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.

Elder Lauritzen with Elder Hales and Elder Richards of Hill Station. Elder Richards is from West Jordan and is in the same stake as Jon and Janie Lauritzen.  Elder Hales (Spanish Fork) knows Nic and Ryan. Their apartment is a couple of blocks down the hill from us.  Elder Hales had received a package from home and we brought it to the mission home so he could pick it up.  They are teaching us how to get the best prices from street vendors and have promised to teach us how to cook pumpkin soup.  We served them a drink in a glass and Elder Hales said, "What's this?"  He was referring to the "glass" not the drink.

Yesterday when we came to the office the guard showed us this bird.  It's a blue jack.  Apparently it hit an office window and was unable to fly.  The guard tied a string on its foot so he could keep it long enough to show us.  After I took the photo he took off the string and the bird flew away as fast as he could.

 Time to get fuel for the mission home generator.  We couldn't find anyone to deliver and we were getting desperate.  Then we found Zion Service ... no kidding.  In God We Trust is their slogan and they deliver.  We consider them a bit of a miracle.  Six men came in two trucks with 90 five-gallon jugs full of diesel.

 Up the ladder to the fuel tank.

The most impressive part of the operation was the home-made funnel they brought with them.  It was huge!  Most of the time two men were emptying jugs into the funnel at the same time.  The tank is full now and we are good to go for another month.  The bill was over 9 million leones (about $2,000).  That's expensive but the generator is the only source of electricity at the mission home.