January 24, 2012 - Kilungu Hills

Well ya home sounds good. And the snow storm looks awesome but at the same time terrifying! Seeing how I'm sweating here. Well I'm not going to email next week. But anyways love you and will see you next week!

January 18, 2012

Hey sorry didn't email last week. It wouldn't let me sign in and yesterday the power was out. So ya I get to email you today. So ya al-sha-bob, is what the terrorist group is called (that you have been reading about). But ya I haven't heard much about it where I'm at. It's nice to be in the bush sometimes. But ya I'm excited to get home now. The work is getting close to finished for me. I am kinda trunky now, but its okay I only have 14 days left. So ya I just started emailing and its time to leave so this one will be short.

Next week we will be in Nairobi for the zone conference/mission tour. It should be good and will make the time go by really fast. Anyways though I gotta run for this week. I should email you next week but you never know. But hope you have a good week.

January 17, 2012

-We have not received email the past two weeks from Matthew. Last week he was unable to log into his email account and this week we didn't hear anything. The internet service is very unreliable and is often not working. We have been given a copy of Matthew's companion, Elder Patten's email from last week, which we will share parts of it below. We thought this would let everyone know about Matthew and Elder Patten's recent experiences.

"Holy cow the mangoes here are ready!! There are mango trees everywhere in Kilungu and most of them have ripe mangoes now. On Sunday after church we were hungry and a bunch of the ward kids wanted to take us to some trees to go get some mangoes. As it turns out, mango trees are the BEST climbing trees and they are big! So we climbed up the trees 20 or 30 feet and ate mangoes out of them. These kids here are monkeys, they swing from branches and can get so high up in the trees. I have to say that was probably the coolest thing ever, sitting so high up in trees while eating mangoes. I can't even count how many we ate that day, probably 20 or 30. And we came back to our house with a bag of probably 40 or 50 mangoes that is almost finished already. They are so good!!! Kilungu rocks!

So besides boatloads of mangoes it was a bit of a slow week. The beans are also ready to harvest right now, and so everyone is out in their shambas harvesting their beans. We had a hard time seeing anyone because almost everybody has constantly been in their shambas this last week. I think we averaged about 1 appointment a day that actually went through. Every other appointment we'd get their and a kid would just tell us "He/she is at the shamba". It sounds like most people are finishing up with their beans, so this week we should have a much busier week. In fact we completely planned out our week at church on Sunday and we are going to be super busy if people aren't in their shambas! The hard thing about planning in Kilungu is that there isn't really time here if that makes sense. Most people don't have clocks or even care about time. So you can't really say "we'll come at 2 o clock", that doesn't really mean much to people. Instead there is "morning" , "afternoon", "late afternoon" and "evening". That's how we plan, we say 'We'll come in the late afternoon" haha. It's kind of funny. It also means that church never starts on time.

A fun thing that happened this week though is on Friday, the Halls wanted to go visit some of the members in Ilima, so we went with them and had Francis, a branch missionary, show us around. It was fun going around with the Halls, and we also got to find out where more of the members stay in Ilima. One of the people we saw was President Simons (branch president of Ilima branch) mother. She only spoke Kikamba, so Francis translated for us and the Halls. Afterwards she gave us some milk straight out of the cow to drink. It smelled and tasted a bit funny, so sister Hall secretly dumped her cup in to mine when I finished. She said she wanted to pay me back so she insisted on bringing me a tray of eggs from Nairobi. Which I'm pretty excited about because it's hard to find eggs here and when you do they are expensive and they sometimes have a baby chicken fetus inside. It's pretty gross.

But something not gross, we made Mexican food this week! We made refried beans, tortillas, and mexican rice! Oh man it was good! We were only missing cheese... but that would be pretty darn hard to get here.. Last p-day we built a boy scout style fire right outside our house and cooked tin-foil dinners using the tin foil we bought in Nairobi. They might just be one of the best things I've made on my mission yet. They were so good. It's also super cool that we can just have a fire 10 feet away form our front door.

Yesterday was a lot like the past week.. we had 2 appointments but both of them were not home when we got there... The second one, Duncan, showed us a faster way to get to his house last time we were there. We tried to find it yesterday using the faster way, but it ended up taking way longer because we couldn't find the right trails. We found ourselves wandering through the sugar cane fields and banana trees when I saw a stump that looked familiar so we turned there and I recognized the path. It was the path that takes us to Daniel and Prisca's house, and we know how to get to Duncan's from their house. However, we ran in to Duncan's wife on the way and she said that Duncan was not home... so we decided to give a surprise visit to Daniel and Prisca. Prisca was teaching since schools just started back up again, but we were able to chat with Daniel for a bit. He gave us some Kitau, which is mashed cassava (which I believe is called arrow root in English, but I could be wrong) and it was hard to eat because I wasn't hungry, but it was good anyways. Then after that we made our usual piki piki ride up to Kalongo where there are now 4 missionaries living.

President Onesmus is the Branch President at Kyambeke, and President Simon is Ilima. Thomas is our branch mission leader at Kyambeke. We usually do our Baptisms with Rako and Raymond, because they don't have a font at Mitini, so they have to come down to Kyambeke. So it's convenient if we do them at the same time.

We have 2 districts in the Kilungu Zone. Ours, the Kilungu district, and the Kilili district, which is not too far from Kilungu. I've heard it's only a 100 bob piki piki ride from Mwaani so it can't be too far. District leaders are just over a district, and the zone leader is in charge of the whole zone, which here includes the Kilungu district and Kilili district. District leaders are in charge of DDM, whereas zone leaders give trainings at zone conference, which is coming up at the end of January." Anyways, glad to hear from you. We've been at the cyber for almost 3 hours now and it just barely started working so I had better get this sent off before the internet decides to turn off. So hopefully I can email everyone back, but the internet is being sketchy today.

-Jared Patten"

January 3, 2012

So ya I got transfer news, and I am staying! And Elder Patten is killing me. I'm super excited to die here. Fetch I love these people and I still have my two kids here. So I was pretty excited. They made Kilungu a zone and added two more missionaries and we also have a Kilili in our zone as well. They are also bringing my old comp Elder Phiri here to be with Raymond. I'm excited to have him around for my last transfer. Love that guy and Elder Frost as well. I came with him so he will be dying with me. So its looking like its going to be a good last transfer. But ya all that is left if just waiting for home. But no worries I'm still busy here.

We had three baptisms this past Saturday and they all were very special. They all gave their testimony and it was so neat to see them and hear them. They all have powerful testimonies. Its was an awesome experience you can't forget. We have another baptism this week but I think we are going to push it to next week. But ya anyways it is still going good here. We are finding people to teach to replace those who are baptized. Just kinda nice. Ha we rely on referrals from members as there is no tracting or contacting here. Which is nice cause I don't really like those things too much.

And are we still sure I'm coming home on the 2nd? Cause the AP's texted me last week and told me I'm now going home with the Nevins and they told me they leave the first. They don't pass through Dallas cause they said they are going on a flight from London to Arizona. Unless they changed their flight plans. Which I don't think they did. So just wondering for me myself, I'm kinda confused. So ya might want to figure that out.

Ya anyways to answer your question on music I would love to have people to sing for me at my homecoming. Anyone who wants can sing, I'll leave it up to you guys. By the ways I love come thou fount of every blessing. Just throwing that out there. By the ways I think Munatsi's release date is the 9th of Feb and also by the ways he got a new comp. He called and wished me a happy birthday which was cool. I should say him and Smedley both called to wish me a happy birthday. But ya anyways pretty awesome. So its cool you got to go to both Max's and Andrews welcome talks. I guess you are going to have to see what I say when I come home. Do we know what my topic is? Doesn't matter I find that when I get up and start talking I can talk for a while.

Anyways talk to you next week.


Love, Matt