Day of Service Africa Style

     Saturday, August 18, was the official day of service for church members throughout Africa.  Branches through out many countries had been preparing service projects and alerting local media to these projects.  Our group in Quelimane is small and we were not able to do a project.  But this was our weekend in Nampula, up north, and we were so excited to meet at the church at 7am on Saturday to help with the service project cleaning at a local hospital. There were about 55 members working on Saturday.We were so impressed with the organization of the project.  The branch had ordered a chapa (mini-bus) that was, in true Africa form, quite late.  So Elder Osborn took a truck load of youth and supplies over first and then another car load went with the YW president and then the chapa came.  We sent a youth to the market to buy a bunch of hand brooms for 5mt. each to sweep the dust in front of the hospital.  That is about 20cents per broom.
     We cleaned outside the entire hospital, sweeping, edging, weeding flower boxes, picking up trash and washing the floor in the chapel.  Some of the more interesting things found in the clean-up were a melted hearing aid, tons of peppermint wrappers (hospital treats) whiskey bottles, prescription forms, insulin bottles, hospital dressings and a mighty big syringe!  Everyone was in a great mood and the administrator gave a little thank-you talk to us when we were done.  A local reporter had received the news announcement from the church and came over to talk to the leaders about the project.  When we were back at the church having some light refreshments, a radio show reporter came and interviewed Toby, which was a surprise, but quite fun.  We praised the branch members high and low for their participation in the great day of service that was held through out Africa.  Perhaps next year, Quelimane will be able to participate as well.


The whole group inside the foyer of the hospital; it used to be a Catholic church.



Everyday in Mozambique you see people sweeping dirt.  It goes make things
cleaner, but I marvel at doing the same thing over and over again with the same dirt.

The trash brigade.

The branch members brought the mops and brooms used to clean the church to this project.

These brethren were working hard, but wanted to pose for the camera.  Africans
just love to have their picture taken!!



We brought our zone leaders, Elder Steel and Elder Gibson with us.  The Nampula Elders
are Elder Bradford, Elder D'Olivera, Elder Paxman and Elder Bigelow.