Another week has passed, we are now at the one month mark on our mission. Woohoo! It has gone by so fast it's scary. We had an opportunity to attend a graduation ceremony for the young people who had completed the water sanitation training. Now that they had clean water from their new bore hole (translate water well) which the LDS church had financed, the prefects and class head man were trained so that they could train the other children in the school. The school of 1250 children is well-run, the children seem happy and disciplined, and they were pleased to present a program celebrating the turnover of the well to the school. The choir sang the Zimbabwe national anthem. The pre-school class sang a bouncy song about the uses for clean water, complete with hand actions, first in Shona and then in English. The dance class (which has won national trophies) did a traditional dance of successful harvest, in celebration of the "harvest" of clean water. They were all in costume, and were incredible to watch, and they were having a good time showing off their skills. A PE class demonstrated exercise and tumbling, and of course there were speeches, most of which were quite short by our standards. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera. The children are beautiful, and love to smile and wave to us.

The pictures are from the Domboshawe Branch. Sister Reynolds got to help with the Primary both times we visited there before our assignment to Dombotombo.

The tree silhouette is in the parking lot of the Harare Mission Office, and I felt like this was our new place to call home, and the landmark I will always remember.

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We had a marvelous time at the Missionary Training Center, or MTC. The group we were with was lots of fun. We actually spent the whole 2 weeks with most of them, since one couple included a doctor, and one a nurse. We did our week of medical training together as well as the week at the MTC. Well, here we are in Zimbabwe! We will add a couple of pictures, but we haven't really gotten a chance to take many yet. We are sitting here in the dark with the computer running on batteries, and 2 candles burning. The power is out. This is not unusual here, but the first time since we got here on Wednesday that it has gone out on us. Our bigger problem is water. Some days the city water fills our tank, and some days it doesn't. We quickly learned to get up and run the hose from the bore hole(read well)and fill the water ourselves! Our apartment is very nice. We have 2 bedrooms, 1+3/4 baths, a large living room and a tiny kitchen! The bedroom has a queen bed and 4! reach in closets with drawers. We have lots of storage space there, but none in the baths. The kitchen has enough space for our few things. The mission stocked the kitchen with new small appliances and kitchen gadgets. It's quite nice. Elder Reynolds has ventured to drive to and from work for a couple of days now, and is getting a little more accustomed to driving on the right side. We ventured to the shop down the street and got a few groceries. It is a fruit and veg mart and has really nice produce. We took a trip into town with one of the locals driving and wandered through various shops. We really felt like we were in a foreign country. Sights, sounds, smells, and shops. Lots of people and cars. You wonder how they keep from being hit, since no one has the right of way. I don't think we will be driving there by ourselves. We have already seen giraffes in the grassland between the airport and the mission office. Exciting! We will go out of town a little farther tomorrow to go to church. We will go with the Smilanick's another missionary couple. We will be working with them doing office work, between my nursing and Elder Reynolds' checking out apartments and cars, or fleets and flats as they say!

We are coming down to the final countdown--we depart for Salt Lake City and on to Provo to the Missionary Training Center. We will visit family in SLC for a couple of weeks and finish shopping for the last of our clothing. Do you know how difficult it is to find short sleeve white shirts in Everett in the middle of winter? Ann has most of her stuff, but I still need a couple of suits. Lots of fun to finish this all up before 4/22/13. We will be in the MTC for only 5 days. The training has been foreshortened because of the tremendous increase in the number of missionaries with the new lower eligibility age. Then we move to the Marriott in SLC for a week of medical training before finally flying out to Harare Zimbabwe on 5/3/13. When we finally catch up with ourselves and our sleep (the flight takes over 30 hours) I will post a few pictures so you can visualize where we will be for the next 23 months. Needless to say, we are just a little nervous and scared, but my missionary sons all tell me, "Wait until you get off the airplane." Thanks, guys!

Zimbabwe Harare Mission

So now we begin a new chapter, not just our travels, but our mission blog. We will be serving for two years starting in April, and I will try to add a monthly update, since we expect to be very busy. And yes, I will be taking pictures of the wildlife and the children.

On the road again, but this time in our motor home. Ann wanted something with a bathroom and shower, so we traded in the pop-up camper and bought a 31' Jayco. We are now soaking up the rain in Ocean Shores on our first outing with this unit. She wanted to watch the storm come in, and boy did it come in, thunder, hail, pouring rain, gusty winds, and waves high enough that we couldn't see the ocean out beyond the breakers. I'd like to post some pictures, but this connection is realllly slooowwww. Ken

We left Nauvoo on Thursday and really covered ground.  We got all the way across Iowa and into Nebraska.  We did see a cougar in a wooded ravine right alongside the road, but were moving too fast to get a picture. 

We ran into a "severe thunderstorm" just west of Omaha, continuous lightning, nickle-sized hail, traffic on the freeway down to 20mph with flashers on for quite a ways.  I guess it had spawned a couple of tornadoes in Colorado, just south of us.  The wind was blowing 50-60mph across the freeway, sheets of rain.  We decided to spend the night in a motel in York, NE.  I'm not sure either of us wanted to be out in that stuff in a camper. 

We scooted out of town and drove the rest of the way across Nebraska, leaving the freeway at Ogallala and following the Mormon Trail up the North Platte to Torrington, WY, where the thunderstorms were threatening again, so are holed up in Grandma's Inn for the night. We had hoped to get west of the storms, but still have a way to go. Fortunately, both motels cost us less than we usually pay for a single night, and we got nice showers out of the deal.   

We will take some time to sort through pictures, and I'll post the ones that apply to this portion of the blog when we get back into coverage.  So far, so fun, so good! Casper and Landers tomorrow, I hope.