Thursday morning we met up with Mbuyi, the man who is in charge of visas and travel arrangements for the Church in this area.  He flew in from Kinshassa last night.  We picked him up at his hotel and went to the South African Embassy to see about getting our visas for the people who are traveling to Johannesburg to the temple on Monday.  We have been hassling with this embassy for about 6 weeks, always being told no or come back or call back or hop on one foot while rubbing your stomach!  They are impossible, but somehow, Mbuyi was able to get them to hand them over.  We need this guy around all the time!  With visas in hand, we drove to Uvira, DRC to deliver them to the 3 families anxiously waiting word on their temple plans.

     Next day we spent the entire day and part of the night with Mbuyi as he checked out hotels in Bujumbura so as to select which ones he will use for Church visitors when they come to the area.  Now we are up on hotels here, who is going to come and stay?  On the way to see one hotel, we passed 3 hippos standing out of the water, grazing.  We were on the opposite side of the road in traffic so we couldn't stop for photos.  I will get photos of the hippos one of these days!

     The same day that we were checking out hotels, Mbuyi also held a leadership meeting for the leaders in our 3 branches.  Then as we were racing around the city we had our first little fender bender. A lady was stopped going the opposite direction in an intersection.  We were passing in front of her vehicle when she lurched forward and nailed us.  We pulled over to assess the damage to both vehicles.  Funny thing--a policeman was standing at this intersection,  and he never even budged to see about the accident.  We got a dent on our passenger side back quarter panel.  Hopefully the  only one we'll get!

     This is a picture of me picking green beans for dinner.  We do have quite a nice garden, with  linga linga (sort of a local spinach), green beans, tomatoes, potatoes.    Pineapplse, mangoes, papayas,  and

bands are yummy as well.  The avocados are humungus.

     Today we went to a baptism of 5 people.  It was great to be there.  It reminded me of the day I was baptized so many years ago now.