Thursday, May 13, 2010

Shabbat Shalom... African style that is...

Sunday in Uganda was amazing! We got up early to travel to church in Jinja--about an hour drive away through a beautiful jungle forest. Jinja is a more touristy city in Uganda. It is located at the head of the Nile, "The Source," and we got to cross over the Nile on our way to church. It brought back many memories of being in Egypt last fall. The branch in Jinja was surprisingly big and had a lot of new members. The lessons all focused on basic gospel principles, but they were fantastic, and it was neat to hear the members' testimonies. The ward building was actually really nice and it had an oven! (We are definitely going to have to make cookies sometime!) There were so many missionaries in that branch, four elders, and 6 sisters. Most of them were from various African countries, but one of the elders was from St. George--he was the second Mzungu (white person) I've seen since being in Uganda. It's crazy to be such a minority!
Rose, our cook, made a Ugandan feast for us tonight. We had pretty much every Ugandan dish that we will be eating for the next 3 months. It was all really good, but there's not much variety. Rice and beans, matoke (mashed plantains), sweet potatoes, potatoes, and cassava, green beans, chick peas, chipati (fried thick tortillas), watermellon and pineapple... I think we'll be mixing and matching that for the rest of our time here. Haha, good thing I liked all of it.
I've decided to take on the challenge of reading the entire Book of Mormon while I'm over here. I've calculated that I should be able to get it done if I read 7 pages a day. So far it is going great, and I'm loving reading it. Feel free to join me in reading it this summer if you'd like too! I felt like I could really connect to Lehi and his family when they talked about leaving their home in Jerusalem and all their possessions to go to a foreign land. This is another little journey of mine to a promissed land and I hope to be able to come closer to my Savior and myself through this experience.

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