We went with our two new "Ezulwini 2"  Elders, Elder Samatanda (Zimbabwe) and Elder Pace (Farmington, UT)  to visit a family who have been investigating the Church for a LONG time. They are Constantia and Luisa and their two little girls are Imelda and Helena.  They met the missionaries last year and want to be baptized but they are from Mozambique and they are not married.  They come to Church EVERY week! They are working on getting the paperwork they need and saving money to go back to Mozambique to be married.  Hopefully, this will happen in January!  They are the CUTEST family and the HAPPIEST people I have ever met!! They are just SO grateful for the Church in their lives and feel SO blessed!  They LOVE the gospel and the Church and NEVER stop smiling! They insisted we stay and eat with them and piled our plates with rice, fish and salad!

We have been SO surprised to see Christmas decorations everywhere since about the middle of October! (You would think we were back home!)  In Ethiopia, Christmas is in January and it is not commercialized at all.  The few decorations we saw only appeared right before their Christmas.  This week, we finally gave in and bought a little tree and some decorations for our flat.  (I have NEVER decorated for Christmas before Thanksgiving! : / But there is NO Thanksgiving here or even anything "Fall" or Halloween.... so we just decided to move on to the Christmas season!) Ü 

This little wreath was on an end cap at our 

grocery store the other day! I was just telling

Bob.... "I wish we had a little wreath." 

We found the angels at a little shop in Ngwenya by the glass factory 

and and the beaded trees in a shop by the Swazi Candle Factory 

in Malkerns.  The little beaded rhino on the left next to the angel 

has with it a little bag of frankincense and myrrh from Saudi

Arabia.  Sister Wagner in the mission office sent it 

to us with Sister Leavitt when she came for 

our last Zone Conference 

We found this unique hand carved and painted

nativity in a little shop.

I also liked this cute handmade nativity and 

JOY carved out of rock and the tiny handmade

Christmas card.

My favorite word at Christmas time is JOY.

I always LOVE it when this Khombi (taxi) is

in front of us and it reminds me to be "JOYFUL"!! 

We had to chuckle when we saw Santa sitting in the

middle of a round about in the parking lot of our mini

"mall", The Gables, in Ezulwini! (He is fake of course.)

Inside the mall there are really PRETTY Christmas

trees already!  I think they decorate as early here as

they do in the U.S.!! 

As we were admiring the poinsettia tree, we heard baby birds 

and looked up above the MTN store.  There was a 

mother bird with a nest full of baby birds and she was

feeding them...INSIDE the mall!