I wrote a letter a couple of days ago and then lost it all as the internet was too slow to send it. I will try again.
All is well here. Lots to do. It seems like some days we run around and don't get a lot accomplished but are busy doing necessary errands. We spent Sunday in Kadoma at their meeting and then Sunday night we ladies went to the church here to hear the Women's broadcast, however, it wasn't working right so we missed it. Instead Sis. Sharon Spencer led them in some singing of hymns and I played the piano. She is a really good chorister and everyone enjoyed the time singing. They really love to sing here and do a good job of it.
Seka got back to Harare on Sunday afternoon and came here Monday morning. We called Bishop Spencer (who gave him a job at his grocery store) and he said for him to be there at noon. Since we had a couple of hours we taught him the first discussion and he was frantically
taking notes the whole time. He is so eager to learn all he can. He has been searching for the truth for several years. He is so happy to be here. He just can't thank us enough. His baptism will be a 'great' day. He will be such a great member of the church here in Africa and a tremendous leader.
A few days ago we met one of Merci's friends and Elder Bullock gave her a Book of Mormon and explained a little about it. (We have a B of M loan program where we loan the book for 3 days and then get back with them). She called today to ask if she could keep the book a couple more days and that she would then like to meet with us because she has some questions. Of course we were happy to agree to that and look forward to seeing her soon.
Out in Epworth, we met a barber and his wife and son. He has a small concrete pad on the side of the street where he has his barber shop (an old table chair). He has a car battery that runs the clippers. He also charges cell phones with the car battery ($1.00/charge). We met the barber first and gave him a B of M. When we went back the son, Prince, was reading it too so we gave him his own copy. The barber also wanted us to meet his wife - she is a very nice lady and is hoping we can get her husband to stop drinking alcohol. We told them where church was and they have been a couple of times and have had a discussion or two. We referred them to the elders to be taught. Anyway, the elders told us today that Prince (he's about 16 yrs. old I think) told them that they are holding up his progress. He wants to be a missionary. I guess they will have to speed up the teaching for him. :) We need to get out and visit with them.
We took a bunch of cabbages and onions to Bishop Spencer's grocery store and he bought them to sell in the store. Glad to have that done. Each week we deliver 10 Kg. of tomatoes to the Hamburger Hut and also 20 big bunches of spinach to a restaurant called Mama Mia's. Huseni is taking good care of the garden and green house but after this growing season we are likely going to turn the whole garden area over to be 'priesthood' run by the Highlands ward. They mentioned that they may keep Huseni on as a gardener to take care of things. We have a meeting coming up to discuss all this.
The weather here is getting hot - they tell us October will be the hottest month. Last night there was some lightning in the sky but no rain here. Apparently there was some in a couple of areas though. It is really dry - as it is the dry season still. Lots of sunshine everyday and sometimes a bit of a breeze.
We have our water tanks working now so we are finally getting a shower/bath. We really do appreciate having that!!!! What a wonderful luxury.
I'm still having trouble sending photos through for the blog but will send as I can.
Hope everyone is doing well.
Love to all, Elder/Sister Bullock
Showing posts with label Garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Garden. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Wednesday Aug. 9th -- 09/09/09
Hi everyone, Just a quick update. We are selling some vegetables from the garden now - 2 cabbages/$1.00, Tomatoes $.80/kg., 8 onions/$1.00. The restaurant down the street buys all the spinach and now a place called "Hamburger Hut" buys a lot of the tomatoes. (Note: the hamburgers are gross but they have some other things that look tasty).
Last evening we went with Wellington to the Celebration Center to a meeting of different church leaders and some others as well I think. They talked about uniting in the cause for Zimbabwe. They talked about what we can do for the destiny of the nation and feel that men
of God can change things. It was mentioned that if people would pay their tithes the Lord would bless them. One speaker said, "Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa but now it is the basket case of Africa". Their goal to to try and feed the nation in 2009 & 2010 regardless of the President and ministers of the country. The main focus is on "Farming God's Way" which basically means to teach the people to stop burning their fields etc. and compost instead. Instead of digging/plowing the fields they dig holes, put in some compost material, put a little dirt on top and then plant their seeds. All this is generally done by hand and this new method would be less back-breaking work as well. The yield from this method increases dramatically. They don't seem to know much about composting here and think they need someone to give them fertilizer all the time.
They showed us a movie they had made about it. It was in Shona with English subtitles but it was hard to read the words as the background was too light. We got the idea though. I think it would be good to try and teach it to some of our rural pastors who are going to be planting corn maize next month.
Today we went out and checked on Emmanuel's little family. We took them some rubber gloves (that mom sent with us) and 4 candles. She is going to have the baby any minute!! He is staying close to home. The wife doesn't know a lot of English but Emmanuel's is really good. We hope they may want to hear the gospel one day.
The weather feels warm today - almost hot. We decided it is time to take the flannel sheets off the bed and go back to regular ones. Beauty is at the flat today doing that. She even irons our sheets (we told her she didn't need to but she still does). She does a good job. We did get a hose pipe (garden hose) for her as neighbors were not letting her always use the communal one so now she can fill the washing machine with that instead of having to haul the water in buckets. (The washer and dryer are outside, on the side of our flats, enclosed in locked cage. The water comes from the borehole (well) since we have no municipal water still (well we did get enough for 2 toilet flushes this week). We aren't complaining though because we have not had any power cuts for 8 days now and that is really great!!!
Yesterday we took some school kits out to two primary schools that don't have a lot of kids (as we don't have enough school kits to hand out at a large school). Pastor Sikyani took us. He is one of our favorite pastors as he is so humble and honest. He asked if we wanted to arrange to go with him by ox-cart one day to take some things to some of his people that cannot be reached by vehicle. I think I want to more than Elder Bullock but we are going to do that. :) He said
it is about 45 - 60 minutes one way. There are 60 children there that could use some clothes and school kits or whatever we can take. We will try and do that late in the month after our Marondera Branch conference is done. Should be an interesting experience!!!
Sikyani's primary school by his house
I better get back to work. Hope everyone is fine.
Love, Elder and Sister Bullock
Last evening we went with Wellington to the Celebration Center to a meeting of different church leaders and some others as well I think. They talked about uniting in the cause for Zimbabwe. They talked about what we can do for the destiny of the nation and feel that men
of God can change things. It was mentioned that if people would pay their tithes the Lord would bless them. One speaker said, "Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa but now it is the basket case of Africa". Their goal to to try and feed the nation in 2009 & 2010 regardless of the President and ministers of the country. The main focus is on "Farming God's Way" which basically means to teach the people to stop burning their fields etc. and compost instead. Instead of digging/plowing the fields they dig holes, put in some compost material, put a little dirt on top and then plant their seeds. All this is generally done by hand and this new method would be less back-breaking work as well. The yield from this method increases dramatically. They don't seem to know much about composting here and think they need someone to give them fertilizer all the time.
They showed us a movie they had made about it. It was in Shona with English subtitles but it was hard to read the words as the background was too light. We got the idea though. I think it would be good to try and teach it to some of our rural pastors who are going to be planting corn maize next month.
Today we went out and checked on Emmanuel's little family. We took them some rubber gloves (that mom sent with us) and 4 candles. She is going to have the baby any minute!! He is staying close to home. The wife doesn't know a lot of English but Emmanuel's is really good. We hope they may want to hear the gospel one day.
The weather feels warm today - almost hot. We decided it is time to take the flannel sheets off the bed and go back to regular ones. Beauty is at the flat today doing that. She even irons our sheets (we told her she didn't need to but she still does). She does a good job. We did get a hose pipe (garden hose) for her as neighbors were not letting her always use the communal one so now she can fill the washing machine with that instead of having to haul the water in buckets. (The washer and dryer are outside, on the side of our flats, enclosed in locked cage. The water comes from the borehole (well) since we have no municipal water still (well we did get enough for 2 toilet flushes this week). We aren't complaining though because we have not had any power cuts for 8 days now and that is really great!!!
Yesterday we took some school kits out to two primary schools that don't have a lot of kids (as we don't have enough school kits to hand out at a large school). Pastor Sikyani took us. He is one of our favorite pastors as he is so humble and honest. He asked if we wanted to arrange to go with him by ox-cart one day to take some things to some of his people that cannot be reached by vehicle. I think I want to more than Elder Bullock but we are going to do that. :) He said
it is about 45 - 60 minutes one way. There are 60 children there that could use some clothes and school kits or whatever we can take. We will try and do that late in the month after our Marondera Branch conference is done. Should be an interesting experience!!!
Sikyani's primary school by his houseI better get back to work. Hope everyone is fine.
Love, Elder and Sister Bullock
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Good morning,
We are in the office most of the day today attempting to write us some projects that we have been working on: 2 grinding mills projects and a water project. We are slowly getting some of the information that we need. We may also go over to World Vision today and fill out the
paperwork so that we can go see Florence's child that she supports here in Bulawayo.
Several weeks ago we were driving by a congregation of Apostalic members having their meeting. They meet here, there and everywhere out in the open fields or under a tree. There are a lot of them here. They dress in white robes. Anyway we stopped for a couple of minutes
and the bishop (leader) of the group came over to our vehicle and invited us to join them but we declined. However, we did tell him who we are and gave him a Book of Mormon and our phone number. Last night we got a text message from him that he has read the book and he wants to meet with us and talk about it - we set that up for next Tuesday. Should be interesting.
Elder Bullock gave a B of M to a fellow he met at the vegetable store (FAVCO) last weekend and just called him. His cousin took the book because he was interested and so we told the fellow we would bring him another one today. We can buy some more apples while we are there - the
ones we bought on the weekend were excellent.
I planted some lettuce (romaine and head) here in the garden by the church and it has turned out quite lovely, except only 1 head of the iceberg grew. I will plant some more since it did so well. The radishes did not turn out good at all nor the zuchini - for some reason it doesn't do well here. The carrots and onions are good. Huseni gave us a bunch of spinach from his garden yesterday and it was really nice too. They do have to use a lot of pesticides and fertilizer here so there is really no such thing as organic. They burn the fields instead of plowing it in (some say it helps to kill the pests). The burning starts pretty seriously in August - we have seen a lot more of it in the past few days and we hear it gets worse. Not great for the air quality!!
Yesterday when we were in the rurals (Goromonzi) with Pastor Wonder looking at their water needs (and there are many) we stopped to see Jean Mitchell at her farm. We met her once before. They are doing well - have had a golfing vacation in South Africa. Her brother with downs syndrome passed away while they were gone (he was 61 yrs. old). These people have had their farm taken from them (about 2000 acres) and are left with just the homestead. They had a beautiful dairy farm and were forced to sell the cattle. They just hope and pray that they won't kick them off their homestead too that has been in the family for years and years. Very sad! She is a nice lady and seemed glad for our visit.
I better get to work. I will send a few pictures.
Panashe Kureva and Elder Bullock
Young Women's class at Marondera Branch.
They have their class outside due to lack of space.
Love, President & Sister Bullock
We are in the office most of the day today attempting to write us some projects that we have been working on: 2 grinding mills projects and a water project. We are slowly getting some of the information that we need. We may also go over to World Vision today and fill out the
paperwork so that we can go see Florence's child that she supports here in Bulawayo.
Several weeks ago we were driving by a congregation of Apostalic members having their meeting. They meet here, there and everywhere out in the open fields or under a tree. There are a lot of them here. They dress in white robes. Anyway we stopped for a couple of minutes
and the bishop (leader) of the group came over to our vehicle and invited us to join them but we declined. However, we did tell him who we are and gave him a Book of Mormon and our phone number. Last night we got a text message from him that he has read the book and he wants to meet with us and talk about it - we set that up for next Tuesday. Should be interesting.
Elder Bullock gave a B of M to a fellow he met at the vegetable store (FAVCO) last weekend and just called him. His cousin took the book because he was interested and so we told the fellow we would bring him another one today. We can buy some more apples while we are there - the
ones we bought on the weekend were excellent.
I planted some lettuce (romaine and head) here in the garden by the church and it has turned out quite lovely, except only 1 head of the iceberg grew. I will plant some more since it did so well. The radishes did not turn out good at all nor the zuchini - for some reason it doesn't do well here. The carrots and onions are good. Huseni gave us a bunch of spinach from his garden yesterday and it was really nice too. They do have to use a lot of pesticides and fertilizer here so there is really no such thing as organic. They burn the fields instead of plowing it in (some say it helps to kill the pests). The burning starts pretty seriously in August - we have seen a lot more of it in the past few days and we hear it gets worse. Not great for the air quality!!
Yesterday when we were in the rurals (Goromonzi) with Pastor Wonder looking at their water needs (and there are many) we stopped to see Jean Mitchell at her farm. We met her once before. They are doing well - have had a golfing vacation in South Africa. Her brother with downs syndrome passed away while they were gone (he was 61 yrs. old). These people have had their farm taken from them (about 2000 acres) and are left with just the homestead. They had a beautiful dairy farm and were forced to sell the cattle. They just hope and pray that they won't kick them off their homestead too that has been in the family for years and years. Very sad! She is a nice lady and seemed glad for our visit.
I better get to work. I will send a few pictures.
Panashe Kureva and Elder BullockPanashe is getting baptized with his mom and dad on Aug. 15th if all goes as planned.
Our two friends with great smiles that we meet on our morning walks.
Our two friends with great smiles that we meet on our morning walks.
Young Women's class at Marondera Branch. They have their class outside due to lack of space.
Love, President & Sister Bullock
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Hi from Zimbabwe
It's raining -- but that's okay because we planted a little garden today here at the gardens by the mission office. We will see how it does - if the rain doesn't wash it out. Huseni, the guy in charge of the gardens laid long grass over the top - he said it is very cold and that will keep it warm. I didn't tell him that it gets a lot colder than this during our planting season at home. In a couple of weeks after the garden is starting to grow then he takes the grass off. I will have to take a picture of it.
We had a fellow come and want food, money or whatever yesterday - so we offered him work in the gardens and then gave him 2 blankets and 2 bars of soap (soap that they use for clothes). We were actually very generous. Pres. Nield said a bar of soap would be enough. He wanted to work again today so we said he could and we paid him $.85/hr. That is also generous. His rent is $20 and he needs money for that but we can't give him that much. (We did go out to the garden this afternoon and he was sleeping in the wheelbarrow!!!) I suggested Jim whistle and see how quickly he jumped up. He did get going pretty fast. Huseni is usually there to oversee him but he had left for 1/2 hr. or so -- so I guess he didn't sleep too long.
We are trying to get paperwork for our container - it seems to be lost (but not by us as we never had it). SLC is resending it. I hope we get that all sorted out soon as the container is due tomorrow. We still don't know how we get the stuff here to our storage container - we will try and touch base with Pres. Nield tonight --
Mom, I don't know if I ever told you that Pres. Nield is friends with Mark Smith (Wayne's son) that lives in Hillspring and has a pig farm there. Pres. Nield was there to visit last year - I think it was. He thinks Mark is a wonderful guy - he served his mission here way back when.
Gotta run for now. Love, Nancy
We had a fellow come and want food, money or whatever yesterday - so we offered him work in the gardens and then gave him 2 blankets and 2 bars of soap (soap that they use for clothes). We were actually very generous. Pres. Nield said a bar of soap would be enough. He wanted to work again today so we said he could and we paid him $.85/hr. That is also generous. His rent is $20 and he needs money for that but we can't give him that much. (We did go out to the garden this afternoon and he was sleeping in the wheelbarrow!!!) I suggested Jim whistle and see how quickly he jumped up. He did get going pretty fast. Huseni is usually there to oversee him but he had left for 1/2 hr. or so -- so I guess he didn't sleep too long.
We are trying to get paperwork for our container - it seems to be lost (but not by us as we never had it). SLC is resending it. I hope we get that all sorted out soon as the container is due tomorrow. We still don't know how we get the stuff here to our storage container - we will try and touch base with Pres. Nield tonight --
Mom, I don't know if I ever told you that Pres. Nield is friends with Mark Smith (Wayne's son) that lives in Hillspring and has a pig farm there. Pres. Nield was there to visit last year - I think it was. He thinks Mark is a wonderful guy - he served his mission here way back when.
Gotta run for now. Love, Nancy
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