Nyabondo

Wednesday July 23, 2014 we had District Meeting.  This was Sister Horner’s first ever District Meeting.   We are so impressed with our Elders.  Elder Ndaba and Elder Hiltbrand serve here in Kisumu and Elder Nysele and Elder Orenge are from Busia. 

After District Meeting, we made lunch for all the Elders and Elder Horner took them downtown so the Busia Elders could catch the bus to go back to their area.  Elders Ndaba and Hiltbrand came back with Elder Horner and the four of us made our first time visit to Nyabondo. 

Nyabondo has a faithful group of Saints eager for the day they can become an organized group or branch.  Elder Horner’s cell phone has been ringing since our arrival here with repeated invitations to come to Nyabondo.  The ride up was scenic!!!  We are serving in such a beautiful area!!!!

Something that is very rare here is a street sign. Our GPS does not work here because there are no street signs in the areas we are assigned to.  This rare sign obviously took our thoughts back home.

Turning to go up to the little church building meant going up a narrow road that felt more like we were driving inside a canal of beautiful red fertile dirt.  This picture taken through the truck window does not show the dimension or the depth of the color of the soil. 

We had no idea  what to expect and could not have been prepared for what was ahead.  We arrived at a beautiful grassy flat where they had built a small beautiful meeting house.  There was a tall red poinsettia plant on the right side of the building and a hedge that was trimmed to perfection on the right side of the grassy flat.  As we got out of the truck, our hearts were touched with the singing coming from the mud building, “Zion, Zion, lovely Zion; Beautiful Zion; Zion, city of our God!”  The spirit was so strong and we found ourselves silently thanking Heavenly Father for an experience we were about to have.  There were about 20 people dressed in Sunday attire in that beautiful little meeting room singing like an angelic choir!  What a greeting!!!  It was one of those savor the moment moments.  They were so happy to have the missionaries there with them again.  It was our opportunity to shake hands with these beautiful brothers and sisters and speak to them.  Heavenly Father does go before our face and give us words to say. 

The floor of the building was spotless and had a beautiful inlaid design in the hardened clay floor.  Someone had even brought a small vase of fresh flowers placed on the floor by the base of the wooden pulpit.  There was a small step up with two blue chairs behind the pulpit.   On the wall was a sign saying, “I will read the Book of Mormon before the end of 2014.”     

This is a scripture bag next to the hymn book.  Elder Horner ask me to speak first.  As I shared a scripture and reference the sound of all their scriptures opening in unison broke the silence.   We look forward to visiting with these Saints again! 

Friday July 25^th another knock at our door.  Bernard, a returned missionary who served in Ghana stopped by to see if he could wash windows at the church.  We appreciated his service as he cleaned the windows and screens where the entry to the church is. (this is also the back door to our flat that adjoins to the church)  Bernard had lunch with us and then mopped the 4 flights of steps up to the open air chapel.

That night the Elders stopped by on their way home.  They had been out in the jungle area and they were exhausted, thirsty and hungry so we fed them dinner.  Davis who is preparing to serve a mission and spends a lot of time with the missionaries was also with them so he ate dinner as well.