We enjoyed attending the Debre Zeyit Branch on Sunday.  Everyone in the branch speaks Amharic (and some also speak Oromia too) so ALL the meetings are in Amharic!  We didn't want to make a big deal the first Sunday we moved here, but we DO hope to find someone to translate for us in the future!

(The only thing translated was MY testimony, which they translated into Amharic!!)  I played the keyboard for Primary.  The Primary children ALWAYS want to sing "I Am a Child of God" and "The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning"!!  They learned "A Child's Prayer" when I was in there 2 weeks ago and they love that too.  I also played for Relief Society and that was the first time they have sung in RS!  They just got a new keyboard from SLC!  I also played for the Baptism of a young single adult, which was held after the block.    Elder Wold enjoyed attending the young adult Sunday School class and met with the young men in Priesthood meeting. (They could clue him in on what was going on.)

We are helping with a YM/YW Activity all day this Saturday, then we will start our Book of Mormon Institute Class at 4:00 pm. It will be held every Saturday.  I have also been asked to teach keyboard lessons and also teach the Relief Society sisters how to use the sewing machine they just received.  The NEW RS Pres. and the Branch Pres. also want me to help organize Relief Society, do the music and teach some of the lessons.  We are excited to be so needed here!! 

We invited the four elders serving here in Debre Zeyit to come over for pudding (no oven yet) and to watch some of Conference Sunday night.  We are 10 hours ahead so could have watched the Sunday AM session live but it was almost impossible.  The internet would cut out EVERY few seconds.... so we watched a few great talks from the Saturday afternoon session.

We have been working hard on our house ~ scraping paint from the floors, washing walls, peeling paper off the ceiling, etc., etc... (Each section of the ceiling panels was covered with a film of paper and almost HALF of them still had the paper half on and hanging down!?!?! )

Every time we drive down the main road in Debre Zeyit around noon or 5:00 pm we see hundreds of students at the high school across from our Debre Zeyit Chapel, walking from school in their LAVENDER school uniforms!  I finally got a picture of some of them today when we went to deliver three packages to the elders at the Church.

I had to get a picture of the WELCOME mat in 
front of a supermarket we went to yesterday.  
We get a big kick out of signs and menus 
here....  Ü

While we were waiting at the Church for the
Elders to come from lunch, Meheret and
Gebrela came out of their Seminary class, which is
held from 11:00 - 12:00.  Their school day is from
1:00 to 5:00 pm. These are their uniforms.

Some of the hundreds of students in their purple uniforms

Would OUR sons have worn lavender EVERY day in high school!?!?!

I JUST now took this of Elder Wold 
on our balcony peeling paper off the 
panels of the ceiling.

These bajas (small taxis) are ALL OVER the roads in 
Debre Zeyit!! Along with horse drawn wagons 
EVERYWHERE!! With hundreds of people walking 
every which way too, you have to CONSTANTLY be 
on the lookout for the unexpected!

There are NO closets or cupboards in our whole house (except for  in the
kitchen,so we bought these two wardrobes for our clothes, shoes, etc... ALL
four Elders , Andualem,  and  Elder Preator and Elder Wold tried and tried to
get them up the stairs to our bedroom but with no luck!! : /  SOOO ~ our
clothes and our underwear are down in the kitchen!!  (It was the ONLY place
we had an empty wall with enough space!!!!  That has been interesting!!  Ü