It was so fun to talk to our kids for Mothers Day. When we hung up, Dad had a grin on his face and I asked what was up. He said he just liked
hearing all y'all laughing and cutting up. Reminded me of our family
trips or when we stay up late and get punchy. Anyway, it was fun and I'm
so glad the internet kept working! It's been terrible lately - so
slow we couldn't even open an email for a few days - so we had been
praying that it would be fast enough for all the Mother's Day calls. On
Thursday, it picked up and was still slow but fast enough to get through
on Saturday and Sunday. About 10 minutes after the last Elder left last
night, it dropped down again. Those are the behind-the-scenes divine
kind of helps we see here in the mission.
This Monday was one of the biggest holidays in Mozambique - "the
Day of the Women." The Beira 1 branch was having an activity to
celebrate and the RS president had called and invited me and Sandi to
come and also asked Sandi to demonstrate how to make the crochet bags
and me to demonstrate how to embellish flip-flops.
They print special capalanas for the day, and Sandi wanted one for the
activity, so we headed to town. We were pretty sure all the shops would
be closed - which they were - but thought we could maybe find someone
selling on the street - which we did. Wish I could've taken a picture of
the street sellers but it's not safe for me to pull my phone out on the
street unless Dad is standing by me keeping watch. But here's a picture
of a guy, through the car window, who tried to sell me some fish:
Anyway, we got the capalana and got ready for the activity. When
we got there, I asked the ladies to show me how to put on the capalana because mine kept falling off.
We didn't really know what they would be doing, but we have learned to
prepare for anything. We didn't know if they would have food or not, but I
decided to make a big batch of rice pudding - like a roaster pan full.
That's it on the left:
Sandi made a batch of another kind. Good thing we did because it was
a pot-luck lunch!! These people aren't very communicative, so we just
have to guess about what's going to happen and do our best to prepare.
The food was interesting, as always, but the chicken was good and they
make a cabbage salad that I like. Sandi was afraid to eat the food, but I
told her that she had to get something so they wouldn't be offended. So
she got a few spoonfuls and played with it. I was reminded of the
'widow's mite' because some people brought a group serving size of
something, and others would just bring a small plate with a single
serving of something. They brought what they could... But I was amazed
at the overall quantity of food - it was a lot! Especially for here....
They loved the rice pudding!! It's so funny that they eat a ton of
rice, but they had never heard of rice pudding. Several asked me how to
make it so that was a trick to convert all the ingredient names to
Portuguese and the measurements to metric and then explain the
directions. I quickly realized that few to none have stoves (or
ovens) so they couldn't bake it like I did. So I converted the recipe to
'how to do it in a pot over the fire'. ;)
Luisa's
daughter, 4 yr old Callista, wanted to play with my phone, which would
not be a good thing so I told her that it was off and didn't work. She
told me that I needed to buy "credilec", or phone credit for it. She's a
little pistol - smart and precocious! She showed me that she still
remembered "Do as I'm Doing" that I had taught the kids when we were in
that ward 6 months ago.
Before we ate, Sandi and I did our craft demonstrations for the
women. I thought it was funny that we wouldn't eat first while the food
was ready but the RS President was insistent that the demo be first. I
wondered if she was afraid that people would leave after they had eaten -
a definite possibility at any activity.:)
After crafts and food, we danced!! They had two of the single guys
there with a pretty nice sound system and they played songs and the
ladies danced in a circle. They also joined in a big line and did their
version of the Bunny Hop. It was fun!! Luisa got tired of her girls
wanting to dance with her and sent them to me. Dancing and twirling two
preschoolers is a good workout!
When it was done, the women loaded up their bowls, plates, or
whatever they had brought their food in, with the rice pudding. There was
half a roasting pan when we finished eating but when we left, there
wasn't a speck left.
When we got home, Dad and I
walked to the Elders' apartment close by us to see some chameleons that
they had called us about. They thought we would want to see them and we did,
so we went chameleon hunting in the dark. I dropped this one - accidentally - when it hissed at me.
But I then I got brave and let Dad put this one on
my shoulder. They all assured me that he wouldn't move. Wrong!! When he
crawled up to my hair, I told them to get him off quick!!!
This one's giving Dad a high-five!
And here he is with the gang of Elders:
The next day I taught my first English class. Some of
the young adults had asked me to teach one so I told them I would start
after Zone Conference. I can teach people how to read but teaching
English is a whole different ball game, especially when my Portuguese is so
marginal, but you do what you can. I am teaching on Tuesdays and
Thursdays from 3:30 - 5:00pm. It was supposed to be an hour, but after
the first class they asked about doing an hour and a half. We have to
finish at 5:00 on the dot because some of the kids have class at 5:30 pm.
The school schedules are crazy here. They have morning, afternoon, and
night school times. We see little kids walking home from school at 8:00
at night.
One day, two of the Elders came over to have me help them
set up visiting teaching in their branch. I suggested that they write a
letter 'inviting' the sisters to visit teach and listing their
assignment. The reason was two-fold: written invitations mean a lot to
the people here and if it's not written down, they will forget. They might
forget anyway, but it's an extra help.:)
Saturday, we had our Seminary & Institute training
with our teachers. I decided to teach the concept of "by small and
simple things, are great things brought to pass" and told them that when
they do a small act of kindness or service, it adds up to great things.
Then I played the birthday video that y'all made and showed how one
picture by a lot of different people added up to a wonderful surprise
for me. They loved it!! Mariana asked me to show her how to make
one.....ummm, Shutterfly in Africa - nope!
Here's our only married
teacher sitting next to Dad with her baby:
I made a jello cake for them and that was a BIG hit!! One
teacher told me, "Sister Snelson, this isn't good, (pause) this is
marvelous!" They're so easy to please when it comes to food. Haha!
Here's the last teacher, Julio, that we dropped off after the training. I
told him that I wanted to take a picture so that you could see his
bright pink shirt and the bike repair shop behind him.
After the
training, I went with Sandi to another "Dias de Mulheres" activity at
the Beira 2 branch. The Elders were at the church meeting with the Beira
1 RS president about the visiting teaching and asked me to help them,
so I sat down with them while Sandi went to check out the activity.
After about 20 minutes,
the Beira 2 sisters came out. I asked if they were all leaving and they
said 'yes'. They said they were going to visit someone that had just
had a baby two weeks ago and her husband died the previous month. :(
That was a good thing, but I wondered about the women that would show
up for the activity and not find anybody there. Oh
well....that's just how they do it here. Plans change and maybe you find
out about it and maybe you don't..... Isabel was part of the group and
said that she would text me when they got back to the church, so Sandi and I
went home to wait.
Two hours later, we
went back. When we walked in, the ladies were all sitting in a circle
around the room. I threw my hands in the air and joked, 'We are here now,
so the party can start!" I know I wasn't grammatical, but they got the
gist and started laughing. I'm always trying to get a stoic Mozambiquen
to smile or laugh. It probably helps that my Portuguese is gibberish.
It makes your dad laugh but he's good about disguising it. ;)
For this get-together, they had food but not as much and
it was more of the small plate or bowl/single serving variety. You
really could just take a spoonful of some things. And they only had 3
plates because they had taken them to another branch for a district
activity so they ate on the lids or containers from the food that they had brought. No utensils either - they ate with their hands. But they
found a fork from somewhere and Sandi and I shared it along with a
plate. I had made a jello cake for this activity and it was gone in a
flash. My tea-party girls:
Amalia is in this branch and she came and sat by me
because I had told her that I had some fund-raising ideas for the YM/YW to
do. All of my ideas were things for the YW to make and I mentioned that
we needed some ideas for the YM. Amalia said that they had thought
about doing a car wash at the church. I turned to her and said that
hardly anyone had a car. (There aren't more than 2-3 cars on a Sunday.)
She answered, "Yes, this is the problem." So classic! And
understated...;) She was being serious but I wanted to crack up. That
phrase could be used to describe so many things here!!
Here I am with Amalia on the left and Isabel on the right, modeling their head-wraps:
I forgot to take a group shot of us in our capalanas. I remembered when it was just our little group left.
After we got home, Dad and I went to buy bread for
tomorrow for primary. I walked into the bakery and there was a big line
that wasn't moving. After waiting a few minutes, I asked a guy behind the
side counter what was going on. He said the people were waiting for the
bread to come out of the oven. Then he said he would go check and see how
long it had left. I thanked him and he took off. A minute later, he
came back and asked me how many I needed. I told him how many and he
took off again. When he came back grinning with two bags of hot rolls, I
started laughing and told him he was a magician. He laughed. I gave
him a 10 metacaiz tip - about 33 cents. That's probabaly what he makes
per hour. He was a happy guy! Sunday we
had 43 kids in Priamary so when it came time to pass out the bread, we
were about 10 pieces short. So, we broke them in half and passed those
out and then took what was left, broke those in half, and passed those
out. I felt like it was the Feeding of the Five Thousand! Haha!! Those
kids are hungry...
Pouring water:
The lesson was on families and I taught them the song,
"We are a Happy Family" and had some kids come up and be the "family".
It was a spur of the moment idea, so I borrowed a tie from my secretary
(fortunately he had one on, not all of the guys have a tie) and got a
bandana out of my bag and tied that on a girl. The kids knew immediately
who the mom was because they see their moms wear a head-wrap every day.I'm not sure what she did with it for the picture:
I showed them the photobook from our Christmas last
year in New Orelans and they were fascinated. The only problem was that the
secretary and other teacher walked around to the front of the book to
see it and blocked all the kids. ;) It's the funniest thing - I'm always
having to remind them to stand back when I teach because they often
stand right in front of me and the kids can't see. It's just one of
those, "This never happens at home." moments and you kinda wonder what
they're thinking. "Bless their hearts!!" Guess it shows that they
haven't had a lot of visuals, games, or object lessons in their own
lives (even though they are 16 and 17 yrs. old) and so they are as
interested in everything as the kids are. Sigh....
Funny/surreal moment: Today while the other teacher was teaching, a
little 2ish yr old boy started walking toward the door. He stopped
about two feet shy of being outside and proceeded to squat down and go
to the bathroom on the floor - through his pants. Ten months ago, I
would have done something, but now I just watched him and smiled as his
big brother picked him up and put him on his hip when Primary was over.
That's the brother on the left. The girl on the right has her baby
sister. The moms all send their babies to Primary with the older
siblings so it's a circus! ;)
"Be good and you'll be happy!"
For real... I love, love, love y'all!!!!
The child still plays with the broom while his mother uses her hands to sweep the sand in the street onto a plastic bag.
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