There's no place like home (click, click, click)

It has been a fascinating experience to be back in the states.  In the end, we felt it important to come home, but it was painful logistically, and we really didn't want to leave what we were doing (being absolutely indispensable as we tell ourselves).  Now after several days in the states, I can say that it was indeed important for us to come.  We had a great time with family, my mother's funeral service was very nice (I made no inappropriate jokes nor postulated any false doctrine in my sermon) and she was appropriately praised and remembered for the impressive woman that she is.  We also have spent some  time working with mys sisters on matters of the estate of my parents--it is a very complex thing to die, one should not undertake the venture lightly. 

My mother Daphne was an artist, her medium usually was watercolors and we hung many of her paintings around the church.  Her children and grand children all love her works and fight over their possession.  Luckily for us she was rather prolific and there are almost enough to go around.

The service was well attended and having not participated much in the planning, we had an interesting surprise.  To call it a "flash mob" might be a bit of an overstatement, but we had an interesting musical number (interesting in its presentation at least) conceived and organized by my creative niece Jerusha (of Napoleon Dynamite fame).  If you are interested, you can view it on my YouTube channel at

http://youtu.be/k8Yjq7woWr8

For those who are Methodists or Catholics, it won't seem like much, but believe me, this was wild and crazy for an LDS service.

100%

We had one other little surprise that was quite touching.  My mother's casket was covered by a mountain of red roses.  We discovered that my father, before his own passing a few years ago, had arranged and prepaid for that final little gesture for his wife of 65 years.

We have eaten the food that we have missed in Mozambique.  I have enjoyed Honey Bunches of Oats cereal each morning with fresh strawberries.  We have had delicious steak dinners.  We have shopped for things that we have needed.  But in truth, we feel the need to get back to our mission.  We miss it and most everything else we do seems a little bit shallow and unreal (the horrible jet lag contributes quite a bit to that dazed feeling of unreality).  To our surprise, we often referred to Quelimane, Mozambique as "home".

 It has however, been great fun to meet up with our children (4 of our 6 were able to make it) and spend some time with two of our grandkids.

Hannah and Lincoln with grandma and grandpa at the City Creek Mall

The kids and parents

My siblings--5 of the seven were able to make it.  Gathered in the back yard of our parents.

Hunger Games

Debbie and I have a couple of investigator families who love the message of the restored gospel, who love to have us over to their humble homes, who love to come to church, who love to read the scriptures--but these people actually do not have enough to eat.  They often simply cannot eat on a given day for lack of food.  This is normal life for them, they often simply have nothing to eat.  One of these families felt the need to explain to us this week what was going on in their life--we had shown some surprise that they had no children.  They do have children they told us, four or five of them between them, but those children have been sent away to live with relatives that can provide food for them--not clothes, bikes, toys, or education--just food enough to live.  The parents, simply go hungry for days at a time.  They don't mourn or put on a particularly sad face--it is something to which they are accustomed.  I really had no idea about this until we started asking some specific questions.  We have other investigators that have other children in their homes ("children of the house", they are called) for this same reason; they are able to feed them while their parents are not.  So what do you do?  We cannot change the economy which has no industrial development and therefore no related employment opportunities.  As we visited people in preparation to leave for the states yesterday, we loaded up on rice and beans and took a week's supply to a a few people in particular need.  We are so very aware and afraid of creating dependency--but sometimes, you just have to give a starving person a piece of bread. 

On the other hand, there is no shortage of professional beggars here--one very pathetic woman came by the other day and explained that she hadn't eaten for a long time and just wanted some food.  I went to the bakery across the street and bought some bread and brought it back to her.  It turns out that she didn't want the bread but asked if we would just give her money instead.

A productive thing that we are doing, aside from saving their souls, is encouraging them to think of education as a way to step out of starvation. Some are interested, and we help them get into schools and other training courses. Others really are not enamored of the idea of effort as a path out of poverty. It is a fascinating place we live.

We discovered this yesterday and were fascinated.  Kids carve a little "top" out of wood (or perhaps it is a type of nut or seed).  Then with a stick with string attached to the top, the whip the little top.  The string catches it and gets it spinning and by continued whipping the top continues to spin.

Here is newly arrived Elder Maynez for Arizona (background) with his companion Elder Petersen.  He does not look as shell shocked as some new missionaries do upon stepping off the plane in Quelimane.  He is already fluent in Spanish so I suspect is transition to Portuguese will proceed quickly.

Debbie and I have now left Quelimane (we left after church today where we had a record breaking 107 people in attendance, 27 of which could not fit in the chapel).  We are spending the night with our mission president in Maputo (adult English conversation--very nice for Debbie) and will get out tomorrow afternoon on a flight to Johannesburg and then the states.  It felt funny today to get on a plane for the first time in six months--after decades of very frequent airline travel.  Strangely, we are looking forward to a little interaction with family back in the states at my mother's funeral, but we are not feeling comfortable nor excited to be leaving Mozambique.  Miserable place though it may be in some ways, it is now home, we feel needed here and are having a great time.

1918--2012

My mother, Daphne Smart Osborn passed away today just a bit short of her 94th birthday.  I was able to chat with her a couple of days ago just before she lost consciousness.  Her passing was peaceful following a very very good and long life--leaving a posterity in numbers only slightly less than the sands of the sea. 

We expected mom to not live through our mission and said our in-person goodbyes as we left.  Though expected and welcomed, we still find this surprisingly painful.  Perhaps I will be more sympathetic now to the thousands of orphans of Mozambique, now that I am one of them.  After much thought, we have decided to travel to Salt Lake for her funeral and will leave after church on Sunday.  We confess that the thought of two and a half days of travel does not have much appeal.  We will be back on May 3rd.  If you are the mother of a young missionary in Quelimane and want to send a small (tiny) thing back with us to your son, contact us.



This is the Quelimane missionary district consisting of Elders Delgado, Homer, Barlow, McCullough, Petersen and Rios--and the Casal Osborn.  Very good missionaries, at least all of the young ones.  We really enjoy our association with these young men.  We parent them a little, but not too much and learn much from them.  We spend a fair amount of time together and really grow attached to them.

We were walking to a lesson today and passed this very friendly woman who greeted us. Debbie admired her beautiful baby (one month old) and she said, oh, I have another just like it inside, and showed us the first set of twins (above) that we have yet seen here. This is Veronika who also said she and her husband would like to hear our message. Veronica displays some attributes that are typical here, the first (and only one that I noticed) is her close cropped hair, which is immensely practical (and attractive if you have the head for it) and the other is cleavage--which is the norm here as far as the way women dress. Women like Veronika are not attempting to be provocative (though there is another element like that), just practical for the most part, as most women of her age seem to be nursing a child or two.

These boys are all playing the tire game, which we do not fully understand, but it consists of running through the streets and paths and alleyways using sticks to direct a tire in front of you at high speed.

Chameleons come from Mozambique.  But this is the very first one we have seen.  They are harmless but the local population believes that their bite will kill you immediately.  I nearly stepped on this one (and thus narrowly averted instant death).  We watched it for a few minutes and saw that it does indeed change color and pattern dramatically and quickly depending on the appearance of its surroundings.

Nothing at all of importance

The American understanding of the utility of the bicycle is sorely lacking.  We see bikes used to transport just about everything.  We recently saw a coffin balanced on the back and these not-too-small pigs are a good example of the livestock we have seen--and of course fitting four or five people is an easy task and relatively normal load.

We spent pday on the beach again and barbequed beef loin for sandwiches--they were excellent.  The wind was up, so there was no serious frizbee playing but we still had a good time.

Perhaps there are shrimp this size in the states, but we never saw them.  We bought a kilo from fisherman on the beach and brought them home with us for dinner tonight (over rice with peppers and sweet chilli sauce).  Very good.  Slowly, we are learning how to access the local food supply.  We had an investigator confront us today with an astounding fact that she had heard--that Americans do not consume "Chima", which is a ball made of corn meal dough.  We confessed that it was indeed absent from most American's daily diet--which she has promised to remedy on our next visit.  Chima is apprently held in the hand and dipped into a sauce for flavor.  It is a local favorite and apparently we will soon learn more about it.

The beef sandwiches were a great hit and we had two left over--which,being  testosterone-laden males, we decided to fight over.  The venue was a round robin tournement of sumo style wrestling (the winner is he who pushes his opponent out of the circle).  Despite my advanced age, I entered the fray and got to the final round against Elder Petersen (who wrestled in college before his mission) who overcame my tiny weight advantage by his obvious cheating.  I was certain that I would be achey and paralysed with back and knee pain the next morning but to my delight we were unscathed (though my ego is still a bit bruised).

This is a Bateleur, a type of eagle.  We see a few birds of prey, but not many.  We spotted this one on the dirt road from Marromeu.





Street art in Marromeau

We went to the small town of Marromeau this weekend to do some church work.  It is a town built next to a huge sugar factory at the end of the road, which is its reason for being.  There was a lot of community service type art work painted on cement walls.  So here is your health and history lesson for today.

Cholera still exists in Africa and is rampant during certain times of the year when
there is flooding.  This sign tells people not to "poop out in the open air" and
to use the bathroom.  The open air is a popular toilet, let me tell you!

This sign was at the local elementary school and I have seen similar ones in every
city.  It says that "using the latrine correctly keeps our school healthy."  It would be
hard to describe the smell here when I took the photo.

One of many signs concerning HIV or SIDA, as it is called in Mozambique.
This sign talks about getting information about preventing HIV from being
transferred from a mother to her baby.  Aids is rampant in this country.  The statistics,
which are high are still low because so much of it is un- reported.

.

This is a sign for a beauty salon.  We laugh every time we see one because
the models in the pictures are so ugly.  I don't know where they get the
body proportions.  Often they will have a picture of a very
ugly woman in her underwear inviting you in to get beautiful.

If only this were true.  There is more drinking here than I have seen anywhere in the world.
Pints of whiskey, gin, wine, and other hard liquors are available on every
corner.  You see children under 10 lugging cases of booze to their little shops.  It is
a huge problem here.

This is part of a scene showing the history of the area.  You can see
the slaves being whipped, working and part of village life.  In
the center was a big painting of a preacher with gold necklaces on that
looked like a rap star.  I wish I knew the "rest of the story."

These two pictures are part of a display about mothers and children. The first
one tells people to bury or burn their trash.  The second one tells people
to wash their hands with water or ash.  I think this is part of the cholera prevention campaign, as well.

Fragments of our lives

We do not often succumb to the allure of technology here, but from time to time we will show a video to help us in our teaching.  It is always an exciting thing for most of the people who have never seen a computer before, nor a movie--and it helps them sometimes to grasp concepts in a different way than by just hearing our oral lessons (exciting though they undoubtedly are).  We brought our two new converts Edna and Aissa with us to this lesson to teach and befriend the 15 year old girl of this family.

Seated above are Edna, Neusa, and Aissa.  Neusa is a very impressive young woman who has outpaced her parents in her pursuit of the gospel message.  She described for us tonight the strange but energizing something that she always feels when we teach or she reads the book of Mormon.
As a side note, we took Edna and Aissa to dinner with us one night this week.  It was a pleasant evening with these two girls with whom we have grown close.  Edna explained to us, that it was the very first time, in her eighteen years that she had ever been in a restaurant. 

Neide, is 7 and has begun participating with her family in our lessons.  She also has a devastating smile.

You cant really see enough detail here, but this little girl is squirting utterly filthy water from her bottle into the teacup of her brother. It was quite cute.

Ines Mariana above is lugging in her hand a 12 pound Mozambican iron.  She and her husband, though they have not a speck of food in the home nor nothing but a single bench as furniture, always dress well with clean and freshly pressed clothing.  She has a beautiful smile, but is terribly shy--just beginning to warm up to Debbie and I after several weeks of teaching.  We like her and her pastor husband, but wonder if they are "getting" the width and breadth of the gospel message and the level of commitment and change that we are really talking about. 

The heating element for the clothes iron is the box within, into which is dropped charcoal--the same charcoal that they use to cook their meals. 

These frolicking rain-soaked unclad boys are part of a neighborhood soccer game.  Until the rains begin, everyone has clothes on.  I have made this picture low-res and smaller size to spare you details of the sight.  After one such more adult encounter today, Debbie claimed to be scarred (or at least profoundly affected) for life.

We had another "first" in Mozambican experiences today.  Going through a rain swollen pond in our path, we got stuck.  It was deeper and muddier that we had imagined and there was nothing we could do to move, even in 4 wheel drive.  It was something of a shock as we go offroad and into serious water several times a day and 4WD has never failed us--until today.  I hesitated briefly before sending Debbie out to push us out.  As I did, the four men pictured above waded out to us and lifted and pushed the truck back to terra firma.  We tipped them generously at about a dollar apiece and they kindly walked in front of us through the pool shown above, to show us a path that would not cover the windshield.  This pool was the second and shallower of this particular fine Qulimane road.

 We are leaving for some travel to distant cities in the morning--where phones have been down for days so we will not likely have email for a couple or three days.

 I must mention just one more "first" for the day.  We sat in a home this evening, Debbie and I were teaching a great lesson to a wonderful family, one who is working hard on their marriage documents so that they can join the church.  As I spoke to them, something wet and sticky dropped on my arm from the ceiling.  A very very fresh bit of rat poop.  I said a silent prayer of gratitude that it was I and not Debbie, who, though strong and steadfast in innumerable ways, would have screamed to high heaven, run out of the house, and sworn never to return.

33.3%

Today is the six month mark or 33.3% completion of our mission. It is a milestone of sorts as it marks only one year remaining here in Mozambique but the dmise of a prediction. My former boss, as I left the company, expressed his certainty that we would be back within six months. I don't believe that he intended it as a personal slight--more along the lines of "you will come to your senses by then". I am pleased to say that he was wrong. I thought that a little mid-term report might be appropriate on this day.

We live in a challenging place. Life is hard here in many ways. Quelimane is not filled with natural wonders nor frankly, much beauty. Perhaps the biggest challenge for us is a bit of loneliness. It is tough not having adult English conversation except for every six weeks when the mission president and his wife stop by (no slight to our six young missionaries intended as we do truly love our association with them). The food is OK here, and we can find enough, but it is a bit monotonous and from time to time, the thought of an Olive Garden, or Ruth's Chris Steakhouse or even Burger King or Pizza Hut, fills us with covetous thoughts.

But strangely, we live in fear that the new mission president (who begins in July) might change our assignment and put us elsewhere, doing other things--which we absolutely do not want at all. We love what we are doing here and the people we are teaching, helping and learning from. We see such a bright future for the church in Quelimane and are so pleased and even humbled to be a part of its genesis here. We would like to see it through its infancy and into early childhood at least. We will be pleased if we can stay here for another year (OK, I admit that one of us will be more pleased than the other).

We find that we didn't make any dramatic errors in our preparation to come. We generally brought the right things (though I did bring a polar fleece jacket that I will probably only wear on the airplane ride home--and not a second before that). We brought extra cash and an extra computer and few other non-essentials that have all since been stolen--so there seems to be a self correcting mechanism at play here. We didn't really have a clear vision of what we would be doing, but we find ourselves with the flexibility to sort of work out the detailed design of our position here--so we are not terribly surprised to find ourselves doing what we enjoy and what we are well suited to do. However, we didn't ever really expect to be teaching families one on one as we are doing now--but I have to admit that that it is such a delightful surprise to find ourselves with that opportunity (and yes, we still recognize that the young missionaries are much better at it than we are--but we have much more fun doing it). It really is a rich experience.

So in summary: so far so good. We are loving our mission experience, but not necessarily every moment of it--and the occasional murmuring word does indeed escape our lips. We try to not worry about the future, and the prospect of having to find work again. Those thoughts arise and it is not all that hard to banish them for weeks at a time. We miss our children and grand children and are grateful to have the periodic skype call with them and with other family and friends. Ain't technology wonderful? Feel free to brighten our day with a call to "akosborns" if the inclination ever arises.

The bugs really do get quite large here. This was about six inches long and our guard says that it was a small one. I have always hated grasshoppers and am disappointed to find them in Africa.

This is the mid-day custom: find some shade and sleep. We admit to doing the very same thing--but with air conditioning. Today was unbearably hot and humid. We have no chickens for our occasional naps.

TW3

In the sixties, there was a television show entitled "That Was The Week That Was" and nicknamed TW3. Herewith is a bit of a review of recent happenings in our neck of the woods.

We heard today that Anchorage just surpassed the all time record for snowfall this winter. We were happy to have missed that.

Our new guard team. Nikko for the night (he is bigger and stronger and brighter) and Gildinho for the day. They were very pleased that I gave them machetes for weapons. We do not actually expect that they will do muchfighting to protect our lives--but we have hopes that they will scream loudly as they run away at the first sign of danger.

I promise that it was Debbie who focused the camera in on this woman's backside. It is covered by a capulana made especiallyfor the celebration yesterday of Day of Women. It features a portrait of Josina Machel, a revolutionary war hero (began 41 years ago) which would make her a communist. It was the communist revolution here which threw off Portuguese rule and abuse--there followed many painful and destructive years of civil war to throw out the communists. Mozambique enjoys relative political stability for now Please note the woman above is wearing Chinese-made flip flops, which are worn by 80% of the people.

Sometimes I complain a little of how crowded it gets when we transport all six young missionaries in our truck. This truck is the same size and is holding about 33 in the bed.

Tonight we went with Elder Barlow and Home and taught the family of Amizade and Lourdes how to hold a family home evening My "concentration" game with original osborn artwork was a great success. We enjoy Amizade a great deal--particularly his efforts to learn everything and implement every single gospel principle and church practice into the life of his family. At the start of our meeting we had six adults and three children present--for a total of 9.

By the close of our FHE, we had, by actual count, a total of 21 neighbor children participating, for a total of 30 in attendance.

After FHE we had our very first home cooked Mozambican dinner at the home of Amizade and Lourdes. They made an effort to keep it pretty mild for us--the only real weird thing is the green slime pictured above which is called Matapa. It is made of pounded manioc leaves and is a sauce to put over rice and other things. It looked disgusting but really did not taste bad at all. The fact that sister osborn excused herself briefly from the meal to go throw up, should not reflect poorly on the evening (yes really). We brought fresh squeezed lemonade for all to avoid any question of drinking water from their well.

Speaking of which, there is a lot of sickness these days among the poor because of contaminated drinking water--brought about by the recent heavy rains and runoff. The picture below is what standing water looks like after sitting for a day or two--lots of algae growth.

Many had their heart strings tugged at in Debbie's recent post regarding the hearing aids. We continue to get more non-functioning hearing aids given to us--the word has gotten out some how. I have learned a bit in the last week or so. They need lots of batteries to keep them going. And the average person in Mozambique cannot buy batteries. So it is something of an impossible situation. We may yet decide to buy a bunch of batteries to give these people (and some of you have offerred to help) some time with a functioning apparatus--but I'm not positive that that temporary assistance will be a good thing for them. It is hard to know what to do to help. I have spoken with the Starkey Foundation, an American manufacturer who supplied these hearing aids in a local effort a couple of years ago--but they don't seem to be focused on maintaining the long-term usefulness of the product too much. To thier credit, they distribute hundreds of thousands of units world wide to the poor--but I am struggling to understand the long term benefit if they quickly cease to function.



How can people go hungry when there are sources of protein like this around? Our snails are about six inches long.

Can You Hear Me Now?

    We have come across some interesting young men.  One of the young men pictured below (in the blue plaid shirt) is named Machave and is the son of Ines, one of our members.  You might remember her as the industrious women who did the logging project.  As a toddler, her son fell ill and became deaf as a result.  He is a teenager and very frustrated with school.  He has to walk about 1.5 hours each way to and from school each day.  It is a special school for the deaf.  Since he missed the formative years in school because of being ill, he cannot read well.  And there is no help for him at school with this problem.  His mother tells us that he weeps most days when he gets home for lunch, because his legs are so tired from the walk.  It really is a long way.  She says she holds him and comforts him until he regains enough strength to eat lunch.  You can imagine this story breaks my heart.  There is no public transportation except a bike taxi which they cannot afford.
     She told us one day that he has some hearing aids form a clinic years ago, that do not work.  We asked to see them.  They had a company name on them, so we thought we would see what help we could get.  It is called the Starkey Foundation. We finally got in touch with them and found them to be not all that helpful.  They found in their files, dates of clinics in Mozambique in 2009 and 2010.  They want us to ship them the hearing aids and they will repair them and then we must find someone or some way to bring them back to Mozambique. This would probably be through  DHL, for hundreds of dollars.. He felt sure that someone from our church went back and forth from the US to Mozambique all of the time.  And, as he pointed out, this isn't an emergency or anything.  He was hard to deal with.
     To my surprise, each Sunday for the last two weeks, this young man has arrived one hour early to church with several friends.  They all dig into their pockets and hand me their hearing aids, hoping we can get them to work again.  Today we saw him walking home from school and he pulled out another handful of several hearing aids from his backpack.  To us, they look like they simply need a battery.  Could it be that simple?  A couple are broken, but not many.  We are frustrated that this clinic was held, but that there is no way for the devices to continue working without new batteries.  It reminds us of too many projects we see and hear about that cannot sustain themselves.
     We will continue to research this, but I am amazed that these boys sit through hours of church and seem to enjoy it.  They don't really read lips, but I am learning much about the language of the spirit, which needs no translation.  They group of three boys below are close friends and wanted a special picture together.  Every day we see needs and just pray for discernment in what to care about and what we must not worry about.  That is easier said than done.  These boys are big on my "to care" list.