Dear Family and Friends:
It is a very lovely day here in Kampala. I am waiting for my washing to finish so I can hang it out before the rain comes. It is usually very sunny and beautiful in the mornings and by afternoon a very black cloud blows in, thunder rolls out of this cloud and then the drenching rain starts. This storm lasts about 20 minutes to an hour and then blows past. It is pretty remarkable the amount of water that falls from the sky. You cannot make it from your car to your porch without getting soaking wet. So I try to get my washing done in the morning and a few hours of drying on the line outside before this happens. When we leave for the day, I ask the guard to get my washing in because I know this will happen. It is truly a tropical storm leaving the roads looking like rivers, but the interesting thing is that the wet doesn’t stay around and things dry out pretty fast. The trees are also blooming again. It is a beautiful sight. The tree behind our compound is laden with beautiful pink blossoms, especially on the top and the birds love it. The neighbor has a banana tree and two days ago it was so heavy with bananas that a big clump fell over the fence and landed in our yard. What were we to do? We did the only thing possible, we divided them up between us and they are ripening on our porch at this time. This truly is a land where fruits and vegetables grow without much assistance. The avocado trees are unexplainable. They produce the biggest avocado I have ever seen. Think of the size of a child’s football and that is how big they are. You peel them, slice them lengthwise, take out the stone/seed and fill them with chopped tomatoes, peppers and onions and put on some Italian dressing and you can’t imagine how good that is. Also the pineapples are the best I have ever tasted. They are very sweet and grow everywhere. They are very cheap to buy and all the roadside stands have them for sale. When you stop in traffic, little kids tap on your car window and want you to buy one. They cost about 1,000 schillings or .60 cents each. We eat a lot of fruit for breakfast, lunch and dessert at dinner.
This weekend was our first district conference (stake conference). It was very very good. We went Saturday for two sessions. Since people have such a hard time with transportation, they stayed for both sessions and were provided with food in between. The church had been thoroughly cleaned and we have new upholstered benches like the very nice chapels in the US. The choir was beautiful. The African people have beautiful voices and they had practiced for weeks. There were about 40 people in the choir and they were very serious about the music. Then the best part was the Primary choir. The kids sang “Follow the Prophet” and then six or so of them sang solos about the different prophets. I so wanted to tape it, but Ron said it wasn’t appropriate in the chapel, It was so sweet and darling I could hardly listen without thinking I wish someone was taping this, and why didn’t I do it anyway. They have the wonderful African accent and so the words had a little different sound then the kids back home and it was wonderful. I had tears in my eyes when they finished and I wanted all of you to be there to hear it. Kids are the same all over the world. It was fun for me as a former primary teacher to hear the song I have heard our little kids sing in the Harbour Pointe ward and to hear the little African kids sing it.
The members here do not have much, but when they come to church they look, as they would say, “very smart”. The women and little girl’s hair-dos are very fancy with yarn, feathers and beads braided in their hair. Some wear the colorful turbans that match their dresses. One darling teenager, that is in our branch, came up to me and handed me a small sack and said “here Sister Bean I bought this for you at the market, you had told me last Sunday how much you liked mine”. It was a comb for the back of my hair and was made of brown silk flowers, sparkles on the leaves and feathers and silk streamers. It was very smart. It was so sweet of her and I insisted on paying her for it. It was extra nice because I know how poor they are. I put it on when I got home, but somehow it loses the beautiful African effect on my hair. It is the kind of thing that would be very fun to wear. Maybe I will dare do it for some occasion. The little girls also have beads entwined in their hair and it really is fun to look around at the very wonderful clothing, very colorful and very African.
At the Sunday session of conference, we had approx. 800 people there. This is remarkable because they either walked a long distance to get there, or they took a boda boda or they came by taxi. What a sight. We had excellent speakers and the desire here is to become a stake and to have a temple nearby. We think this desire it quite a way off, but we are sure it will happen someday. The members here are first generation and struggle with a lot of family traditions and culture issues, but there are some strong remarkable leaders also.
We had an adventure last week in one of the villages. We asked Elder and Sister Huskinson, who are fairly new missionaries here and are from Rexburg, Idaho, if they would like to accompany us out to a village to deliver some hoes, rakes, nails and fence material for a pineapple project that the Church is helping with. They said they would like to go. The village is very remote and you have to drive down a very bumpy narrow lane, not even a road, to get there. We found the lady in charge of the project and dropped the stuff off by her house. She asked us to come and see the field that they were clearing for the planting. She said they had hired some men to help clear it. As we approached the field, we saw a bunch of men swinging pangas, hoes, etc and really working hard clearing the thick underbrush. We got out of the truck, with our cameras in hand and I took a picture of a little boy with his baby sister tied on his back standing in the field. Just as I snapped the picture, a man in a military uniform, high black boots and a AK47 machine gun in his hands, ran up to me and grabbed the camera out of my hand. He then turned around and grabbed Elder Huskinsons’ camera out of his hand. He was yelling at us and was so very mad. He appeared out of nowhere and must have been back in the bush. He yelled you can’t take pictures of prisoners, it is against the law. I am taking your cameras; this can’t get in the newspaper and was yelling all sorts of other things. I thought he was going to smash our cameras. We have a very nice camera and it had all kinds of wonderful pictures on it. I said to Ron, "he has our camera, he is not going to give it back" and Ron said, "Oh yes he is." The man was storming around and waving his gun and I said to him, "I did not take any pictures of the prisoners; just a little boy and his sister" and he kept yelling something like, "I saw you and you can’t have these cameras." I pointed to our missionary badges and said we are missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and we would not lie to you and I just walked up and took our camera out of his hand. We again explained that we did not take pictures of the men. He gave Elder Huskinson’s camera back and just kept being very excited and waving his machine gun around. People tried to explain that the Church was funding this project. Things settled down then and Ron and Elder Huskinson walked around the project and then we all got back in our truck and left. It was pretty scary. Ron is so funny after we had left, he reached in his pocket and pulled out his little pocket knife, it is just little and about one and a half inches long and he said to me, if he hadn’t given our camera back, I was going to take care of him. We all laughed and the crisis was over. Later we found out why this man was so excited, we were told that it is against the law here for prisoners to work for money and they can only work within the prison grounds. So this guard had taken them out to the village illegally and was charging for their labor and pocketing the money. The village is so remote, he probably couldn’t believe his eyes when four muzungus’ (white people) pulled up in a truck and started to take pictures. It is funny now, but not so much then.
We hope all is well at home and love to hear from everyone. Brent and Kami are coming to spend Christmas with us and that makes us so happy. We love this mission and all the wonderful blessings it provides. Love, Elder and Sister Bean.
PS: we have made CDs for our family, but can only send them in the pouch each Tuesday, two at a time, so kids expect them in the next month or so.
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