2-28-2017 Pictures

When I came out of the water...I took a deep breathe and it was Cold!

Well this week was awesome I had my first baptism. One picture only, I will explain later. Transfer news I'm not moving but I am getting a new companion. A New Kenyan Companion transferring from Kyulu, and he has already served in Langas.  Elder L. is headed for Kyulu, he was great and he will be missed by everyone, especially me.

Okay so lets see I know you guys like stories, so here goes.

1) Mr Brown can read the bible, can you?

So we did branch street-boarding on Friday. Elder L our branch mission leader and myself were at the table answering questions.  So this lady walks up to me and almost yelling already says, "Do you have a prophet today?  I am getting excited like oh boy do we! I have a book for you, yes I do!  Then she asks if we read the bible? I say "yeah we believe the bible to be the word of god".  She then asks "If I can understand the Bible?" ( Now I am not great at it, but yes I feel like I can understand it. I know it pretty well) so I said yes.  She did not like that one bit! She is now screaming at the top of her lungs "YOU DON'T KNOW THE BIBLE! YOU CAN'T READ IT! IT"S A MYSTERY BOOK!" She proceeds to tell me," there is one man alive who can, and that is some dude who says he's a prophet". The prophet,not Monson I checked. So I ask "why?" She says cause "he has the power of god in him". I am intrigued so I ask "what if... I... had the power of god?"  She stares at me for like thirty seconds then says "PROVE IT!" I am like "OKAY!" and pull out a line of authority chart, and a Book of Mormon. She yelled at me for a while generally calling me a "liar", and then ran away it was fun! Turns out we can't read the bible guys Sorry.

2) How much laundry can an Elder launder if an Elder could launder laundry?

So it has been raining a ton which is super awesome because when it rains in kenya, it rains! We are talking Noah type rains its the best! However it is not the best when you need your laundry to dry.  So I did my laundry on Monday, then it rained, a bunch of mud splashed all over my white shirts. So I do my laundry again, and they get mostly dry by Tuesday night.  Well it rains again, same story Wednesday, and Thursday. By Friday I had done my laundry by hand three times and ended up just washing one shirt at night that I would wear the next day.  It was a little frustrating but it was still fun, my knuckles are different colors than my hands though its nice.

3) BAPTISM

I had my first baptism on Saturday, his name is C.K. and he is fantastic, love that guy.  A baptism-the font takes like three weeks to fill up if we want to use the faucet. So we have to use hoses from outside, and the water is not warm at all.  The baptismal service was cool I gave an impromptu talk, it was a nice.  After the baptism itself C.K. was invited to bear his testimony. All he could talk about was how when he came up out of the water, he took a big breath and it was cold.  He had the restored gospel and spirit in there somewhere, but mostly cold and breathing. 

I wanted to take pictures but my camera was being stupid and would turn off every time I tried to take a picture. I ended up getting 1 picture of my comp and C.K. in front of the church.Elder L's camera ws taken in the robbery a few weeks ago. We have better security now. However at the cyber I am at right now I can't upload the photo. I bought a new camera so that it will not happen again!

We should have about three more baptisms in the next couple weeks, and by the end of March we should have about seven more. We are working hard and killing it.

Welp... see ya

Elder Tucker

"Aye! It's Jesus!"

Hey everybody.  How are you doing? I am doing great thanks for asking. Yes I will explain the subject, its a good story. Got a few good ones this week.  As well we had a Baptism Interview so Next week we will be baptizing a man named C, he is baller, love that guy.

Okay Lets do this (Ju lee! Do the thing!)

First, we have exchanges

Now to update you, my Swahili is doing pretty dang good if I do say so myself, not great but pretty good.  I can talk with people and teach most the lessons.  But it is nice to have someone who can speak more than me.  On exchanges sometimes THIS IS NOT THE CASE.  Bounce ahead to an appointment we had that day, which until we got to the door I forgot he only knows Swahili. (Here we go)  And guess what! ya'll thought I was gonna fail, but no I freaking killed it, taught the whole restoration and first part of the Book of Mormon in Swahili, that's right! It was great. I was super excited, the spirit is real and knows when you need the gift of tongues.  The church is true.

Next, we have a Luia DA. (Luia is a tribe here)

Background, Luia's are very very very very generous. And it is rude in African culture, to deny any offerings no matter how small.... or how big.

So we have a dinner appointment with an RC named S.  She is Luia. She was like "Yeah, I am going to make these guys some Mendazi"  so she does.  Then she makes some more.  Mendazi in intervals are good.  They are a lot like scones.  At first we thought that they were for everyone, we were WRONG.  I ate about twenty along with three cups of hot chocolate. Elder Le about the same but not as much cocoa.  I stopped because I literally could not move, and she Kept making them!  and was upset when we couldn't finish the other twenty five in the bowl.  While we were waiting to teach a friend of S.'s walked in saw the scriptures, and screams "Aye! Its Jesus"  and she was gone. I have never seen someone move that fast. After processing the shock of seeing the missionaries, she returned and listened to us.  We shared a brief message, then left.  We had another appointment with a kid who will hopefully be baptized in a couple weeks.  While teaching him about the word of wisdom and being careful to have moderation in all things ( ironic i know).  I was dying, my stomach is not happy, NOT HAPPY! So I ask this dude mid lesson, " you got a bathroom in this compound " No".  Well I am screwed now.  So I just said i'll be back and ran out of the room, went outside, walked to the fence and vomited like half the Mendazi. Got some water, then taught the rest of the lesson. It was a rough rest of the day. Luckily I did find a bathroom after about another two hours.

Other than that I have been doing great, having a ton of fun. 

Have a great week 

"Huge enormous spirit! itty bitty living space."

Karibuni Mnaendelije (If anyone knows what he is saying let me know-mom- I can't get Google translator to work)

This week we had some fun fun times.  We had Zone conference so like the Western Kenya missionaries all came to Eldoret.  It was only twenty of us from four different zones, but we had ten of them in our flat.  It was nuts, but we made it fun.

Wednesday morning

So whilst preparing for our morning run, I was tired.  Usually what happens is I unlock the door and give the keys to Elder Le, because my shorts don't have pockets, or any room for pockets.  So I unlock the door and sleepily thought I handed elder Le the keys. However I just put them back on the rack, proceed to exit the flat and lock the padlock.  Directly after I am asked "if I have the keys?".  I thought he was messing with me.... he wasn't.  So I reach through the hole in the door and move the curtain to see the keys locked inside the flat just out of reach.  After a lot of waiting around this kid comes and is like ' just climb the building ( we live on the fourth flour) so this kid climbs the building to find the balcony door locked. We ended up having to hacksaw the lock. That was fun, we were a little late for DDM though. I almost got to climb the building, maybe next time. ("No Teron just no" as quoted from Zac-Mom)

A letter came from the Stake Presidency which was sent in November that was fun! We got to meet with the mission president and our first baptism should be this Sunday!

Following that ten elders came and stayed with us, needless to say it was pretty crammed till Saturday.  There were people sleeping on the floor, on couches, and using towels as blankets. Absolutely no food in the flat, we had to go to the small shop in front of our house like five times to get stuff to cook.  On the plus side I convinced most of them to go for a run on Friday, and they were pretty willing to do so.

I got to meet Elder C he is super cool. ( He is a grandson of one of mom's nursing buddies). He stayed with us. He was on the Cross Country team his freshman year. He looked at me and said "That I looked like this one really fast dude that went to Richfield high. I asked him who and he said "I don't remember his name I just remember he won region my freshman year, he was a senior and he destroyed the course time". I told him that was my older brother; which he thought was awesome cause he thought Colter was the coolest. That was fun we talked alot about Richfield. 

I got to eat at a really nice restaurant, because my comp memorized a poem and recited it to president,  that was fun, we cook better though. 

Another fun time

So my comps mom is super awesome and sends a ton of stuff for us to play with.  Most recently she sent 'Snowballs" which were a bunch of cotton glued together or something. We got them and had a huge snowball fight in the flat with the Kitale elders. Mattresses were used as shields and one elder made a tank,  it was glorious super fun.

Anywho, have fun y'all and just remember  when a drunk man asks you if you are from America. Say you are from Zanzibar in Kiswahili and confuse the crap out of him, live life to the fullest. Elder Tucker

Bet mom knows.

Dad,

This week has been pretty good, we have been running all over my area which is pretty big, its been tiring. I know that the spirit is literally carrying me sometimes.  I have been trying more and more to speak Swahili and its becoming easier I feel like I can actually connect with people now.  The president of the branch is extremely impressed with my ability to learn.  I am starting to be more like a Kenyan, so that is fun.  

Don't Tell mom this next part, for your own good:

So we get a monthly allotment at the beginning of the month, and you are supposed to use for food and stuff.  So last Monday we got out our allotment. I still had some left over from January so i didn't use any. We don't know how what why, or anything but we came home on Friday and my closet was wrecked,the back door was open and someone stole my money.  Allotment and emergency, all of it. Luckily I had like four thousand ksh with me because we were going to run by the store.  I will get half of the money back, but don't be surprised if I take some out of my personal.  Thanks

Week of many tongues-February 6th

This week my companion and I have been really noticing the blessings of learning languages and what that means.  Swahili is super fun and I can actually speak a fair amount now.  As well as we had some other fun stories of talking and expressing, without further adieu.

This week:

#1 Be careful when and what you sing when in Africa

So its been raining a fair amount here which has been beautiful because we definitely needed it, and it means less dust.  However it also makes the roads very muddy and makes it hard to talk with people cause they are all inside.  So while we are on our way to an appointment it starts to drizzle. Now I love singing and when it starts to rain in Africa, you sing Toto.  It is just a must, gotta do it.  That was a bad idea.... first verse was fine, I got to the chorus and sang "I bless the rains down in africa"  aparently Heavenly Father thought it would be funny to take that literally.  Within two minutes it is Pouring, we are talking buckets.  And we still had to walk for about another twenty minutes.  We had forgotten rain jackets so we were quite soaked by the time we got to the house and the host went nuts about how we are gonna get sick and all that fun stuff. Hey it was a great break from the dust storms, and it was very very fun to see everyone cowering in shelter and two wazungu just having a ball in the rain. However my slacks were covered in mud by the end of the night.

#2 The many titles of a missionary.

So you get to do a lot of service as a missionary, which as I have already cited includes some wacked stuff in Kenya.  This was just cool.  

So we teach some "juakalis"  which are essentially blacksmiths.  They make hammers, axes, chisels, spears, all sorts of cool stuff.  And they invited us to come help one day.  So I learned how to make my own forge, and me and elder Le  made spears completely by hand. We got to heat up the metal, hit it repeatedly with a huge hammer a crap ton of times, it was dope.  Sadly we were both working so no one got any pictures.  But now I can say I did smithy work on my mission, and it was dope!

#3 many many languages

So me and elder Le speak Swahili a fair amount.  And English a fair amount, it is probably about fifty fifty on which language we use.  So we have a lot of people want to speak to us, but don't know English, so we speak Swahili and they are kinda surprised but its not uncommon.  Elder Le knows some German and I know sign language. Turns out African sign language and american sign language are very similar and I can sign African.  

This man is waving us down, and sounds like he is slurring his words ( we thought he was drunk) so we keep walking.  He gets more persistent.  as he gets closer I see his hands are waving by his face, weird but not terribly uncommon.  Not until he gets very close do I realize he is signing and can't speak.  I don't know how he knew I knew sign language, but he was very happy to find another signer. So we give him a book I tell him what we as missionaries do.  He tells me where he lives (Elder le is staring awkwardly at the guy, we are signing and it is pretty silent so that was funny).  I told him we had an appointment but we will return in about half an hour.  We went back to where he lives after the appointment and see this lady. We greet her no answer, so we get a little closer, repeat "Habari yako" no answer.  She finally sees us and stands up looks at us, we repeat a third time "Habari yako" turns out SHE'S DEAF TOO! I am super excited and start signing and her face lights up, so we talk for a second about her day and I tell her we are looking for another deaf man, so she takes us to ANOTHER DEAF LADY! She was older but was so happy to see I knew sign language so she didn't have to write. We gave them some books and told them to text us if they have any questions, it was awesome and I loved it.

But thats about it for the week. Mom I am not dead yet. I don't have my camera on me so no pics this week pole Sana. 

Ninawapenda nyote

Elder Tucker

I was out of short sleeves, laundry isn't easy. It is very hot but you gotta do what you gotta do.