On Monday, (P-day), we took our Mbabane and Ezulwini elders to visit the Ngwenya Glass Factory north of Mbabane on the way to Oshoek Border.  They had never been there before and two of them are finishing their mission in just 2 weeks and wanted to go there. 

We love that our elders are ALWAYS missionaries first, no matter where they are!! 

I have already put photos on of things in the Glass Factory shop, but this is

just another example of the unique things they make there!

There are always peacocks wandering around the grounds outside of the shops.

They are SO pretty and SO noisy!! 

This is a common sight.... a cat sleeping in a basket in a shop!

This morning we stopped at the zone leaders' flat to get something that needed

to go to the Mbabane chapel. We watched these monkeys playing around near their flat.

We went from Mbabane to Manzini to order pizzas for our zone conference lunch on Thursday. I got a few fun photos as we were going through town. People carrying things on their heads happens all the time but it is difficult to get photos. This guy had quite a stack on his head. It is unbelievable how much weight they can carry!!  I caught this just after he passed when we parked our car.

These fruit stands are all over downtown....

I went into a dress shop for the first time today and decided to take a couple of photos to show African style dresses that we see everyday. The ones on the top row are traditional Swazi clothes that unmarried girls wear for holidays and special occasions.  (A lot of the fabric here has King Mswati III's photo on it, like the black and white one above.)  The piece of fabric is wrapped around covering only the left shoulder and the right shoulder is bare. The two ends are tied on the left side. A skirt of a different color print is worn underneath.  Married women also wear the fabric wrapped the same way, but they wear a black skirt underneath and a white band around their hair, (which is often put under a black wig, unless their hair is naturally very short), signifying that they are married. They ALWAYS wear a beaded necklace with the Swazi flag on it with this traditional costume.

We see LOTS of women and girls with their hair braided with extensions, that are black, different shades of brown, shades of red, white and yellow, but this was the FIRST hair braided with THIS color that we have seen here! (There was another girl that had this color and also pink braided together but I couldn't get a picture...)

It is SPRING and all the mountains are GREEN!  I LOVE this time of year here!  

 

We saw our favorite blue-headed lizard on the wall at the end of the driveway
to our flat today, as we were leaving.  He sat just like this for quite awhile, but 
when Bob tried to get closer to get his whole body, he quickly went away... 

My brother, Rick, his wife, Carla, and a group of sponsors for COEEF, have been in Ethiopia all week. They will be in Uganda helping Sussie Apondi with jigger projects until Sunday, then fly HERE to visit us in Swaziland arriving Sunday night, the 21st!! Ü  

We have a few projects we have found for them here too.  

They got to see Tutu and Tigist Ayele above, (darling sisters, who we taught in seminary in 2013-2015 in Debra Zeyit, when we served there).  Tigist (in purple) recently returned from serving a mission to Ghana!)

My cousin, Beverly Roe Peterson, is with the group too, and Rick sent this photo of her with our dear friend (Debre Zeyit Mission Leader), Abere Tiumelisan Adane! 

Our special friends, Ruth and Yeabsra Misgana were just 12 and 7 when we first met them, after we arrived in Addis Ababa in August 2013.  They are now 17 and 12!! We were so excited that Rick and Carla finally got to meet them and their sweet mother. I told Rick about them and he talked to Fitsum, the director in Ethiopia and Yeabsra qualified and is now being sponsored for school by Rick's organization, COEEF (Children of Ethiopia Education Fund).