Sister's Dinner and Cooking Skills and Missionary Leadership Training

 Here's how we celebrated July 4th, but no songs about "America" were sung; except Bruce and I in our apartment!

    Sister's Dinner with the SLT's at Sister Judd's. We always have a wonderful time with the sister missionaries eating and learning more of Christ. 2023.07.04  Sister Louder and Otienda

Learning to make an African tortilla "chapatis" a favorite homemade recipe of Sister Makura's. Sister Mbabazi teaches me how to roll out the dough.

Sisters Mbabazi and Otienda taught us how to fry our African bread tortillas.

Sister Leonard and Sister Makura, our Matare Sister Training Leaders. We love all the sister missionaries and they all love their companions. It's like having more daughters!

                                    Sister Kindrick and Sister Ayigi, our Seke STL's

                                        Sister Louder and Kendrick

                                 Sister Louder and Sister Mbabazi, our Damofalls STL's

    Sister Treese (left) and Otienda, we call her "Saint Treese", she's an amazing missionary and taught David and Agnes before they were baptized. She's from Blackfoot, Idaho. The Highland sisters come to pick up litter in front of the temple every "P-Day" preparation day as a service project. We love seeing the front of the street neater without the rubbish. It's hard to teach the locals to stop littering; it's very commonplace and there is no garbage cans available to put their trash in.

    We had an amazing dinner catered by "Pistachios" and then a nice sister's fireside. We learned from Sister Nancy Turley how God qualifies those that feel unqualified. Relying on the Spirit really helps to manifest our callings. Sister LaNae Poulter gave a powerful testimony about relying on Christ in fulfilling our assignments and our stewardships. I love how she related the "16" stones the brother of Jared molten out of the fire to have the Lord touch them to bring them light in their barges while crossing the sea. We can offer our "16" stones or talent to the Lord and he'll make up the difference in whatever we are asked to do.  I marvel at the faith of the brother of Jared in the Book of Ether, one of our favorite stories in the Book of Mormon.

New missionaries for Harare Zimbabwe; the Lewis's came to the temple site and met Persuade.
We have a new senior couple that arrived last week, Eric and Megan Lewis. They live next to us in our apartment building, so now we aren't the only missionaries in our complex. They are from Lindon, Utah, and are a missionary leadership couple. Megan has a beautiful soprano voice and sings in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She can teach music and piano lessons. She's only 48 and Eric is 50 and retired. Their son is serving in Madagascar, Africa. It's nice to have neighbors. They'll be spending most of their weekends in Matare, and have an apartment there also. 

We had "Missionary Leadership Counsel" MLC on Wednesday, July 5th. We were invited to dinner with all the zone leaders and STL's at the Judd's that night and a leadership training. We focused on the new "Preach My Gospel" edition that just was published. We practiced teaching our companions the "Plan of Salvation" and summarizing it in 3 minutes. Bruce gave a quick short rendition in less than 2!

Bruce and I practiced preaching my gospel; we had a delicious "curry" dinner catered by Rachel Nield-Geranios, Reeve and Sharon's sister.

Elder Payne, assistant, and Pres. Gary Judd, remarkable leadership of the Harare Zimbabwe Mission.

We love being among the missionaries. You can't help but feel the Spirit and shed tears when you hear everyone sing "How Firm a Foundation" acapella with such vigor and vim led by Sister Judd.