Red Dirt

It's not that hot here in Uganda.
It's weird though because the sun
passes right over head, every single day.
The sun rises at the same time, and sets
at the same time. It's almost the
same temperature every day and every
night as well, with the occasional cloud
coverage or rain during the day which
makes it much, much more comfortable.


The one thing that does suck here is
that red dirt. Bugembe is the
worst area in the mission too with it.
It's nice when it rains a little every once
in a while because it keeps the dust down.
But, it sucks when it rains a ton, like
last night! It sounded like a
hurricane outside for a few hours and
because the house isn't sealed
that well, our kitchen doors kept slamming
shut the whole time!

The day before though we played soccer again
with the Elder's, some investigators, and
random guys. I was THE only mazoongoo (white
person) there looking like a snowman in Africa.
I played goalie most of the time though
because I kind of stink at soccer. I got
super burned by the sun though. I took a
picture so you can see how bad I got it that
day. I was going to put sunscreen on my nose
before but I forgot so that's where I got it
worst because it was already a
little sunburned.

During the week we pretty much just taught
lessons like usual. Last Tuesday though we
had the Jinja Zone Conference which President
and Sister Jackson came to and it was way
spiritual. I got to see the other about 26
missionaries that are here in the Jinja zone.
There are some cool guys. I did realize
though  that for some reason this is an
old guy mission.
That's not even a joke. Most of the African
Elder's are like 24 and older.  
Zone Conference was good and we learned a
lot about recognizing the spirit and such.
It took up the whole day though since
we still have to be in by 7 p.m.

We finally got J C interviewed Saturday too!
I baptized him yesterday in Empumede
(because our "chapel" was having a water
problem). It was so awesome.I hope J felt the
spirit as much as I did. It was also good
because we had some of our investigators
there to see the baptism and they all really
enjoyed it. Another guy we were teaching named
Immanuel was even there and after told me he
wanted me to baptize him.
We like to try and do it like Clay's mission
where you have a branch member baptize them but
we give them the choice to choose too.

We also had a new investigator come to church
this week, even though we didn't really plan
on this particular guy coming. We were walking
down by all the shops/mud homes and I was
just greeting people and this guy came up to
us showing us some police report and medical
thing telling us how he got mugged and his
shoes were stolen. I was like I
have no idea what this guy wants us to do?
He was also pretty drunk so I wasn't quite
sure about him. We just told him to go to
church Sunday and described where it was
like we always do, expecting him not to
show like everyone else does. He was there
though, drunk, still pulling these papers
out every time someone talked to him. It was
actually a little funny. He even introduced
himself and had a 5 minute introduction
when everyone else were just saying their
names... He even somehow made his way to
the baptism! It was good though because
the lesson taught in one of the
classes was about the word of wisdom so
maybe he'll clean up. I don't
think he got it though... But then again
I also didn't think he got
when and where our church was going to
be but I was wrong about that too!

This morning before we came to Jinja we
just cleaned our house. Elder and Sister S
came by the other day and saw our home
and said we had to clean it so we wiped down
walls, swept, mopped, and just cleaned the
entire house today and last night. It looks a
lot better. I feel like it's almost a waste
cleaning though because we're supposed
to be moving to a new house. Elder W and I
found a place about a 100 meters up from our
place that is way nice.
It's like an American home. It's walled in
which is required, has a great view from the
mountain of all of Bugembe and out to the
lake. It's got nice flooring, built in closets,
and everything looks recently redone. The
only problem is the water tank is smaller
and it's higher up the hill so we might have
water problems. But, nonetheless I hope we
move in there because it's so much nicer
and is right next to a road that
doesn't have much traffic at all unlike
the road we live on now. That
will cut down on all the dust we have
to sweep and mop up.

I hope you guys know I love you so much.
Make sure people email me!

Elder Welch