings . That's how it was, but it worked.

We held Relief Society, Primary and Priesthood first. In Africa there's always a problem with people being late, really late. Sometimes people are a half hour to an hour late, so they always do Sacrament meeting last. But this Sunday NOBODY was late. I think that they were all just excited to have a full program and they were all there on time and ready to go.

Sister Magnifique was magnificent as she conducted Relief Society, having never been to one before. Wow! It was awesome. She's such a gracious young sister and very much the picture of an African Relief Society woman as she stood before the group in her beautiful African dress and headware with her little baby boy wrapped on her back.

I attended Relief Society and then went in to help with Primary. I had been asked to teach the Relief Society lesson. It was pretty frightening to give a lesson in French. It's one thing to give a talk where you can just say what you've carefully prepared and written down that it is to do a Relief Society lesson. There you have to ask questions, have a discussion. You're not etirely in charge of where the lesson goes and you don't know exactly what will be said. YIKES! There were only about four sisters of the 17 who speak enough French to understand the the lesson well, so my dear friend, Veronique Malabi, translated into Swahili as I gave the lesson in French. It worked well and I think we all felt the spirit as we talked about the history of Relief Society and how the first meeting of pioneer sisters in the time of Joseph Smith was just like our little meeting of the pioneer sisters of the Bujumbura Branch. We talked about the programs of Relief Society and how they can bless our lives as we serve each other and our friends and neighbors. We talked about what a great honor it is to be a part of this wonderful world-wide sisterhood of women who have charity born of faith and commitment to Jesus Christ. I introduced them to the motto-

CHARITY NEVER FAILETH or CHARITE NE PERIT JAMAIS

Then I gave each sister a laminated book mark with "Charite ne perit jamais" and the date of the first meeting of Relief Society in Burundi as a remembrance of their being part of this historic day. I could tell they loved meeting together and Relief Society will be a great blessing to them.

Lastly, we had Sacrament meeting. It consisted of open song and prayer, announcements, the Sacrament, eight confirmations, one 10 minute talk, and the closing song and prayer. Not much time for anything when you had 8 confirmations, but that's not such a bad problem to have.

It was just another great Sabbath Day in the history of the church in Burundi.