Ebola comments, zoo, artwork, the "village", Sudanese family, Christmas party

I was thinking about my comments after I left the internet cafe last week about the whole Ebola situation. The truth is I'm really not scared. The chances of any missionaries getting Ebola are incredibly slim. But then I got a splitting headache. Tuesday I woke up and had three loose stools by the time I left the house at 10:00 a.m. And then I started getting body aches and pains. So obviously I just kept thinking, "Great, I'm going to die of Ebola just after I announced that I'm never going to die from Ebola... I'm an idiot." But all that stuff went away and I figure most of the symptoms came from playing soccer early Monday morning while not drinking enough water. I thought it was interesting when I received a text message early last week saying that President needed the e-mail addresses of everyone's parents. We even had permission to stop what we were doing and go e-mail them to him. And then the message said to be sure not to e-mail our parents about Ebola. Well, apparently I was not supposed to tell you about Ebola. As if you wouldn't find out or something. I don't understand completely why. Maybe they thought we would blow things out of proportion and they didn't want to have to deal with a bunch of hysterically worried parents. Either way, it was about two days too late. If you think it's worth my time, I'd actually like to see what exactly President Christensen had to say about it.

President Christensen called me just a few days ago. He was on his way to Gulu to check out the situation up there and he wanted to talk to me about our zone going to the zoo. Ever since I came to Nsambya zone, everyone has been wanting to go to the zoo. They even already had it planned, but it was postponed because of CHOGM. He told me he was fine with us taking the Elders to the zoo but his only concern is that he had a picture on his desk in his office with an Elder wearing a red shirt sitting on a rhino. He said he wasn't quite sure who that could be, but it worried him. He obviously knew it was me, and it seemed he was able to approach the situation with a sense of humor while driving his point across. So today we went to the zoo, and no one rode the rhino. It was still a temptation though.

There was an Elder that just left back home named Elder Goodman. He had gotten some artwork done for him that involved banana leaves. It was an incredible remake of the picture of Christ rising from his tomb. Every piece of leaf was cut out about a centimeter by half an inch. And when all glued together, the shading was pretty awesome. I think the picture was about 3-4 feet tall and maybe 2-3 feet wide. It's in my mind that I need something like that. Of all the things I could buy on my mission, I think something like that could actually look good hanging on my wall for the rest of my life. I'm thinking about having him do "Jesus visits the Americas." The full landscape version. Elder Goodman spent 350,000 and I'm thinking my order is probably going to be more, although I haven't spoken to the guy yet. The point I'm getting to is I'm probably going to need more money. My solution is don't send me anymore packages, and maybe for my birthday you can slide a few buck into my account. What do you think? And I'll probably even let you hang it in your house until I get my own. Pretty good deal...

Things seem to be going smoothly here. At our zone conference a few weeks ago I had to report that we only had one baptism in the zone last transfer, even though I wasn't here when it happened. But so far we've already had five this transfer. I like to think I've made a difference, even if it really wasn't me that did anything. Elder Kruger let me know that two of the people we were teaching together in Jinja were baptized yesterday. One of them was that Muslim named Ramadan. I wish I was there for that.

Our baptismal date didn't come to church last Sunday. He went to the "village" to build a house for someone. The "village" really kills missionary work here. Everyone has a "village" - a place where the roots of their family are from. So all of the holidays are usually spent in the "village". It's not like in the states when an investigator moves, you just call up the missionaries living in that area. If the person moves outside of central Uganda, then they're out of luck. But we were very surprised when we saw him at church yesterday. We thought he wouldn't be back for at least two or three months. He explained that he's going to be coming back every Sunday just to go to church. That's pretty powerful. We explained to him the whole baptismal interview that has to take place and now we have to arrange a new baptismal date for him. That's a big sacrifice if he's really going to be coming back every Sunday.

A few Sundays ago Elder Roberts and his companion Elder Sammy had some investigators show up in a car. I was pretty impressed. If someone has a car in Uganda, they're pretty rich. And if they're rich, it's obviously hard to humble them to listen and actually commit them to come to a new church that they've never been to before. One of their kids even had braces! The first person in Uganda I've seen with braces. Kind of funny...

Earlier this week we knocked on one of the biggest gates I've ever seen here. It was deep in Kansanga on "tank hill." A lot of rich people. We even met some other Americans living there. But they were also "missionaries". Then we came to this gate, and it was big. We knocked it, and no one really came to open it. We pushed it open and saw about a dozen guys around a round table in their yard, all just finishing eating. They invited us in and we sat down with them. Their house was probably three times the size of yours. We found out that they were a Sudanese family. Actually it was very obvious. If you think the people of Uganda are black, I'll have to send some pictures of the Sudanese. Anyways, it was cool. They were a big extended family and were very welcoming to listen to our message of the restoration. It worked out just nice that they were all Christians, but were separated by denominations. We haven't had a chance to follow up yet, but I think they liked us and the message. The whole time while we were teaching I saw the one teenage guy holding a deck of cards like it was his favorite possession. So of course at the end I had to show them a quick card trick. And I'm pretty sure I won at least one heart.

We had our district Christmas party on Saturday. The children in our investigator family went, but the parents couldn't. It was nice. Everyone enjoyed themselves. The primary put on a nice skit of the nativity. The best part is when they reenacted Joseph and Mary getting their "marriage certificate". That's a bit of a problem here. People have traditional marriages, but don't have a licenses from the government. Apparently the law of chastity says you need one. So I thought it was clever that they added that into the skit.

Still waiting for some packages. Elder Roberts has been getting hooked up. He has all this candy and stuff sitting around, but he's just eating it slowly. I don't know why... I think he's just tempting me to eat it for him.

I love you. Have a great week.

ZAC