Leaders visited - Primary - Testimony in Amharic - Driving Ethiopia

Elder Giraud-Carrier (from France), councilor in our Africa Central Area and Elder Balilemwa came to visit Ethiopia for the first time. He had all the couples introduce themselves and tell about ourselves. Then he shared with us the importance of senior couples and that sometimes we won't ever realize the difference our example makes in someone's life. This picture was after a nice pot-luck dinner. Guess what food I brought?

Elder Giraud-Carrier and Elder Balilemwa (area seventy) from Tanzania spoke to many of us missionaries for a special event. Elder Balilemwa said "to be a missionary is a privilege." And Elder Giraud-Carrier said, "You are here because the Lord wants you to be here." Sometimes serving a mission is not easy, but what other mission or adventure in life would be better than serving with the Lord? We have seen and felt his hand in Ethiopia. It is truly a privilege to be here!

Elder Giraud-Carrier spoke in General Conference last October for the first time. He gave an amazing talk I love about how people often look on the outward appearance but God looks at our heart. 

link...  We Are His Children

I enjoyed leading the discussion with this talk in Elder's Quorum last year. 

It's just so good about how people often look at the outward appearance of others, but God looks at the heart. I feel the spirit so strong when reading this talk, I am convinced we need to use this talk again. Even the Prophet Samuel at first thought one of the other sons of Jesse should be the next King. 

 

When I teach this talk again, I'm going to add the children's story version of Samuel the Prophet choosing the new King, David.   Link... "Young David"

 They also attended our sacrament, fast and testimony meeting at University Branch. Sunday school pic.

Elder Giraud-Carrier gave some insights during our Sunday School, "Come Follow Me" discussion that was interesting as we discussed the dangers of "Pride." He said sometimes members get too prideful when they get higher college degrees or earn more money than others and sometimes poor members can have pride when they envy others. 

Everyone agreed that we need to focus on our Rock, Jesus Christ and listen to him and read his teachings.

Some great scriptures were quoted such as Helaman 5:12 and 2 Nephi 9: 28-29

I went and took this quick picture of Sister Martin in Primary class.  

This time, Sister Martin had children from 1 to 13 years old. 

I created this coloring page for Sister Martin's Primary class, celebrating our Prophet, President Russell M. Nelson's 100th birthday.

We bore our testimony in Amharic language for the first time at district meeting.

The District Leader challenged us to do it so we did our best. Mine was fairly broken Amharic but I resisted the urge to mix in English and just use the words I've learned. 

Elder Hogan. His Amharic is very good. He was born in Ethiopia, but was adopted and grew up in Utah. 

                                    Elder George, Elder Lee, Elder Dueba

Directly translated back to English, it probably sounds something like this, "Book of Mormon, true, I know. (verbs are always at the end)

"Jesus Christ, resurrected. Jesus Christ is here (lives). In Jesus Christ's name, Amen."

Driving is sometimes so crazy here. Check out this picture. Do you see anything wrong here? Can you imagine driving at night with no warning of what's ahead?

I recently hired a driver to take some of the stress off driving.