Do You Understand the Words that are Coming out of My Mouth?

Language is one of the greatest challenges we have in this mission. There are so many languages spoken that it's a major difficulty. In the Lubumbashi area they speak Swahili (of the Congolese variety) not Kiswahili, which is the Swahili the Kitabu Cha Mormoni (Book of Mormon) is translated into. In the North of our mission they speak Thsiluba. In Burundi the language is Kirundi. Neither The Book of Mormon nor any other church materials are yet translated into either of these languages. All of the countries also have French as an official language. In DRC there are five official languages, Swahili, Tshiluba, Kikongo, Lingala and French. In Burundi there are two, French and Kirundi, but many of our members speak Swahili and not Kirundi. Some only speak English and Swahili, not French, because they were sent to neighboring English-speaking countries during the war. Only about 70% of the people speak French. Many of our elders and others speak many languages-French, Swahili, Tshiluba, Lingala, Kikongo, some English and Kirundi and a tribal language or two. So, why is learning one new language, French, such a challenge for me?

Brent speaks French so well that people say he speaks better French than they do, and it's true.

Every Sunday in church as the meeting is translated from French to Kirundi we hear many language all bringing the same message. It's quite an amazing experience.

Bujumbura is Beautiful

Nature certainly smiles on this little country. Here's the scene from our veranda the other day.

Here's the scene from the kitchen window...........View of the city from the East Mountains

Scenes at Lake Tanganyika.

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Drive along the river ...........................................Hills covered with Village houses

Our Favorite tree

Notice the white van on the left for perspective on the size of this perfectly shaped tree.

The beauty of this land is a stark contrast to its difficult challenges and turbulent history.

If men could live and work together in peace and harmony, this land could be a paradise.

Progress - Appolonie's sisters are baptized

Each week we have the privilege of seeing men, preparing, blessing and passing the sacrament. None of them have been in the church longer than three months. Vianey (17) and Thomas (Vianey's uncle and a former pastor) prepared the sacrament together, under the tutelage of Elder Tshituka . It's a touching experience to see them as they perform their tasks with a feeling of true understanding of the sacred nature of what they're doing. Fathers & sons, uncles & nephews, all of them newly ordained priests, preparing and distributing these emblems together with tenderness and reverence that is unique and wonderful. Their attitude is so touching that it brings tears almost every Sunday and makes this experience even more meaningful.

Today we had our first baptisms of 2011. The pool is repaired at Sun Safri Hotel so we held them there. It's nicer and much more private, but it's also quite a distance from the church and we have been instructed not to transport members in our truck any more. Our good Brother Willes, who works for the American Embassy and lives at Sun Safari, arranged for the bus from the hotel to pick up our members. We filled a bus with supporters & our trucks with elders. Usually they would have all walked the several miles to the baptism, so this was a real treat.

Emery has three cousins who were baptized earlier. With his baptism, the priesthood is now available in their family.

Izadore heard about the church from Prosper, one of our earlier converts. It would have been perfect had Prosper been the person to baptize him. Sadly, Prosper is recovering from a serious knife wound received as he tried to stop two men in his neighbored who were having a confrontation. He is lucky to be alive but will take some time to recover.

Odette and Dieudonne are such a cute young couple. They have an adorable eight-month-old son. It's a somewhat unique and very special to see a family come into the church together.

Annie and Nanas (both dressed in white) have already been baptized. Now Menos joins them in the church. Their mother (in orange), who is not a member yet, was so cute. She ran to her son and joyously embarrassed him after his baptism. Such sweet demonstrations of public affection and support aren't common in this culture. It was very meaningful. It takes time here to get a whole family to be baptized. Usually the man joins first, then eventually, he brings his wife and children. I used to be very troubled by it, but I have come to think that it's the way men protect their family. They come and then if it works well, they invite their family. In this case it was the daughter, Nanas, who made the first step, after being invited by Annie. We believe that someday this family will all be in the church.

Each person is shown with Thaddee, who did all the baptisms. He was baptized on November 21, 2010. You could feel all the members pulling for him to do well as he performed these sacred ordinances for the first time. He did a wonderful job. It's truly a blessing to see those who are new to the church stepping in to give service and doing the work of the group. The more they can do without us, the better it is. It's much like teaching your children to be self-sufficient and strong in preparation for the time when they leave your home. All the missionaries will leave someday and the members need to be bonded and strong without us, both spiritually and as a functioning unit of the church. That's our goal.

This brings our number of members to 51. We began three months ago with 8 official members. Weekly we see them growing not only in numbers but in strength and unity. It's awesome!

The Bridge Went Down-Holy Traffic!!

Traffic in Bujumbura is never easy to navigate. This is a city of 3 million people without a single traffic light and only a few stop signs, which people totally ignore. There are no police directing traffic and intersections have just one rule "Bonne Chance!" which means good luck!

We live across the river from the center of town in a little quieter place. To get there you cross a bridge and there is less traffic when you get to our quarter.

But recently this is what we found on the way home.

A heavy storm had caused the bridge to collapse and the road to crack. So, we were left with only one way to get into the city. For a month or more the road was closed. We didn't know if it would ever be opened again. The traffic going into and out of the city was horrible. We spent hours every day just waiting in line to get anyplace. Cars would be lined up as far as you could see.

A few times they opened a lane of the road for an hour or two, but it was pretty scary. I wasn't sure that waiting in the longer lines on a safe road wasn't a better idea.

Brent even became determined to find a new way home. He went down a dirt road looking for a way across the river. Some young men motioned that he could cross the river if he followed them. So off we went down a steep embankment and onto the river bed. They told him that we could cross upstream, but when we went that way, we didn't see any opening on the other side of the river to get out of the river bed.

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After much begging on my part, we turned around and headed back. With the help of our four-wheel-drive truck we finally were able to get ourselves out of the river bed. Luckily, on the way home we found an ice cream bike and for $5 Brent bought his way out of the doghouse.

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Then one day they started working on the bridge and the road. All the work was done by hand, but slowly things progressed. Many workers cleared out the fallen rock. Then they moving one giant rock at a time up the hill. They smashed them to the ground, breaking them and building a new road and retaining wall with the pieces.

In two weeks they finished the job and gave us our road back to town. The terrible traffic snarls are now back to just "normal craziness" and all is well in Bujumbura.

Christmas 2010 in Burundi

Our second mission Christmas was definitely not a traditional Christmas. It was filled with things that were far from our usual Christmas activities, but most interesting. This is my favorite Christmas tree. It was made of bamboo supports with branches of a non-evergreen tree layered over them and then decorated. They had to change the branches every few days as they wilted quickly in this warm climate. But it was the prettiest tree we saw this year. There were more trees here than in Lubumbashi. We saw a half a dozen in the stores around town and some young men selling them on the streets.

Two days before Christmas the ladies had a fun morning making spiced nuts the African way with the help of Sister Malabi. They taste a lot like our usual spiced nuts, but the process is very different. I threw in a little cinnamon to make them taste more like the traditional ones at home. I also made a batch of English toffee and fudge for our Christmas celebration. Some things just have to be done. I brought the nuts and marshmallow cream from the US just so we could have them for each Christmas. Yum!

We spent Christmas Eve with the Frogleys. Their tradition is to have Israeli food on Christmas Eve. So, we had a great adventure in new food. I made a soup, something like minestrone, flat bread and coconut cookies, like macaroons. I threw in a little apple pie just to keep Brent happy.

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The Frogleys made tabbouleh salad (tomatoes, onions, parsley, avocado and quinoa, a kind of grain) and harrosette salad (apples, raisins, pomegranates, dried apricots, coconut, nuts and yogurt) It was interesting to try these different foods.

Then we watched a presentation on the Holy Land by Elder Frogley.

Christmas day we had all the missionaries over for dinner and a little party. It was fun to share part of the day with them. We gave little gifts to the elders and played the white elephant game. They're such serious guys that it took awhile for them to get in the swing of the game, but eventually they did and they had fun with it. We also gave them each a DVD of all the pictures we had of each missionary. Since almost none of them has a camera, we thought they would like to have pictures. The missionaries were also able to make a 10 minute call home. For most of them this was their first contact with family during their missions. I think it was a very special time for them. The Frogleys gave them each a DVD of church hymns. Then the elders surprised each couple with a beautiful drawing made by Elder Kizimbou (on the far left) and signed by all the missionaries. It shows the Title of Liberty being raised in Burundi. It will be a treasure by which we will always remember our mission.

We spent the evening talking to our children on Skype and it was wonderful. On Christmas Eve we were able to read the nativity from the scriptures in French as Ryan and Linsey's family acted it out. On Christmas Day we saw some of the grandchildren open gifts and play with their toys and it was an enormous blessing to talk to each family.

We did miss our wonderful Christmas traditions, but we had a good Christmas and felt grateful to be full-time servants of Him whose birth we celebrated.