VISIT TO CAIA, NAMPULA and LUAHA in JANUARY 2015

 You will see in the next few pictures that the drive north to Nampula was just beautiful.

 This began our journey outside of Dondo on  EN 1.  (This is a main road [1 of 2] to Marromeu)

 We drove about 300 kilometers on this road to reach Caia.

 As you can see, even when we had some oil. it was still 'off-roading'

 President and Sister Kretly visited with this group of villagers on Sunday morning.  They were such a happy group of people.

 It just poured rain as the meeting ended.  They all lined up in the shelter of the thatch overhang to see us off to Luaha.

 We crossed the Zambeze River.  The rains hadn't come heavy yet, but when they do this area is about 3 times larger.  The toll bridge was built by South Africa.

 This is the Luaha group.  They are a large family unit and have built themselves a nice meeting hut in the center of their village.  It was so much fun to be there.  They love President and Sister Kretly!

 Here I'm visiting with President Lucas.  He is the patriarch of the family.  He joined the church as a young man in Portugal.  All the members of his family married and were baptized two years ago and President Kretly created their group.

 Sister Kretly

 As we were leaving, President Lucas had 4 young men carry over a huge sack of corn.  They raise corn as their main food and income source. He gave it to President Kretly as their offering to the Church and President Monson.  What a sacrifice that is for them, they have so little and live such humble lives.  But they were so happy and wonderful to be with for 2 days.

They loved seeing my pictures of our family.  They were all impressed with our 7 children, spouses and grandchildren.  They were also impressed with the fact that we had been married for 46 years.  They liked that I wore a capulana and tied one on my head.

LAST CHRISTMAS IN MOZAMBIQUE 2014

This is most of our group of Elders here in the Beira district.  Wonderful group of hard working elders!!

 On Christmas Eve, they all came to our apartment for a party and some of them to call their families.  We are here in Elder and sister Castro Deus' apartment which is across the hall from us.  They have a larger area that is open.  Sonja and I furnished a baked potato bar, salad, rolls and chocolate cake and the elders brought soda.  It is quite a feat to feed 38 young men who eat to fill their shoes!  Before the meal we sang carols, learned the Mozambican National Anthem, read the Nativity and each took 1 minute to tell us their most special moment this year and small gift exchange.  It was very, very nice.

This is our apartment,  After dinner the elders from Manga, Dondo, Munhava and Inhamizua used all our electronics to Skype and call their families.   While companions waited for their turn, we watched movies (Christmas Story and Christmas Carol), played a fun and fast paced card game and visited.

On Christmas Day, the Palmeiras and Baixa elders came over and called their families ( they live much closer to us).  Larry made every elder a large cinnamon roll to enjoy after the phone calls.  The elders LOVED them and for many was that little taste of home (for the others it was a new taste).  It made for a very busy few days around our apartments.

 By the end of the evening, the chappas had quit running (they don't go to Dondo anyway) so the Castro Deus took the Manga elders in the mission van and we piled the rest into our Ford Ranger truck and drove the Munhava, Dondo and Inhamizua elders home.  It was quite the trip and in the states would have been really illegal!!  Here it is just another chappa ride.

The Snelson's left the mission for home about the 17th....we will miss them but are glad they could spend Christmas with their family.  We had a wonderful Christmas with the Castro Deus and the missionaries.  We will always treasure our memories from here.  Whenever I wear my African capulana that matches the one all the ladies from Inhamizua have I will remember Mozambique. 

We enjoyed our last Christmas in Mozambique.   Merry Christmas to one and all.

Home Depot Mozambican Style

This is a typical style of building here.  The walls are filled with small stones.  Some are later plastered over and others are not.  This is a typical size of home.

Piles of wood for purchase

Grass mats for walls, roofs and fences.

This is bundles of thatching for roofs and we have seen some huts that have this on the walls also.

Here are piles of the rocks for sale.  

This woman's work is to break up the larger rocks into the correct size.  The bottom picture was along the roadway in the same area.  These pictures were taken on our drive from Maputo to Beira after out Couples Conference in Swaziland the first week in November.  We are in the Inhasssoro area on the coast.

PEOPLE, PEOPLE AND MORE PEOPLE

We received a new couple here in Beira.  Elder Enos and Sister Sonja De Castro Deus from Curtiba, Brazil.  They will be a  great asset here.  It has been so hard to do leadership training because of the language and they just breezed right in and took over.   We (Snelsons and us) gave a big sign of relief and hugs of gratitude.  He has been a bishop, stake president, temple sealer and now is a Patriarch.  What better couple to do the job!  No more elementary school approaches to training sessions.

Just had to put this picture in.  The tall girl in black and white in the middle is Marianna Agusto from here.  She is at the Provo Temple with her district on her way to Atlanta, Georgia for her mission.  The temple worker is a friend of Sister Snelson and sent this to us.

This is an example of a group of our young men that we just took to the airport to fly out to start their missions.

We see ladies like this every Sunday.  These ladies were walking home right outside our building in Manga.  I asked the lady with the baby if I could take her picture and the others stopped also.  Her little girl was so cute in her white hat!   Their church is called the Good News Church and seems to be very popular in our area.

We were visiting a branch in Magoanine (outside of the Maputo area) and took these pictures. These little babies are just the cutest!!! Here Larry is showing the Primary children the pictures he took of them sing.  

Catching Up

At the end of October we had a visit to our mission from Elder Clayton & Sister Clayton .  We had a wonderful missionary meeting in the morning, lunch and then training and a special adult meeting that afternoon.  It was a Monday afternoon and we sere so excited to see that over 500 people attended.  What a wonderful surprise it was because of a work day and and transportation is not very easy.  This is saying goodby to them at the airport on Tuesday morning.   Elder and Sister Ellis were also visiting, but due to flight problems had already flown out to Maputo.

These three pictures are of craftsmen here in Beira.  We purchased a nativity from then.  As you can see, it was a windy day, very pleasant. 

We just had to take this picture.  Usually the people are just standing, jam packed in the box of the trucks, but this  truck bed had plastic chairs?  Do you think he was able to charge more for the ride?

This is a typical picture (other than our daughter Melissa ) of what a piano lesson is like.  We usually set up 2 or 3 keyboards and other students practice while I give lessons at the bigger organ.  This is in the Manga Chapel.