Sand getting low in the hourglass

The above video is the Catholic Palm Sunday precession down the main street of Marromeu--directly in front of our church there.  Very colorful and I enjoyed the singing.  It is not a hard thing in Mozambique to come up with palm fronds for this celebration, but I do wonder how my Catholic friend Kelly does this in the icy streets of Fairbanks in March. 
 We (obviously) travelled to Marromeu this past weekend.  Our farewell visit.  I guess it wasn't "we", as Debbie is still stateside.  We have been going there for the last eighteen months and have grown fond of that very out of the way place and its people.  I gave training to members on Saturday (temple preparation), spoke in church on Sunday (repentance) and then spoke to the women of Marromeu in Relief Society (giving the the key to happiness and success--you can buy my book on the subject in a few months).  They are pictured below. It is an interesting group in that all of them speak the local dialect of Sena, and some speak no Portuguese--so I asked someone to translate for me and I simplified my remarks and got the group involved.  I could have sworn that the entire group was breastfeeding babies during my lesson, but counting the babies in the picture, perhaps I am exaggerating the number of breasts I was trying to ignore.

These are the principal non-african women of my life. Left to right, they are: youngest daughter Andrea, eldest Eliana, bride Sister Osborn, and middle daughter Liz.  Debbie has been having a good time with them.  Debbie was more than pleased to get her hair done by someone more competent than I .

Making a visit to a member this evening, I spied these two young children very high up in a palm tree--doing what, I have no idea.

We are putting in a second bathroom for the members right outside the chapel.  The line gets a bit long on Sundays sometimes.  We hired our investigator JoJo to paint (he actually did a very good and careful job). in order to earn money for marriage.  JoJo is an interesting case.  he and his wife are somewhat motivated to get their marriage legalized as they swore off intimate relations when we taught them concerning chastity and marriage--not surprisingly, I notice him working the issue harder than she. 

These are the fine young missionaries of Quelimane, Elders Seoane, Kelly, Bradford, and Guanuna.  I almost hit Elder Guanuna last night when he asked me: "so what's your deal, were you called like REAL missionaries?"  I tried to explain to him that yes, we sort of felt like we were real missionaries. These days there have been a lot of malaria cases, some quite serious, among the missionaries in Maputo down south, but here, which is the malaria capital, we have been free for some time.