Memorial 2010

Just a quick note about our memorial here in Mwanza Magharibi. For our 42 pubs, we had 100! It was a pretty nice location with room for at least 20-30 more for next year.
The local brothers knew not to expect many to arrive on time, so we printed 6 PM on our invitations, but didn't actually start till 6:40! And that was goo, since only about 20 there at 6:00. But it was a nice turnout and a good talk.

Here a few pics:

 Our auditorium

Our Speaker, Br. Method and our table

 July's student Scola

 Some of our kids

HOpe you all had a good memorial.

Love, Scott-n-July

Lake Flies!

Hi again,
I can't believe that I sent that last update without the pics of the Lake Flies! It's like something out of the 10 plagues. Kyle and Wendy had told us about them when we arrived, but we had no idea what they were really like.
The first time July and I saw them was a few weeks ago. We were having lunch and looking out the window at the lake, when July saw what she thought was smoke. But it was just hovering above the water ... strange. Then a few minutes later the 'smoke' was at the house... but it wasn't smoke! It was the Lake Flies! We ran to close the windows up- and downstairs. They were everywhere. There were tens of thousands of them. Once the bulk of them passed, thousands of them stayed behind and landed on the walls. The 2 pics below show some of them.

 They are the size of mosquitos,
but thankfully they don't bite.

They told us that that was just a small swarm, and now we understand why they said that. Last week out on the horizon we again saw what looked like smoke. But it was the Lake Flies!

The following pics show the swarms as they got closer.

Crazy huh?! Fortunately they were blown to the east and the bulk of them missed us. But there must be millions of them in that cloud! 

So that's all, just wanted share another interesting aspect of our assignment here in Mwanza, TZ.

Scott-n-July

Critter update and more...

Habari zenu?

We are trying to do more frequent updates of our blog. Recently we have collected some pics of the curious little bugs, lizards and other critters. 

First off is this cool lil' bug that Kyle saw on our outside stairs. Actually he wasn't little, he was about 3" long! Kind of a cross between a beetle, a grasshopper and a crab. No idea what he is though, except cool looking.

Next are some of the cool and colorful lizards we have here. The first four lizards are about 8-12" long! And they are everywhere. I'll have to get a good video of them, 'cause the look so funny when they run. It's like they are on their tippy-toes.

This one is almost a foot and a half long. He's like a big skink. (What do you think Jeremy?) He lives in this crevass between two boulders near our house.

This lil' guy is a Rock Hyrax . There are quite a few around, but this is the only one we have seen in a tree.

This was a chameleon that I picked up as I was walking home one day. There were three chameleons all together and I have never seen more than one at any one time. They were next to as little stream. Two were in the water and the other was on the edge. It seems that one had fallen out of the tree and his buddies came down to help him. One of them in the water got out and walk away to climb a tree. The other stayed there looking at the other for about 10 minutes then he to walked away. The other must have been injured, as he died a little while later. A rasta kid came up to see what the 'mzungu' was doing staring into the trees. He, like many, are somewhat afraid of chameleons, thinking that they bite and/or are poisonous. But when he saw me holding, he got brave and held him for a few minutes.

This is a Kite. Not sure which variety. Tony Porter said there are two of them around here. But most evenings there are 100 or so. They ride the thermals and go in circles higher and higher. Not sure why, guess it's just what they do. ;-)

And the final critter is this cute lil' hedgehog. Our dog was after him, but his spikes detered him. July saved him from abuse and put him outside our gate in the bushes.

Now for a few pics in the ministry. 

The first is July on her study with Sofia. She works downtown all day, so we decided to meet her at the end of the day and study in our car before she heads home.

This is a pic of the Mwanza Kusini Kingdom Hall. Originally it was just half the size, but not too long ago they expanded it to double the size. Standing in front is George Quaweay.

Here he's setting up a return visit
with a carpenter at his shop. 

(notice the little kid playing peek-a-boo with the box)

And finally two young girls reading the memorial invitaion. 

(try doing that with a 5 gallon
bucket of water on your head!)

Hope you enjoyed the pics! 

Siku njema! (Have a good day!)

Scott-n-July

Return to Tanzania

For those who haven’t heard, we finally made it back to Tanzania. We got the news at the end of December. and within 2 weeks we were in TZ for the Zone visit. And as soon as we arrived at the branch there was a letter waiting for us with a change of assignments… We were to leave Arusha and move to Mwanza! So then after about a week in Dar, we headed to Arusha to pack our things. It was a really busy 2 weeks as the Arusha missionaries were moving into their brand new, society-built home. The one we had been looking forward to for over a year. Although we were a bit bummed to not be able to live in the new home, wait until you see our new house. ;-)

It was very bitter sweet to be back in our congregation. They were very happy that we had made it back, but saddened when we told them that we would only be there for 2 weeks. We enjoyed a few meetings with them and then they threw us a very nice going away party and the next day we were off to Mwanza.

We had planned to make the journey in one long 12 hour day. And we could have if it had not been for a slight wrong turn that we took. We had looked at the map and felt that if we just follow the nice road we’d be OK. Well, we were having such a good time driving (on decent dirt roads at about 30-40 mph) and taking the scenery that we didn’t pay close attention to the signs (which are few and far between). By the time we realized that we were not where we were supposed to be, got ourselves turned around and back on track, we had lost almost 6 hours! And it turned at that the road we wanted was not as nice as we were led to believe. For nearly 3 hours we couldn’t drive much over 10-15 mph! Not to mention that it started to rain…hard. Let me just say that our little Rav 4 went places it should never have gone. But we never got stuck, even though much of the road was ¾ under water! One spot the water came over the hood and came in on my feet! We thought we’d stall out in the middle for sure, but we made it through and kept limping along until we made to Singida (a town about halfway to where we wanted to be). The next day we drove for about 6 hours and made it finally to Mwanza. After 600 miles of driving, we were at our new home.

We love our new assignment! The missionaries are great. The home is beautiful. The scenery is breathtaking. And the brothers and sisters in the congs are very welcoming. While we were awaiting a congregation assignment, we visited the different congs of the other missionaries for a week or so. But we now have our assignment, it is Mwanza Magharibi! There were 39 pubs, 5 Pioneers with 1 Elder and 2 MS and now us. It has only been a cong for about 1 year and we have a pretty big territory, which we are still trying to get aquainted with.

Now some pictures…

This is a short clip of our rough drive to Singida

Our new home...

  

 Here is the Mwanza Missionary family, (from the right to left)

Thompsons (who just moved to Arusha), 

Queweays, Lippincotts, Us, Stackhouses

 

 There are huge boulders like this all over the region, 

this one is in our front yard!

  

Our watch dog Jesse

  

    Our Kingdom Hall

  

The first Chameleon I saw here

(There are also huge 8-12" lizards all over the place, 

no good pics yet, they are too fast!)

 

 Sunset from the veranda 

 

  

 And finally the panorama from the veranda