Staying in Nsambya, a baby named Teancum, witch doctor incident

Happy Birthday to me! No big deal I guess. It is kind of hard to "celebrate" when you're busy being a missionary.

The week went by fast. Actually these past few weeks have gone by fast. I think that's a good sign. I've noticed that when things are going good, time just seems to fly. I'm used to the area, I have a good companion, and we have a lot of people to teach.

I received the transfers Saturday night, and found out that I'm not going anywhere. I'll be staying right here in Nsambya with Elder Soko. Elder Roberts is going though. He'll be going to Kajansii, and we'll be receiving Elder Shenjere in our house. He just came back from Ethiopia. So we'll be hearing all about that.

We've been teaching Keny Armstrong's wife, Christine Lamuno. She would have been baptized the same day as him, but she can't really speak English. So we've been going very slow through the lessons, trying to help her learn and speak English. Her progress is something miraculous. It is funny listening to her try and speak English though. She has a bit of a gap in her teeth, so in general she already has a speech impediment. It's hard not to laugh sometimes. But she's learned to laugh at herself.

Part of me feels that I'm staying here in Nsambya to finish what I've started. We're very close to baptizing many of Keny Armtstrong's family members. That is probably one of the only reasons I’m really happy to stay. Other than that, I like change. But it'll be very nice to see all those people be baptized. Five of them on April 13th. Keny now has the priesthood, so he'll be the one to baptize them all. It'll be a great day, but we still have to stay focused on preparing them for that day.

One of our investigators recently just had her baby Saturday night. We were with her earlier this week and we asked her what she was going to name it. She, like many other Ugandan mothers, hadn’t yet thought of a name. So she asked me to name it. The name came into my mind, Teancum. I told her the story about Teancum, showed her how to spell it, and now she has a 4.5 kg baby boy named Teancum. There were some complications while she was trying to give birth, but everything seems to be fine now. We went to visit her Sunday after church at Nsambya Hospital.

I've noticed that I usually find myself teaching a bit of basic math skills when the tithing lesson comes up. Most people can't really figure out 10%. It's sad, but easy enough to learn in about five minutes.

On Sunday an SUV pulled up right when church ended. Four guys got out all wearing gum boots indicating that they were some type of construction workers. They approached us and told us a very interesting story. One of them had found a black plastic bag earlier that week at a work site which contained about 950,000 shillings. He took it home. When he went to get some money from it, he found that all the money had turned into pieces of paper. The next day the right side of his body became paralyzed, from his shoulder down to his toe. He felt that it was a curse. I've heard several stories like this. The average African strongly believes that witch doctor stuff is nothing to mess with. They refer to it as "Ju-Ju." Well, we sent him up to the branch president, and I haven’t heard anything further. I'll let you if know of anything miraculous happened.

I was talking to Elder Huskinson (a senior couple missionary) about your trip here and what hotels were good. He named a few. We got to talking about the whole trip and apparently he's planning to do the same thing in May. They're going to Bwindi. I don't know if their trip is as final as ours, but it might be good to get in contact with him. He could probably get some details that you and I couldn't. His e-mail is: rshinka@mac.com

If you could, maybe you can e-mail the whole planned itinerary so I can get an idea of which hotels to book and when. There's some good hotels in Jinja that we might want to go to. There's even a good trail we can hike and hire a bird watching guide who's a member of the church there.

Have a great week. See you soon. Later.

Elder Zac Wright