ELDER BEAN OR MONKEY? YOU BE THE JUDGE.
BANANA CARRIERS
BOYS IN THE VILLAGE
PG-13 SOCCER GAME
Dear Family and Friends:
Just an update on what we are doing here in Uganda. The last few weeks have been very busy, but very rewarding. We drove out to a village to check on our pineapple project. This is the village where we promised a bunch of little boys that we would buy them a soccer ball. As we drove down a bumpy lane to the project manager’s house, the boys saw our truck and two came running out to meet us. They were about six or seven years old. They were stark naked, but they were so excited they didn’t seem aware of it. We handed them the soccer ball and they just went wild. They immediately started kicking it and running around our truck and then Ron joined in the game and pretty soon even their mother was out kicking the ball around. It was very funny to see these little naked African boys playing soccer. No one seemed to mind or notice. They were so excited and happy we couldn’t stop laughing.
The weather is very stormy. Almost every day it rains and sometimes it rains several times a day. These are very noisy storms. First it starts out with a very black sky, then a strong wind and then rain, hard like hail. The rain is accompanied by very loud claps of thunder and a lot of lightning. This of course does not help with the flooding problem up north. We are impatiently waiting for ten containers of clothing, food, blankets, hygiene kits and plastic sheeting that we have asked the Church to send for relief aid to the flood victims. Many thousands of people have been cut off from the rest of the country due to bridges and roads under water. The United Nations are dropping food into villages by helicopter and the UN is now asking for more food and donations from any and all organizations that can help because they are running low on provisions. We sent another E-mail today to SLC asking them to send the aid ASAP. The Department of Defense is flying it into Uganda at a cost of $140,000 for transportation. We are hoping to get help from the missionaries in unloading when it arrives. We would also like help in distributing, but will see what we can arrange when it arrives.
We had zone conference last Saturday at the Kololo branch, which is the district center of the Church here. It is very touching to see these young men and women line up outside the chapel and greet the mission president and his wife as they walk down the line and shake hands. We just stood back and watched. Thinking how proud the parents should be of all these fine young men and two sisters in white shirts and blouse standing in line to show their respect to the Mission president. About half of the full time missionaries are native Africans. They are from Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Congo, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zaire, and other African nations. All have different accents and speak different languages and some have had to learn English. Most of the white kids have African companions and in spite of the different cultures, it seems to work. This is a pretty hard mission and they walk many many miles every day and put up with a lot of hardships and challenges that are certainly here. As we arrived at the conference we were all greeted with a bottle of water and a small box of worm medicine, which contained six pills. We were instructed to take two tablets immediately and four tablets the next day. It was a humbling experience, but we were all in the same boat so we took them. We take a daily malaria pill, eat food that has been washed in bleach, dishes that have been washed in bleach and breathe in all kinds of dust and pollution daily, we wonder what it is doing to our stomachs and lungs. So far we have only had a head cold. The senior missionaries are so very important to a mission like this. The young missionaries get sick; sometimes hurt and from time to time discouraged or home sick and we are their parents, grandparents, friends, and counselors here
Our grandson, Ryan, has just recently received his mission call to McAllen, Texas. It is right on the border of Mexico. He will be in the MTC for two months learning Spanish. We are so proud of him He just recently went through the Seattle Temple for his endowments. His aunt Darcy and cousin Connor will be flying in from Wisconsin for his farewell talk. His Aunt Kami will be flying in from California and his mom and uncle Matt and Aunt Pam and five Latimer cousins will also be there. It is wonderful to have the whole family on his mom’s side there to support him. We wish we could also be there, but he will be in our thoughts and prayers.
We are busy with many projects. We are in the middle of our first water project, which is rehabilitating 15 deep bore holes and providing pit latrine slabs, sanitation training and some mosquito nets for the Impigi District. We have also submitted plans for our second water project in the Jinja area that is quite a bit larger, with 46 water sources being rehabilitated. The wheelchairs have been ordered and we are just waiting for custom clearance before shipping. Along with these major projects we have a piggery project, a malaria repellant candle project, and have recently visited six potential new projects in the Jinja district. One of the projects involves women being organized in seven very remote villages. They are asking for help with agriculture needs. One of the villages consisted of only mud huts with thatched roofs and we met with the women under a big tree and talked about their needs. As we were leaving this village, Ron got in the truck with a tight turn around and asked me to stand behind the truck and direct him out. I was distracted by a cute little baby and some of the other kids and he pulled forward and went into a deep pit. The truck was almost standing on its nose in the hole. This provided much merriment among the villagers. A bunch of the older boys and men had to help push him out. He is still blaming me for this mishap, but my job was to keep him from running over the children and I didn’t know he was going to go forward and fall in a hole. We both see the situation differently and blame the other one. At one of our new potential projects, after we had met with the board and were leaving, they gave us some wonderful local sugar cane, at least six avocadoes, the biggest jackfruit we have ever seen, and some huge paw paws (papaya). They were so generous and we shared this with the other couples.
We continue to monitor the rice, banana and pineapple projects. So you can see we are very busy. We are really enjoying the varied types of projects and the different locales of Uganda and the wonderful people that we are working with. We are really seeing what Africa is really like out in the villages and countryside. We love our branch and have grown to really appreciate the people here. They are still very new in the church and don’t always understand the procedures. I play the keyboard for the branch and teach Relief Society and give a piano lesson before church. Ron teaches the Gospel Doctrine class and provides much needed experience to the whole priesthood organization. We love our branch, the only problem is that most people are very very poor and think that all whites are rich, so we get asked to provide money and other things very often. Handling these situations is very uncomfortable for us. All in all we are enjoying the work. We are attaching some miscellaneous pictures.
We are looking forward to Kami and Brent’s visit here at Christmas and hope to take them to see many interesting sights and with us to visit some of our projects.
Love to all.
The Beans
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