General Conference and Farewells

We were finally able to view General Conference on the 15 and 16^th of October!  The DVD’s arrived from Salt Lake translated into Kiswahili.  We were thankful they also sent them in English too (Our Swahili is coming, but it is coming slowly) we really wanted to understand every word and we enjoyed every minute! The building was packed to capacity! The entire District met at the Ubungo building where they enjoyed a newly installed big screen to view conference. We also had to say goodbye to a couple of great Swahili speakers and favorite Elders (ok, we have admit, they are ALL our favorites!) Some were being transferred and one was going home. They love getting together the night before transfers.  It is a tradition we have them all to dinner. This time was at the Nolls, our house next transfer. : )

The Dar es Salaam District Elders from left going clockwise around the table, Elders Chimbetete, Anievas, Huskinson, Bywater, Dlepu, Rosemann, Coles, Jimu, Nyazumgu and Bhala  

Elder Rosemann, a great teacher and District leader- exceptional missionary, heading home to Woods Cross, Utah 

 Elder Coles, from Silverado, CA was transferred 10 hours north to Arusha, his last area before he goes home next transfer.Another exceptional missionary!

A Trip to a First World Africa - Johannesburg, South Africa

A lot has happened the last few weeks since the blog was last updated.

We were excited to learn that we needed to travel to the South Africa Area Office in Johannesburg to receive additional training from the Africa Southeast area Perpetual Education Fund director, Thembinkosi Mkhize, an extraordinary man of great insight and understanding of how this program is supposed to work and what we need to do to make sure it gets a strong start in Tanzania. We learned a great deal and are so grateful for the invaluable knowledge and information we obtained. To make a great trip even better, we learned that there was time scheduled for us to attend a session at the Johannesburg Temple. The city is very beautiful and modern, we were even able to shop a bit and get a few things that aren't available here in Dar. Our chauffeurs for the entire time were the wonderful Area Office PEF Sr. couple from Portland, Oregon, Norriss and Carol Webb. From picking us up at the airport, taking us back and forth from the hotel every day, to lunches and dinners, beginning to end, they made an already fantastic trip totally unbeatable. The last night we were there they accompanied us to a great Italian Restaurant to have dinner with all ten Sr. Couples serving in the Africa Southeast Area Office.   Did we mention how much we enjoyed the trip to Johannesburg?  

 Elder and Sister Worthen, Johannesburg Temple, South Africa

Lunch at "Mikes" with the entire Southeast Area PEF office staff
Thembinkosi is next to Pam, the Webbs are to the left

Harbari, Za Asubuhi! ( "Good Morning" greeting in Swahili)

We had the best day visiting the Mbezi Beach Branch on Sunday.  They have only been a Branch for a couple of months...they are small in number but great in enthusiasm and love. The church is a two story home that has been converted into several class rooms and a large area for the chapel. They had a convert baptism after church and then we all got together on the front porch area and had a traditional celebration dinner of Pilau and Pork Knuckles.

Irene between Elders Huskinson and Dlepu.  Her Father and Brothers are standing behind.

 Irene is the niece of the Relief Society President, Sister Kabaza. Irene's non-member father and brothers all came to support her.  Elder Dlepu baptized her and our new Elder Huskinson (from Bremerton, WA - a former Tacoma Dome Dance Festival Participant!) have been teaching her. 

The baptismal font is outside.  Yes, you need two ladders - one to climb in and one to climb out.
Elder Worthen was asked to witness the Baptism.

 Adam,  President Kachuchuru's son, is very proud of  his " Future Missionary" tag. 

Pam will be starting a Music Class at Mbezi Beach this coming Saturday.  This is the third out of four Branches that she has started so far. The Church's Basic Music Program has two parts: the Conducting Course and the Keyboard Course. They must complete the Conducting Class first, which teaches them the basics of rhythm, note reading and how to conduct hymns. Then they can start the Keyboard Course which will teach them them how to read music and play some simple hymns on the keyboard. It is so exciting to teach people that are so excited and hungry for knowledge. The classes are pure fun.

MUSIC CLASS - CHANG'OMBE BRANCH 

                           Elias, Grace, Robert, Romanus, Sister Worthen, Junior, Brother Okanda - Elias and Romanus have been called to serve in South Africa where they will use their new musical knowledge in the mission field.  

Pictures of our Home in Dar Es Salaam

We have been out of electricity for the past several days.  This has not happened since we've been here, so it is great to finally have some power! Usually we have power at least 8 or 9 hours for every 24  hours, but this was something  new as when the electricity came on it would fluctuate between bright and almost nothing. Our neighbor warned us to turn everything off as the power surges could damage everything electrical.  Everything thawed out in the freezer and much went off in the frig...but we didn't have a huge stock of food yet, so thankfully it wasn't a great loss. We are excited for our generator to have a home in the new outside building, but are still waiting for the door and window grates to be installed.  We are not fussed about any of these things because we have learned pretty quickly to roll with it as that is what it is like here. The great things about our new home here in Dar FAR out weigh the inconveniences...some you will see below. We have been asked to send pictures of where we are living, so here they are.

Our home - Street view

Elder and Sister Worthen outside our front porch and entrance

Looking from the screened porch and front door into the Living Room. That is a Swahili Book of Mormon. Swahili lessons every Wednesday evening! Habari,  Za Jioni (How are you this evening?) 

Looking into the Dining Room from the Living Room

Looking into the Kitchen from the Dining Room

More Kitchen to the right of  picture to the left.

Master Bedroom- notice mosquito net on top of frame. A welcomed protection.

 

          Back yard with 3000 Liter Storage Tank and smaller gravity flow pressure tank.  Because of these, we have thankfully, never been without water.

Papaya tree in our back yard.  Yum, we have already had 3 of these.  Jarvis, the compound keeper climbed up and gave them to us.  We'll try to get a picture of him up there next time.

Bananas almost ready! Behind our generator house.

Fausta, our next door neighbor, an incredible woman who takes care of 2 of her nephews, twins Dennis and Davis. Another little boy, Armani, lives there too with his mother, Veronica who is the house helper.
 

FINALLY...The Blog is Official!

Dear Family and Friends,
Our darling daughter-in-law, Lindsey, helped get this blog going before we left for our mission.  She designed the heading, downloaded pictures, copied our emails, and coached and cheered us along. Thanks for never giving up on us, Lindsey! We are so techno-illiterate.  After many hours of  learning through doing, we are so happy to finally be up and running. 
We have started at the beginning...so if you want to begin at the beginning you should scroll down to the bottom of the blog where it all starts.  We will try to keep up with the blog most weeks. We would enjoy reading your comments if you would care to leave them...don't feel obligated, and also please understand we won't be able to respond much because of our limited time and internet access here.
Thanks for all your love, patience and support,
Bruce and Pam (AKA Elder and Sister Worthen)

Tanzania Update

We have been learning our job and meeting people that we need to meet to make happen what we are supposed to make happen. We flew back home from Kenya Tuesday and have had an entire day at the new house today with "fundis" (foon-dees) or workers that are repairing plumbing and electrical things so we can have a pleasant time here in Dar. We have a list of things that don't work and they need to be fixed within 30 days of move in - after then we are responsible for ALL repairs. The good news is we are happy and healthy. We have a really beautiful home but just outside our gates are many, many hundreds of thousands of people with one room homes, no car, very little money, very little food and very little work. But you would never know it.  They are a happy people. A beautiful and loving people that we adore! What a great blessing to be here with so many people who are so excited about the Gospel of Jesus Christ in these Latter days. The Gospel is true and has changed so many lives for the better.

Tomorrow is Sunday and we will be attending one of our two branches, the Ubungo branch (pronounced ooh-boon-go ) for the first time. We will be attending 3 convert baptisms after the 3 hour block! We have asked the Nolls and the two Elders assigned to that branch to come over for dinner.  They will be our first dinner guests in our new home. We will also be meeting with the District President, Pres. Balilemwa, about the PEF coming to Tanzania.  He was a PEF recipient himself, and is very excited for it to start.  We will have a busy Sunday, it will feel good!! Also, there is already someone ready and anxious to take keyboard lessons.More on that later.

We have some people here next week from the Church's translation dept. that we will be meeting with. Then Elder Nelson will be coming with a group of Seventies to the Africa South East Area in late October. He will stay in Nairobi, but Bishop Edgley will be coming here to Dar Es Salaam. Everyone is very excited and looking forward to their visit.

Elder and Sister Worthen, Elders Chimbetete, Rosemann, Coles, Anievas, Elder and Sister Noll

The Nakuru National Park and Lodge

We just had the most amazing weekend at the Lake Nakuru National Park and Lodge in Kenya.  The rooms were lovely, we had an incredible panoramic view of the hills and lake.  We kept thinking how much the grandchildren would have loved seeing all the Zebras, Giraffes, Cape Buffalo, Rhinos, Baboons and LIONS!! The only problem would have been them wanting to jump out of the truck to pet them.  Most probably would have ran away...all but the Lions, that is. Some in our group actually saw the pride take down a Cape Buffalo and enjoy dinner. We drove off a few minutes before and just missed it. What an amazing experience to see these truly magnificent creatures in the wild just a few feet away.  A once in a lifetime experience!

While we were all gathered to enter Nakuru Park,  this monkey jumped on the top of the our truck. 
We took this picture for our grandson, Avery, who LOVES monkeys.

Zebra crossing-right in front of our truck

Giraffe from a distance- beautiful and shy

Lion cubs playing on the road - there were six cubs altogether.

King of the beasts taking a nap

Waking up

You could stare at these beautiful beasts for hours. We were about six feet away.

Make way for the Lions

Up on the rocks again

Elder and Sister Worthen at Nakuru Lodge with a Maasai Warrior

Mommy with baby hanging on for dear life

Mommy and baby Baboon

Pelicans

Cape Buffalo right on the side of the road. He wouldn't move...just kept starring

Many, many Pink Flamingos. Unfortunately the road did not go very close to the Lake at this point.

We came around the corner and this White Rhino was heading down our path

So glad he decided to turn and go another way. Extraordinary beautiful creature! Breathtaking!

We were all in our own vehicles. We rode with the Byrds who knew the difference between the white and black rhinos, and could share all sorts of interesting information about the African wild life. We meandered  along the many roads in the park looking for and chancing upon the animals. When someone saw something really exciting, we would call each other on the phone and let them know the location.What a way to Safari! The best of the best of fun!
On Sunday we had a Sacrament Service with all the couples and President and Sister Broadbent.
It was full of the Spirit while each couple told which hymn was their favorite and why. Many sweet stories and testimonies were shared.  Then everyone sang each couples choice.  It was a powerful meeting. Music invites the Spirit!  We also had a fireside that evening where President shared with us the new training that has come out to enhance Preach My Gospel. He also showed us a new video clip that the Church has produced just for Africa. Amazing weekend! Oh, and did we mention the food?  Excellent!!

More about home in DAR

We love our new home! We are fortunate to have a large reserve water tank so we have a constant supply.  We have to purify it before we can drink it or brush our teeth with it and we also need to keep our mouths closed in the shower. We have adjusted well to this and are so thankful that we have water readily available. The church has supplied all the missionaries, young and old, with a water filtration system.  It was installed for us the day we moved in.   We need to rinse all of our fruits and vegetables in a bleach and water solution before we eat or cook them.  There are no dishwashers here (but us!) and so we also must put bleach in our wash and rinse water. We never know when our electricity will be on or off. Every day and night we are without electricity for many hours at a time.We have fans in most of the rooms, and it is so nice to have them running when the electricity is on.  We have 3 air conditioners...one in our bedroom, the guest room and the living room.  The living room air conditioner is on the "need to fix" list.  We are fortunate to be getting a generator, especially for the very hot days to come this summer (which are December and January). Workers are building a cement block house to keep it in.There are many fundis fixing many things today. All is good!!
We leave for the couples weekend this Friday to the Nakuru National Park and Lodge and are looking forward to meeting with all the Kenya Nairobi Mission couples and Pres and Sister Broadbent. We are told there will be picture opportunities galore with all sorts of African animals. Til then!

Our wonderful water filtration system

Elder and Sister Worthen with building fundis (workers)

We Have A Home!

First visitor in our yard in Dar!

After five fun filled weeks of traveling from Washington, to California, to Arizona to Utah to Nairobi to Dar Es Salaam,  packing and unpacking suitcases, visiting family and friends with joyful reunions and tearful goodbyes, we are finally unpacked and moved into our home! We moved in this afternoon. There are many mosquitoes here and some of them carry malaria...that is why we take our malaria medicine every day. Our home has a fenced perimeter and 24 hour guard. That is what they do here and it creates more jobs. We truly love it here and feel very safe ... the people are kind and gracious.  The children we see are well cared for and clean.  The mothers usually carry the younger children and babies on their back in a large serape type cloth. The children are beautiful! Big brown eyes...truly engaging.
Our most authentic Kenyan food so far was back in Puyallup with a the marvelous Odhiambo family where we ate yummy vegetables (potatoes, peppers, carrots, peas) cooked in curry sauce. Their mainstay dish is Ugali, a type of corn mush that they eat with everything. It takes on the flavor of the main dish and is a good filler.We look forward to our first authentic Tanzanian meal.  We know that beans, pillau (rice with many spices), bananas and chapati (flat bread) are a staple. They also have many fresh fruits and vegetables here.  Bananas, pineapple, papaya, oranges, watermelon, cukes, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, avocados are plentiful and very good.
We don't know the name of our not so little visitor, but will you know when we do. 

Here in Tanzania

We are using our computer for the first time in Tanzania.  We are very pleased with the beautiful home the Nolls have found for us and are very fortunate to have such a nice place. It has all tile floors, 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a screened in porch and is freshly painted.  Plenty of room for visitors! We should be able to move in a few days.  Elder and Sister Noll have taken good care of us with good food and a place to sleep.  They just turned on the generator because we haven't had electricity since 8 am this morning...it is now 3:30 pm.  It's been pretty hot and the air conditioners and ceiling fans are now on. Feels great!! We live in a compound with the Nolls and 15 other homes. We look forward to getting to know our neighbors.  I  know there are two very cute little boys next door...Emmanuel and Denny.

Church was great!! We attended the Chang'ombe branch.  There were about 150 attending sacrament meeting.  They asked us to bear our testimonies and we did while John, a wonderful and valuable employee of the church here, translated for us. Many members speak some English but we need to learn the language if we are going to be effective and understood. We will be starting Swahili lessons in the next couple of weeks and the church provides tutors for anyone who needs it as it is not taught at the MTC. There are 4 branches in Dar...this is a HUGE city...and only the District in the entire country. There are two other branches far out from the city...one north in Arusha and one east on Lake Victoria, Mwanza.

We have so much to learn, and are so excited to learn it.  Just to give you an idea of the missionary work that is going on here, the 4 Elders we visited with today (our district) said that in all 4 branches (our zone) there were 47 investigators today.  These people are so loving- so humble and so ready to hear the Gospel message.

First days in Nairobi

We and all our luggage arrived safely in Nairobi late Tuesday night.  We were met at the airport and stayed the first night with President Steven and Sister Julie Broadbent. It was great to finally meet them in person.  They are as wonderful as they sounded on the phone. Wednesday night we were introduced to all the fantastic and dedicated senior couples working in Nairobi.  Five couples live in some condos close together called "the nest". They organized a fun get-to-know-you dinner for us. We will meet the rest of the couples from the entire mission when we all meet together at the Nakuru National Park and Lodge for the Couples Conference Sept 2nd and 3rd.

We traveled to Kilunga Hills today (Thursday) with Elder and Sister Hall whose assignment it is to serve the 4 branches in this beautiful area that looks a lot like Machu Picchu. The road to the "Hills" is a steep, narrow, and bumpy dirt road. On the way up we saw wild impalas, ostrich, monkeys, storks and people herding all sorts of goats, cattle, donkeys and camels.

The traffic is heavy in the city with many large trucks, literally thousands of pedestrians, and mini buses called matatus (vans crammed full of people hanging out the doors) dodging and weaving through traffic nearly colliding with autos and pedestrians.We survived as do all the couples everyday as they wend their way to "work".   We are still getting used to the time difference and are told it will take a month before we are totally acclimated.  Tomorrow we meet with the area CES director as we will be coordinating with him on getting PEF started in Tanzania.  Saturday we fly down to Dar Es Salaam and discover what we will be experiencing for the next year and a half!

Elder and Sister Worthen with Sister and President

MTC

Our MTC District, Watsons, Curtis', Raymonds and Worthens

We are having an incredible experience at the MTC! All is going great, we truly are loving our time here.  We had a wonderful Devotional tonight with Cecil Samuelson speaking.  I have to say the highlight of the night was all of us Seniors and 2000+ missionaries singing "Called to Serve". There are several other couples here going to Africa, but we are the only ones going to Kenya right now.  There are many extraordinary couples here. We will spend the remainder of this week and next Mon through Wed at the MTC here in Provo then go to SLC for PEF training at the church office building Thursday and Friday.
We have been asked to give our farewell talks this Sunday in Bruce's old ward (the current Bishop was an Aaronic Priesthood youth when Bruce returned from his mission.) Grandma Worthen went to church with us last Sunday and stayed for all three hours and is excited to have Bruce speak in church next Sunday. At 93 she is still sharp as a tack and still working in her garden. It is good to spend the weekends with her and also with Bob and Pat (Bruce's sister and brother-in-law).  We will get to see much of his family next weekend when there will be a celebration for their 50th wedding anniversary.