Moving day for the elders in the mission office apartment.  Their old apartment will be demolished and a new mission home will be built in its place.  Moved them to an apartment in downtown Freetown.  Front to back, left to right:   Elder Esiaba, Elder Baffoe-Appia, Elder Adah, Elder Burton, Elder Sumrak and Elder Ekbo.  

Elder Sitati's visit to the Freetown and Freetown East zone conference in September.

 Say hello to Garry the kitchen gecko.

Sister Roggia has Gary with one R in her kitchen.  We have his cousin Garry with two Rs.  He is very shy and only comes out in the dark.  He is also camera shy.  When we turn on the lights and enter the room he dives into a crack behind the wall air conditioner.

Replacing a generator at the mission home.  It takes lots of people ... all talking very fast at the same time very loudly.  They got it done with no smashed toes or fingers and each left with a big smile on his face.

 Shopping for oatmeal and beans at our local Safeway.

 Political rallies today.  Green leaves on the okada for the green party.

Little girl loaded with buckets on her way down to the stream.  Don't know how she's going to get them back.

 Making little rocks out of big rocks is a common occupation.  First you dig it up.  Then you set a fire on top of it with tin on top to hold in the heat.  Then you go to work with a sledge hammer.

 I asked if I could try.  She thought it was funny.

  This lady asked me to take her hammer for a while.  She said I was hitting too hard and breaking the rock too small.  I felt so inadequate.

Raised garden.  Looks like sweet potato.  They eat the leaves as well as the root.

 Puppy pile on a sand pile.

He has a Western Alaska Council patch on his scout uniform.  I asked if he knew where Alaska was.  He didn't.

We ran into Boy Scout Area 9 Troop.  They have girls in the troop.  On a day hike.  The scoutmaster told me how they started Lord Baden Powell's scout program in Sierra Leone in 1964.

African flower.

Another African flower.

Marlene making her first whole wheat bread.  It was delicious.

Here's a video showing a bit of what it's like in downtown Freetown.

We have big diesel generators at the mission office and at the mission home.  This is an old three-cylinder one that Brother Wilson (on the left) is rebuilding.  He pulled it apart and put it back together again with a new piston, new rings and a new head gasket in less than three hours with nothing but a couple of socket wrenches and a screwdriver.  It's amazing to see how people get by here without the right tools.