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.

Pictures of the Ubuntu hotel and restaurant:

Happy 44th to us!

After the English class, we started towards the DHL store to pick up a church shipment, but Gary detoured and bought me some flowers for our anniversary .

What a sweetheart!  Next we tried to pick up the shipment, but it wasn't there (even though we had already paid the customs on it).  To celebrate our day, we went to dinner at a beautiful place that overlooks the lake.  The grounds are lush green and they have 2 crowned cranes that wander around, even visiting us in the restaurant.

     The other day I sat down on the sofa and heard a noise to my left.  I looked down and there on the sofa by my side, was a 10-12 inch gecko!  We love the little guys because they are our bug patrol, but I didn't really want him in my lap, so I surrendered the couch to him and I moved to a chair.  

     Yesterday, the 7th, was our anniversary.  We started the day with breakfast with the humanitarian group who had a visitor in town.  Then we had to hurry up to branch 2.  They had been burglarized for the second night in a row.  All of the chairs were taken, the sound system in the chapel was gone, and a large metal grate in front of the front door was gone.  The thieves keep targeting this same poor branch, so we have decided to put 2 young men in the church over night to act as a deterrent.  We ran to a market and purchased a mattress for the young men.  We are going to build a small structure to house permanent guards in as soon as possible.  After handling this situation, we made our daily run to the South African Embassy to attempt to get the visas for a group heading to the Johannesburg temple.  Once again we had no luck.  We are running out of time, as they are due to fly out on Monday.  We bought supplies for the missionary apartments and then went to teach the elders an English class.  This is always fun.  At the end of the class we worked on a hymn they are going to sing on Sunday for 2 of the branches.  

Here is Gary leading the elders and loving it!

     Driving through town you often pass Red Cross and UN land cruisers.  Every Sunday at Church, our vehicle (Toyota 4 wheel drive truck) is the only car in the parking lot.  No one owns a car.  In branch one, a "wealthier" branch, there may be 4 cars plus the missionary couple's truck in the parking lot.  An interesting note.  Remember when I said there are no traffic signals in the city?  I was talking to one of the members about that, and he informed me that Bujumbura once put in a couple of traffic lights to see how they would work, but unfortunately, they were stolen.  (?!)

     As you drive along the streets you notice there are basically 2 ways to mow the grass alongside the road----some men using scythes or a herd of goats.  Everything , including digging deep gutters, is done by hand, by hard physical labor by people with shovels and picks.

     We met a 60 year old member of the Church today who told us a bit about his family history.  His grandfather was captured in Tanzania by an Arab slaver and taken in chains across country to be sold.  He and his wife were able to escape in the Congo before being sold and ended up settling in Burundi.  That is not that long ago, which blows my mind.

     Driving down the road by the lake today we noticed a small group of people looking out at the lake.  I looked out and there near the shore was a hippo!  Once again I notice I'm not living in Utah!

More photos of our new digs:

   

The Cahoon's have left for home, sadly.  Now we are living in the house where they used to live.  It, too, was filthy and full of stacks of random papers.  We are in the process of deciding which of those papers are truly vital and which can be tossed in the round filing receptacle.  While cleaning our bathroom for the first time here, imagine my surprise while cleaning the sink to suddenly step in a hole and go tumbling down.  Turns out, the hole is actually a strangely placed shower stall in the floor by the sink.  Happily the only casualty of my fall was a ripped nail, as I tried to catch myself.

This house has quite a nice yard,  complete with an avocado tree, among others.  We picked some the other day and are enjoying fresh avocados.  The house also has a breakfast room that I especially enjoy.  It is screened in and looks out at the yard.  We have been battling daddy long-leg webs and an army of little kitchen ants.  It's hard to keep up with the daddy long-leg's spider webs, and the little ants are so annoying.  The other day while eating lunch, I looked down at my plate and there was a group of them running around my plate trying to share my sandwich.  I quickly washed them down the sink and returned to eating my lunch.

     Living here is quite interesting, to say the least.  No phone books, no mail service, no T.V., no garbage disposal, no dryer, no air conditioning, no BACON.  For the past week we have not had water till 10: at night and the power is constantly going down.  Sometimes it returns quite quickly, sometimes it is down for hours.

     The other day, one of the branches (wards) ran out of electricity.  To get the power back on, you go to the power store and stand in line to buy however much power you would like.  (It's a pre-pay system. )  Gary and I went to the power store to purchase power for the branch, but it turned out there was a problem with the account number.  We went to another office to try to resolve the problem and while we were there at the power company, the power went out and they were unable to help us fix our problem.  The irony of it all.