Hello and Merry Christmas. We have completed 6 months of our mission and are enjoying the African experience of being around exotic animal. December is our wedding anniversary month, so we celebrated by going to a lodge a few hours away from us. The unique thing about the lodge is that it is also a game reserve. There are over 70 zebras and about 17 giraffes that wander freely on the grounds. The hippos come out of the water at night, but they close a gate to keep them away from the guests. Apparently, Hippos are dangerous and they like to keep the guests away from them. We were able to walk freely among the herds of zebras, giraffes, and other animals.  We took a boat ride to an island and were able to walk freely on the island with several other exotic animals. It was an experience that I never dreamed we would be able to experience. We also took a drive through Nairobi National Park which is only a 10-minute drive from our apartment. We saw a large male lion by the side of the road as well as several other animals. We will post several animal photos. We are aware that the pictures do not do justice to the experience of watching a giraffe walk by when you are about 20 feet away.

Sister Holloway finished the keyboard class that she has been teaching with others. It was a long 6-month class but there were several students who completed the class and they had a recital. It was rewarding to watch the students perform. Everyone that completed the class earned a keyboard. The hope is that they can develop their piano skills so they can accompany in church meetings. The next phase is to turn it over to the three stakes in Nairobi so they are responsible for managing it with the support of the senior missionaries.

It was a quiet Christmas for us. We had a Christmas Eve brunch with the senior missionaries and a gift exchange. Christmas day we spent with the senior missionaries from the Nairobi East Mission. We had dinner at a restaurant and visited with some senior missionaries that we don’t see very often. We were able to video call family which made it feel more like Christmas.

 

The giraffes are always looking down on us. 

Nairobi Piano class after the recital

Petting the Tortious

Ready for our boat ride to Crescent Island

walking among Impalas on Crescent Island

Flamingos in the water

A stroll among the Zebras

A morning walk among the Impalas

Zebras everywhere

 

Our Area President dressed in his traditional African outfit for our Area Christmas party

We interrupted his lunch

Female Impala by the side of the road as we were walking

Hippos on the shore at Crescent Island

Wildebeest on Crescent Island 

Zebras everywhere

Pelicans in the shore of Crescent Island

Group photo of another senior missionary leaving us at the completion of their mission. 

Things in the Central Africa Area continue to be busy and exciting. Our senior missionary group changes as our missionary friends complete their mission and go home and others come to join us. We found out that we will have a missionary couple join us in January. They are from Arco, Idaho and Sister Holloway knew her as a child when she lived in Mackay, Idaho. They will be serving as Family History missionaries. We find the senior missionaries bring a wealth of experience and skills that are very valuable. There are areas here that lack  skills to do what needs to be done. That is why the senior missionaries are so valuable.

We attended our Area Office Christmas devotional on Friday. The African employees all dressed in traditional African clothing. It was colorful and fun to see the variety of colors and dress. Many wore traditional clothing from their villages. They had an area office choir that they put together. Sister Holloway played her flute to accompany the choir. We are learning that there is some musical talent here, but it is still a developing area. Sister Holloway has been helping to teach piano lessons with the goal of getting piano players for the local congregations. We just heard that the narrator for The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, Derrick Porter, will be in Nairobi the end of January to lay the foundation for a Kenyan choir to record a number to be broadcast on the Spoken Word. We are excited to be a part of that.

Our days are busy talking with missionaries. Some have had some traumatic experiences. We talked with two missionaries who were attacked and assaulted. One had his nose broken. We also talked with other missionaries who came upon a man who had been beheaded. Some of the countries let local citizens handle the punishment for law breakers. Some of the stories we hear sound like the wild wild west of early America. We find we are safe in Nairobi as long as we stay in the safe areas. We have a walking path we do every day and wave to several of the Africans who are kind and friendly. Most are happy even though they live a very humble lifestyle with very few luxuries.

We are grateful to be here and serve. We miss our friends and family, but we feel we are needed and are part of a great work in this part of the Lord’s vineyard.  

It is easy to get limited in our thinking at times. Before we came to Africa I thought motorcycles were for one to two people transportation. As you can tell from these pictures, I have been limited in my view of a motorcycle's purpose. Some of these require great balance and skill. 

A little updraft could turn this into an airplane

I hope they have goo health insurance, or even better life insurance. 

Not only a spare tire, but a spare motorcycle

Not just a sleeping bag, but a whole bed set.

A two person moving company

 

Outdoor kitchen as a school we visited. They have no electricity and they serve about180 students. Food is cooked over a wood fire. 

Nairobi marathon. They closed all 4 lanes of a major highway that we use to travel to church. There were thousands of people with fireworks and oud music. It started right by our apartment complex. 

Students on a school classroom. They were very respectful a polite.

School classroom

School classroom

 

Africa Central Area Senior Missionaries

 

Dinner with a family in our branch

 

Piano lessons

Dinner with a family in our Branch

It seems like it has been a while since we updated our Blog. We have been busy. We attended one day of the mission leader’s seminar which was a great opportunity to met the mission leaders in person. We are close to the Nairobi West and the Nairobi East missions, so we are able to see them more frequently. But the other 14 mission leaders are hundreds of miles away, so our contact is a monthly meeting over Zoom. About half of the mission leaders are French speaking which makes it a challenge. We need a translator to do our meetings. We are finding there are many obstacles to do what we would like to do for the mission leaders and the missionaries, but we do what we can. The church is growing so fast it is difficult to keep up with it. We have heard that some wards and branches meet in a tent. We saw today that we will be getting four new missions in our area. We were told that we need to think of this as Kirkland, Ohio in the 1830’s. The growth is happening so fast that it is hard to keep up with the growth.

 

Elder Rasband is here now touring the area He will go to a small island nation off the coast of East Africa called Seychelles. It is a beautiful tropical island with about 250,000 residents. There was a couple living in Australia who had raised their family and decided to return back to the island because they wanted to bring the Gospel there. I believe one was raised there. They contacted the area president and told them they were going and wanted to help establish the church. At about the same time a family in Denmark wrote a letter to President Nelson saying they were moving their family back to the island and wanted to have support in getting the church established. So Elder Rasband will go over and dedicated the and for the preaching of the gospel.

We drove through Nairobi National Park for the third time. It is close and inexpensive so we try to go when we can find a block of time to go. We usually take about four hours to five in the park and just drive around and see what there is. We saw Rhinoceroses, Giraffes, Zebras, and Ostriches right by the side of the road. We saw two animals that we didn’t know what they were. They were head butting right by our car. We thought they were going to hit our car a time or two. They were bleeding from the head and from their knees before one ran off and the other followed. We are always amazed by the beauty of these animals. Watching them in the wild and close up is amazing. We are planning to go to another park in December with a small group of other senior missionaries. We are considering it our anniversary trip.

 

We spend most of our time talking with missionaries. It is amazing to see the growth in some of them in such a short period of time.  We also are realizing that we are simply instruments in the Lord’s hands. Several times thoughts come to mind which seem to make no sense, but it is exactly what the missionary needs to hear.  We are still getting use to some of the cultural differences and ways of doing things. Traffic is always a major challenge. We pray for safety each time we get in the car.

 

 

We took a few minutes to visit the Giraffe Recovery Center. They have 12 giraffes. Two were less than 2 months old. They give you a small bowl of pellets so you can feed the giraffes. They warned us to be careful because a few of the giraffes like to head butt. They have two male giraffes but one is still young. When he gets older, he will need to be moved because the dominate male will attempt to kill him when he is able to mate. They have one dominate male who is the protector of the females. The dominate male will fight to the death any giraffe that threatens his females. It was fascinating to be that close and to interact so closely with them. They are graceful with log legs, long necks and long tongues.