MONDAY Josh's new P-day

Letter from Josh 12-1-08

so monday is moms new favorite day, cause it is p-day and i get to write home. i'm not going to lie, its been pretty hard for me here so far. it is so different from how i am use to living, from how i am use to talking, and from how i am use to doing pretty much everything. it really wont be bad once i am use to it, i just need to get use to it. My companion is elder Byaruhanga, and just to let you know, you are saying it wrong. He is from uganda and is twenty four and the end of this transfer will be his year mark. i like him a lot, he is very kind and very loving. the only thing i dont like is that i feel like we aren't working hard enough. he keeps saying that i need to get used to the african pace and forget about rushing, whatever! Rangai is about a half hour out of the city, and as pres described it to me, if you wanted to get the ideal pic of an african village, then take a picture of the shopping center here. by the way, i will be sending one of the memory cards home with the christmas package. and the adress for the mission home just changed, but any packages or letters you have sent should still get to me, the only problem is that i only get mail every six weeks at the zone conferences, but i guess that will help me stay focused here.

Kenya Nairobi Mission
Upper Hill Road, net to Citigroup
P.O. Box 46162-00100
Nairobi, Kenya

so really the only thing that changed was that the office is no longer next to the british high commision. my first zone conference is wednesday, so hopefully i will get mail from you then, i have only got one letter so far and it was from mom and dad in the mtc. it was the one that had lovey written all over it from mom and nobody at the mtc believed it was from mom, oh well, it made things funny. Pres and sister Taylor are good, the only time i saw them was the first night and even then it wasn't for very long because our flight had got in late and it was 10 by the time we got to their home. the next morning i had an orientation and then was shipped out to Rangai. the hardest part about it is that i feel totally lost. i still dont know where anything is. i can make my way home from the grocery store but that is about it. i struggle with remembering names here because i cant really say them in the first place. but the ward was good yeasterday. very small, everyone was either a president or councelor of one of the qourums unless they were children. the building was actually the first church building in all of east africa (kenya, uganda, tanzania and ethiopia) so the building wasn't bad at all, but once again, it was small. the biggest problem with progressing people here is that the church is in langata and is like an hour and a half walk and many of them dont have the money for transport so its rare that investigators end up coming, even when they are interested and not just listening to you to be nice.
We ended up getting 30kg for the luggage (only the missionarys going to kenya got this, i know it was moms prayers that did it) which is about 66 pounds, and if you remember that is exactly how much the bag weighed in slc, so i just packed everything that i had and didnt even have to pay a fee. one of the elders from south africa however had a bag that was 69kg becuase his mom had filled half his suitcase with soap, we were all laughing as he pulled all of it out. he was still a bitover weight, but notby much. i can read the blog, but the pics dont always come up cause the net is really slow. tell spencer thats hilarious about the not knowing who it is and that he should bring the oreos to school and ask everybody if it was them that dropped them, thats what i would do anyways. i am not getting the e-mails from greg and i really want them, i also found out that at least for now, since i am not close to somewhere where i can send or recieve mail, i can e-mail everyone as long as i dont take too long, which means more than a few hours since the net is slow. it will be much easier to do things that way, but i am still going to try to send normal mail as often as possible.mom, you said you saw steph, do you know if she is getting the e-mails somehow? i dont know if there is any way for you to know, butif there is then make sure she and jake and greg and mike hardman and dave are seeing them. This is by farone of the poorest places i have been in my life, and despite the shady structures and the dusty dirt roads, it is beautiful. langata (where the church is and part of our area) is where all the tourist attractions near nairobi are as far as animals go. today we aregoing to see the crocodiles, and within the time that i am here will go to all sorts of animal orphanages,i'm excited. I hope you all have a great week! i hope you are all safe and well! i'll join you in the fast this next sunday, i am sure dad willget a good job soon and that real estatewill pickup. i love you all!i miss you morethan ever! talk to you next week!
Love Josh
i just realized i didn't talk about the food at all, or my apartment, and i know mom is very worried about it. but thanksgiving i had homemade chips (french fries) with scrambled eggs and chopped tomatoes and onions and green peppers. we actually make chips often cause potatoes are cheep and there is no oven,just a stove, so we have tolearn to cook what we want there. we have eggs with tomatoesalmost everymorning for breakfast, istill hate breakfast but i have to take mymalaria medicine with food so i eat. the other night i had kitheri (i dont know if that is spelt right) at a members house. it is beans and corn that have been boiled (but not for long becuase they are stillhard) mixed together with bananas, it wasn't bad but it was very heavy and it was hard for me to finish the first plate letalone the second that she scooped on. we alsomake our own tortillas and ocasionally turn them into meat pies. and we eat spagetti. those are our staples, but i am fed well, and the food is generally normal. my apartment is very small. the bathroom is literally just big enough to fit a toilet and have the door open the door goes within a half in of the toilet and you have to straddle the toilet to open or close the door. there is a shower, butit sucks and it is easier to use a rag and a tub of hotwater to clean yourself asyou stand under the miserable flow of water. there is running water, and they have purifiers for us to use so that we can drink the water. i use a mosquito net to sleep under everynight and i somehow wake up with more bites everyday still, not many, but i have afew on each arm. it is a wlaking area of course,ifound out that there is one biking area in the mission and that the aps have a car, but that is it. my comp hates walking and likes to leave the apartment as late as possible and come home as aerly as possible because of it. ocassionally we take taxis called matatoos (spelling?) but they blast loud rap music and show the music videos so i dont like to take them even when we are going far, but he insists that we take them. our alotment is equivelent to about $150 a month, but it seems to be plenty to live on for the month. i left my gym shorts at the apsapartment the night that wegot here so i have been wearing my tracting pants everywhere, but i will get them back wednesday at the zone conference. Mom will be happy to know that the mtc time counts as a full transfer cycle which is 6 weeks, so my return date should be about three weeks short of the full two years (although i know that right now she is probably saying something like "oh yea, great, like that makes a difference now." but i promise it will make you happy toward the end of my mission. anyways, i love you all, and once again, make sure i get gregs e-mail somehow, even if he has to send it to me, i know that he is only suppose to e-mail family but i am family, and if his pres doesn't think so then tell him to call me and the otterstroms so that we can sort this out.
I LOVE YOU, AND MISS YOU ALL!!!!!!!
Josh


NOTE FROM NATALIE....YES...you can ALL start praying NOW for him......