Letter from Josh 29 June 2009

Hey Everybody, So we got transfer news on monday, elder molotsi and i are staying, but elder bangani is leaving arusha. it is wierd to not have him here. since my first day on mission he has been around. When i was in Rongai, he was in my district, so i saw him a few times a week. then we bothcame to arusha at the same time, and we see the other elders everyday here because of english class, ddm, church, and coralation meetings. So i knew him pretty well. He goes home in 2 transfers though so i he wouldnt be around for too much longer anyways. We had a baptism yesterday though. fredrick buhati budabya. if there is one thing i hate here it is trying to find out peoples full names and their parents full names, and peoples birth dates. we need all of that to fill in the baptismal record, but it is almost impossible to get. even when you try to get legal documents to see their name and birth date it is confusing. you will look at their passport and it says one thing, then their birth certificat says another, and their drivers liscence is once again completely different. and the way you get your last name is different in every tribe, which adds to the mess because there are 120 different tribes in tanzania and then a seperate 40 in kenya. its rediculous. i honestly dont think the temple work will every be finished for Africa because you will never be able to get the information you need for the ead people, i mean, it is hard enough to get it for the ones that are alive and in front of you. the baptism went well though, he is a great kid and wants to serve a mission and will be a great addition to the branch.this week should be really good. our weeks just get more and more full since elder molotsi came, i dont know how it is even possible to be more full here. maybe if we had bikes and could get to peoples places faster we could fit one more apointment in each day, but even that is stretching it because of the slow life style these people live and how forty five minutes late is right on time to them.so i guess michael jackson died this week, i am sure you all know that, especially after seeing moms blog, i just thought it wasfunny how big of a deal it was even way out here in africa. front page of the newspaper, on all the radio stations, and most of the tv channels devoted a day to just playing his mucsic videos. and people are more mad cause i guess he was working on a new album. Then at church our branch president was giving a lesson on the word of wisdom and included the part of section 88 that talks about the whole early to bed early to rise thing. he turned the whole lesson into a michael jackson theme with all of the crazy stuff he has done. during part of the lesson he said that one of the contributing factors to his death was that he was working so hard on his up-coming tour that he wasnt getting enough rest. then he gave us some of the best advice ever, he said "dont be like michael jackson, dont work to hard or dance to much or take bad things into your body, or add bad things on to your body, like all the plastic michael had." all of us missionarys started laughing, which was quickly stopped as everybody stared at us because they thought it was an excelent point and that we should not laugh at michael jackson. that justmade us laugh harder when we were talking aout it later. anyways, i hope you are all doing well, i love you all! have a great week.Love,Elder Harris