Camels, Birr and Sim Cards

This is what a typical street and our walk looks like as we are out knocking on doors every day.

Hello everyone! Hope you’re all staying safe and had an amazing Halloween! Time is moving by fast, at least most days it feels like that. I'm starting to really miss music hahahah. But my week was good! No jail time, so that’s a plus! Here's what happened with my week. I’m going to start from Tuesday and move forward because I put the 27^th on last week’s BLOG post.

October 28 

It was a pretty normal day. Some lessons, but barely any finding. (Finding is what it sounds like, finding people who are interested in listening to our message.)  We had a good group correlation meeting.  We were talking about how to get numbers up. We said we needed to call our members and people, which was hard cause you know jail. but. On the way back from the correlation meeting, we saw the guard who escorted us, and it was pretty funny. I think we will be flashing back to jail time until I leave this area.

October 29 

Today was good and hard. We had a surprise that the AP's wanted to do an exchange with our trainers, which meant only greenies around. My spirits were low, trying to talk to people and trying to share our message. Mostly, because with our trainers gone, that left us two missionaries who really don’t speak very good Amharic. It made me question what I was even doing here. I’m not going to lie, it was a rough day. But the work goes on. We taught family home evening tonight to a family that are members and had some people who are interested in coming to church. 

Elder Hutchinson and I. We both got to Ethiopia at the same time and are District Leaders. But our trainers have been away for 2 days to fulfill their Zone Leader responsibilities.

October 30

I’m not going to write about this day, it was just hard, and I was complaining in my journal. No need for anyone else to listen to this. It is hard not to be with our trainers.  Today we were knocking on doors, and I can understand enough that when we were leaving someone’s home, the woman said to her friend.  “He is Ethiopian, but his Amharic is not good.”  Our trainers are still gone. Some of you have asked about where we live. I have taken a video tour of our place. It is VERY nice. One thing to remember is there is not a lot of mid-level accommodations here. We are very fortunate. We even have a washer in our home, but no dryer.

Apartment Tour.

October 31

Happy Halloween! One of my favorite holidays of the year! I love the weather! But sadly, none of that is in Ethiopia.  So off I went to do some more work, which is totally fine, I’ll have spooky season in my heart! The work was a little hard because our SIM cards went out, so we couldn't really contact people so that was interesting. The office pays the bills for the SIM cards, and apparently, they forgot about renewing our SIM cards, so our phones stopped working.   Still a good day!

The Streets of Adama

November 1 

And just like that... another month gone. Sooner or later, the transfer will be over! Our service on our phones came back. We had to buy it, and it was like a dollar USD. One thing that has been interesting is that I have heard how missionaries in other areas must really be careful and not spend any money, because they will run out of money. However, I have not really had that problem.  Things here are so inexpensive by US standards, and we seem to have enough money for all our needs.  We are not extravagant, but our money seems to go far.  We find somewhere to eat out every day, and we buy our groceries at little souks (small on the side of the road stand and very small stores). We ended up going to teach this guy named Robson. His English is pretty good. But what I didn’t know is that we would be crashing a wedding, hahahaha. I have no idea whose wedding it was.  I think Robson was the brother of the bride and invited us. So yeah, we went to a wedding, and it was fun.  We visited with some of the people there and just ate food and talked.

  Sunset in Adama. The blue cars are the Bajas. (Taxi's)

November 2

Good Sunday today! I played piano and it was testimony meeting. It was really nice! I could understand people (mostly), but we taught primary afterwards and then just went and visited with people. A guy named Kenbor, whom we are teaching, came today! It was good to see him! We ate dinner with him that night, and we will see if he keeps going! He and his family are Ethiopian Orthodox and very active in their church.  The Ethiopian Orthodox church is an ancient religion that dates back to Christ’s time, and most people are members of this faith, and they are very devout. Kenbor’s family is no exception.  But it was a good day! 

November 3

Pday (today) 

I've slept, and we had to get gas today, which took a while, and a guy tried to scam us. We were getting gas for the stove in our house. It ran out, and as DL, that’s my responsibility to do. We had to charter a Baja, which are everywhere in Ethiopia. A baja is how you get from one city to the next, like a taxi; most are blue and small.  He tried to scam us because we told him we would only pay 300 birr for the whole trip to get gas and to be with us for about an hour.  This would be equivalent to about $2 US. He agreed, but when he saw we paid for the gas with 3500 birr ($23 USD), he said it was only one way. We then had to renegotiate, and we agreed on 500 birr total, which isn't bad, but also, he went back on his promise. We saw camels, see my pictures!!!!! That was fun. 

See ya next week, 

ቻው! Elder Frasier