October 28, 2013

So this past week was pretty slow as far as the work goes.

But the main event this week was the funeral of our district president Steven Mwangangi.   Even most of the week we were doing service at his home moving stuff around just trying to help his wife out as much as possible.  The service was on Saturday and started at the church at 11. It was crazy to see how many people were there! One thing in Kenya is that weddings and funerals are like totally opposite to how they are in the USA. Where many people come to weddings back home and like nobody goes to funerals.... its the exact opposite in Kenya. Funerals are packed! There were 700 people in attendance...people were standing outside of the church looking in to see what was going on.  But the service was good... at least i think so. Most of it was done in Kikamba so not really quiet sure what was being said but it was good i think.  Even President Hicken and Elder Usi (area seventy) were in attendance and spoke.  One thing that was cool though was when his mother went up to speak. A lot of people said that pres Steven died because the devil took him (people have really dumb rumors about the church). So when she went up to speak all she said was "I know Steven lived a good life, God put him on this earth and now God has taken him back." Oh yeah! That shut up the rumors real fast.  But after the service at the church, we all (700 of us) went back to his home for the actual burial. And  there were more speeches and talks, mostly from members of the church and family. But Then this one guy came up who was somebody from the community, who I'm pretty sure was a pastor. So he heard that Steven was once a missionary and has seen us missionaries around, so he started to talk about us. He said he was happy for our work, but then went off about how we should be paid for what we do......... i was like oh no this is not good! He then turned to President Hicken and said "So we have the boss here today so i hope he can listen and do what i say"..... i was like man this guy is a fool! ha so that made things weird... but yeah after he spoke the guy conducting the service (who is member) said "yeah we aren't going to return to that topic again" hahaha! But other than that the service was good... really long but good. But its good to know that we will see Steven again, and he did a wonderful job of getting the Chyulu district moving towards a stake. He was an awesome man.

But Kenyan funerals are crazy.

other than that the week was ok. We were able to find some other new investigators this week which was good... and one of them is a family!!! so that's really exciting, we hope to continue to work with them.  Also got to go around with one of the members to visit Less active members. It was funny because he wanted to carry me on the bike (i would just sit on the rack), so people were staring at us so much! Gosh they thought i had 5 arms or something hahah but it was pretty cool... getting all that attention haha. 

Other than that things are good. We will get transfer news tonight, but ill probably still be here finishing training elder Tebbs. Sorry not much else for this week.  But Darajani is great! I love you all!!

Elder Thomas