General Conference

Just so you know, this is a religious post.

We finally got to watch General Conference. After a month, the branch receives the CDs and we watch it together on a Saturday and Sunday at the church.

The primary planned an activity for the children on the same Saturday so we got to watch without distraction. We took a short break in between sessions to eat a meal so kindly prepared by the sisters. I am repeatedly impressed with how willing these members are to serve.

You know when people say "my heart is full"? By the end of the first session, I realized that my throat felt "all choked up" and my "heart felt full." Every word of President Uchtdorf's talk rang true to me. His talk was just saturated with truth.

I had been talking with a lady who is a Seventh Day Adventist last week about similarities and differences between our religions. I began to feel discouraged slightly thinking how inadequate/incompetent I am in explaining the gospel in a secular way. I don't know how to testify of the truth that I know when people are not searching.

I mean, when I teach a lesson or bear my testimony in sacrament meeting, I feel like I'm given the right words to explain appropriately and accurately what I feel/know. But when people don't really care to know the truth, there's no power behind my words. It's a little frustrating.

I thought, how BOLD it is for us to claim we are the only church that has the complete truth restored by Christ in the SAME way as it was established when he was alive on the earth with the SAME priesthood authority. I mean, it sounds CRAZY! The lady I was talking to agreed. And it IS a bold claim! But as I listened to President Uchtdorf's talk, I felt the Holy Spirit strongly confirm again to me that IT'S TRUE!!

Hunter used to ask people on his mission when they were feeling the Spirit for the first time bear witness of the what he was teaching, "Do you think that if what I was teaching you were not true that Heavenly Father would allow you to feel this good feeling?" Each time, they would say "No." The fact is, (which fact can't be observed by the physical senses) if none of this were true, I would not have felt the Spirit testifying of the truth in EVERY general conference and EVERY testimony meeting and EVERY baptism. If a person is earnestly searching for the truth, they WILL find it here in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!

Crazy Kids

Look what I found the other day:

Want To See Kenya?

While riding on matatus you will hear some interesting music. Most of it is hip hop stuff and occasionally you hear a some real deep reggae. I quickly took a liking to one song in particular by an artist named Juliani. The song is in Kiswahili but is still catchy even if you can't understand it. So I looked up the music video on YouTube and found it to be an awesome overview of the people and places we see everyday here. It even features Moi Avenue which is where the Mormon Church we attend is located. So here it is. Turn up the music and enjoy:

My Walk To Work

My office is pretty close to home. It's nice. See the people, tuk tuks, and matatus on the way from my front gate to the office.

Still Had A HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I hadn't planned to make any costumes this year, but I woke up on Halloween morning and I felt that sudden spark of creativity and motivation to AT LEAST come up with SOMETHING for Reyna. Poor thing--I can't NOT dress up my ONLY daughter on her very first Halloween! And one hand-me-down kimono, one headband, one black sock and one twist tie later, this is what I came up with.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She is SO STINKIN' CUTE!!!!!!!!!

I realized, this is why I do it! I like to google over how precious my kids look in their costumes and yip and yap and sound like a complete fool while trying to get my babies to "SMILE FOR THE CAMERA!!!!" So glad I did it.

The boys were cute. I bought candy for the first time at the store. I discovered that they have Mars bars and Smarties like the ones in Canada. I bought just a few candies for each boy, and then we had them trick-or-treat in our house to the different bedrooms. Haha!

Daddy came home a little early and brought pumpkins with him. I guess it took quite a bit of effort for him to find them. The kids had fun carving. Our landlord and Lenik were excited to see them on our doorstep.

Then Daddy treated us to this AWESOME fried chicken place owned by an Egyptian guy from Saudi Arabia. Seriously, like just as good as Roscoe's Chicken n' Waffles from Pasadena. EXCELLENT fried chicken. And I liked their fries, too. Actually crisp and tasty, the way fries are supposed to be. They even had coleslaw. Then to top off our lovely meal, Hunter took a scoop of what LOOKED like pudding for dessert….it wasn't pudding. It was garlic creamy stuff that maybe we were supposed to dip our chicken in. Hahahahaha! He discreetly spat it out into a napkin and took it like a man. Oh so hilarious! It was kinda expensive, but it was nice to celebrate the holiday together. They even had a TV inside playing Tom n' Jerry and Garfield Halloween episodes, so the kids were able to feel like we weren't the ONLY ones celebrating. :)

Alright, I'll let you go ahead and scroll back to that picture of Reyna now. Oh my goodness! It's too much for me!