"Dia de Mulheres" - Day of the Women‏

      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!!!!