So, Saturday was just lovely. At dinner on Friday night we
ran into Sam’s friend Ayub (sp?) who is a professional tennis player that she
took lessons from last summer. Alyssa
and I have both been dying to play tennis so we were super happy to run into him
and find out he had rackets and balls and was willing to play any time. So that’s
what we did first thing Saturday morning.
It was just the three of us, but it was so much fun. I don’t know if it gets much better than
playing tennis on red dirt courts in Africa.
Tennis + Africa = One happy girl.
We had such a good time. We will definitely
be doing that again soon.
After I got back from tennis, I cleaned myself up a little
bit and headed into town with Sam. We
had decided that we were ready to get away and take a break from all of the
crazy of the last week and a half, so we went on a little sister date. We found a little hair and nail salon and got
ourselves a pedicure. So nice. My feet have not been clean since I got here
so getting them all clean and shiny and massaged was such a good feeling. And my toenails are a bright purple now. Love
it. Best part? It only cost $2. Yes, 2.
Probably going to be going back there at least once a week. So great!
The plan for the rest of the afternoon was to go to the
Mount Elgon hotel (a super fancy hotel in our neighborhood) and lay by the
pool. When we got there we decided to
get some lunch at the poolside restaurant and enjoyed a little break from
matoke and beans and got a cheeseburger and a pizza instead. Which were surprisingly good. Unfortunately, the next part of our plan didn’t
work out so well. Sam had warned me that
last summer, without fail, every Saturday she decided to spend by the pool
ended up being rainy and cold. This Saturday was no exception. It has been blistering hot and sunny every
day that I’ve been here so far, with just a quick little rainstorm in the
afternoons. But while we were eating our
lunch it started to rain really hard and didn’t stop for a long time. When it finally did stop, the sun was still
blocked by clouds and it was actually pretty chilly. So we opted to go home to our sweats rather
than try to tan with now sun.
We finished off our evening by watching some Boy Meets
World. Which was, of course,
wonderful. We sure do love that
show. All in all it was a really great,
relaxing day spent with my sister.
Definitely can’t complain about that.
Today for church we had district conference in Jinja (like
stake conference when there’s only branches instead of wards). It was a long drive there and back, but it
was really cool being there. They had
huge white tents and chairs set up outside of the church because there were way
too many people to fit inside the chapel.
A pretty nice problem if you ask me.
It’s a really cool experience to go to church here because the majority
of the members are so new to the church so there’s a different enthusiasm than
you see in Utah or Idaho. Everyone is
still learning and really wants to learn, which is really fun to see. We got to hear the testimonies of a couple of
people who recently went to the temple for the first time. The first guy who spoke was 65 (ish) and was
so excited that he had finally gotten to take out his endowments. The closest temple is in South Africa so it’s
a big sacrifice for people here to be able to make it to the temple at all, so
when they do they are sooo grateful.
What a lesson for those of us who live so close to temples. I’ve heard stories of people who sacrifice a
lot and have to wait a long time to go to the temple once, but it was a
different experience to hear personally the testimony of someone in that
situation. We are so spoiled.
In the closing talk, the mission president gave us some
numbers of the strides that the church in the Kampala mission has made in the
last three years. That was so
inspiring. I can’t remember the number
of missionaries, but I remember being impressed by how many there were. I do remember that he said there were 5000
new members baptized in the last three years.
He also said that there were over 1000 people at the conference today
which means that the district can now apply for stakehood. So cool! The church is growing so fast here and
I have no doubt that a stake will be established here very soon. It was definitely an inspiring and
testimony-building Sunday.
I love Africa. I love the church. I love how blessed I am.
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