When the smoke clears.....

It's hard to imagine the countries Africa still allow you to burn your trash, leaves, fields, and just about anything you care to burn. The smoke over the area this week has been very heavy. You feel like you have been at a camp fire all day, and your didn't get even one marshmellow. We have held district and zone conferences all over this mission this week. It has been fun to travel around the area and visit with the missionaries and to do training. we have several banana trees in our yard and they produce large bunches of bananas. We asked one of our guards. Yes we have guards 24/7, it's just one of the things you do here. We asked him when we should pick them. He said they were all ready to cut and place in the big bag in the laundry room. We cut a big bunch about 40 pounds worth, and placed them in the dark and two days ago we checked and they were ready. Remember when you run down to the store at home you get maybe a pound or two if your going to eat them with your cereal or bake banana bread. We had forty pouunds. We asked the guards if they would like to take some home and they politely laughed. It's like asking the baker if he wants to take home some bread. Everyone here has bananas. So if you have forty pounds of bananas you take them to the missionaries. And thats what we did, they ate everyone of them. I have never seen so few eat so many. We had about 12 missionaries at the meeting and I watched one Elder eat six without taking a breath. We are glad they didn't go to waste. We flew up to the Copperbelt last Tuesday for meetings. We went up in the morning and came back in the night. We left the Sisters at home and I took my 1st Counselor and the Assistants up for the meeting. It was nice, we have decided to open up three new areas there. The work is growing and we can use 6-8 more up in the north. We have been told we will receive 15 new missionaries in September. We look forward to the excitement that will bring. It will sure keep me busy as we will double the size of the mission by years end. We are happy that our things from home arrived. Everything was just perfect. We only broke one small glass in one of the picture frames. We would like to use our Apple computer but we need to find an adapter that will step it down from 220 to 110. And you all know the answer to that question. Where do we find one of those. We have looked e verywhere in Lusaka and have come up short. We have a couple of spots to look and we remain hopeful. We are going over to Malawi on Wednesday for a few days and maybe we can find one there. We have been looking for furniture for the house. We found a great place that has nice things. We found four chairs and a large sofa table and mirror and even a desk for my office. The fun is that it's going to arrive tomorrow. Now if you all remember the difference between Now and Now Now. You will just have to wait until next to see if it arrives. We are doing well, we are happy and very excited about this work. I received an e-mail from the boys at work. ss them very muThey are doing a good job. I mich and I am thanful for the stories I tell about them. I am proud to call them my friends. They follow our blog as you do and I would be remiss if I didn't express my love and prayers to all of them. They have had a big part in preparing Sister Padovich and I being able to take on this task. I am thankful for their trust and support. We went out to an area today for church services and met some wonderful people. Sister Padovich and I were called on to speak. She did such a fine job. You all would have been proud of her. I always am. If has been a nice day. On Saturday we had a family fun day over at the International School of Lusaka. We had about 400 people in attendence. We played soccer and had a BBQ. It was fun, the missionaries played a game with the local soccer kids. It was fun to watch the missionaries hold them off and finally win 1/0.. Yea Elders. The children were off to the side dancing it was fun to go get in the middle of them and dance. Yes, I danced with them. They laughed and laughed. We will send pictures one of these days. We hope for a strong wind tomorrow. A big wind would be nice. When the smoke clears remember we love you all. We think of you. We pray each day that you will know how much you mean to us. Be well, thanks for the e-mails. xoxo M&A