hey mom

well this week was pretty nice. first off i talked to you and everyone which was nice. it was good to hear your guys voices. also we did a lot of teaching this week. we started teaching a guy who came to church last week. he is awesome. this week we invited him to be baptized after a baptism that the other elders had on saturday. it was really nice. and the best thing is..... he speaks really good english because he is from kenya. so we can teach him powerfully. its really sweet. anyways, ya thats pretty much what we did haha. but this week the mission pres. is coming to arusha to interview some people so he will most likely be bringing me my christmas packages so if you see money being drawn out dont get worried haha. well i hope everything is going well. and i cant wait to hear from you next year.... haha. oh ya HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!! i hope you have a good one and i hope you make some good new year resolutions. i love you!!

love reese

all of the first ones were of the orphanage with the missionaries here in arusha. and the last one is what i call TZ donuts. i put nutella on these things called mandazi and it tastes exactly like a krispy kreme donut. i love it hah merry christmas

hey mom

today im doing good. yes im a zone leader again. yes we took the bus to dar and back this week. we watched battleship with no sound. on the way back we watched a movie called prey and the ghost and the darkness. well the elements in the movies here are hard to explain but i will buy some movies and bring them home hah. you will love them. ya i was able to see a lot of the people that were transferred to dar and the guys that stayed there like elder patten. the meeting was good. it was super long tho. it lasted four hours. but we talked about some good things. and yes president was there. the new couple missionaries are really nice. they are very spontaneous and they have a lot of energy. so it kinda kool. they are the gotchers from arizona. ya i miss sister n. she was awesome. 

anyways, this week we really didnt do very much. just went to dar es salaam. the bus ride there took like 13 hours because the bus broke down and we had to wait while they could fix it to start going again. in dar we stayed with elder patten and elder barney and had a good time. we stayed there from wednesday to saturday. we had the zlc or zone leader council. it was alright. they told us about the stuff that we will be doing for christmas and things that we need to help our zones with. pretty basic stuff like teaching father led families and curfew and obedience type of stuff. it was a good meeting. we had to stay in dar for an extra day because the bus that we bought tickets for broke down or wasnt available or something so we stayed an extra day. it was actually good that we did that because elder patten and i were sick. patten was a lot sicker than i was tho thats for sure. i just had a cold cause i wasnt used to the weather in arusha hah. but that night the aps came over and they slept there and we had a party hah. we called this guy who came and sold us ties. we bought each tie for 1500 so the guy made like 30000 in like less than an hour. then we came back to arusha. we had a really nice bus on the way back. i even had leg room which is a pretty impressive thing. but that was pretty much my week. 

well i hope you have a good week love ya a lot. excited for next week. ps i dont think i will email you next week i might just send you pics hah

love maurice

hey mom

arusha is beautiful! i love it. i was able to see mt kilimanjaro. it is huge and it looks like it comes outta no where. it is super nice almost all the time except in the middle of the day. thats when it starts getting hot. even in the morning i can wear a sweater because its so cool in the morning. i love not feeling sticky all the time, like in dar.

 

i havent gotten my package other yet but i will find out if it came this week. because i am going to dar again on wednesday because i have to go to a zone leader meeting. im hoping i get it soon but i wont hope too much because im really used to getting dissappointed now. anyways my new companion is elder diodati from canada. he is awesome. he was trained by elder patten and they had a good time. i will most likely go back to Kenya again in like 4 months maybe... but you never know.. well im sorry that your stitches were super painful. i know tho that they will get better. and omg a cavity. mother you are a dental hygienist!! have you not been flossing???? or brushing your teeth??? haha but i think i will have a ton of cavities when i get home. but im hoping that i will have been protected and will have zero cavities. that would be a miracle big time hah. 

 

well im glad that sami liked the cheerleading camp. all girls love that kinda stuff tho. i think it would be good for her to do gymnastics cause then it would help her in anything athletic that she would want to do. 

 

well this week was alright. before i left dar, i pretty much washed ALL of my clothes. it took forever. washing sucks. i really miss a washer and dryer. but on tuesday i said goodbye to all the guys in dar and on wednesday i got on the bus in the morning for 11 hours.  the ride was ok but i was super squished cause i was sitting next to a big dude. but it was alright, really boring but alright. i had the right amount of snacks for it haha. i didnt have anyone to talk to or do anything with so i was just quiet watching crappy tanzanian movies. they are all really bad by the way. they are made like home videos and they all have the same elements to them. anyways, so then i got to arusha and its awesome. oh ya and on the way i was able to take pictures of mt kilimanjaro. its super cool and nice here. but the branch is ok but its small. like pretty small and its pretty weak but hopefully we will be able to make it stronger. then on sunday i bore my testimony again in swahili. i also found out that we have a good swahili teacher so that is nice. he knows his stuff and he knows how to teach it which is nice. one thing that is weird that there is 8 missionaries here in this branch. 4 elders 2 sisters and one senior couple. and its a small branch so i have a bad feeling. and my bad feeling is that we are not going to get DAs ever....... it would be too hard for the people who are members here to feed all 6 of us so i will most likely not have a single DA in this area so that will suck a lot. oh and dio my comp knows less swahili than i do.... and i dont know very much hah. so by the time i come home i will know another language most likely hah. thats if i learn it nicely. well thats pretty much what happened this week.

and this next week we are going back to dar for a zone leader meeting so this week i will have been in a bus for 24 hours. more or less. and that means that i wont even spend a week in my area until week 3 of the 6 week transfer hah. anyways i hope you have a better week than you had this week. i hope you know that i love you so much and i miss you a lot. im really grateful that you have helped me while ive been on mission here with everything. i love you!!!

love reese