May 24

May 29, 2025

May 24

Tuesday we had a great devotional. Another great conference talk given by Elder Alfred Kyunga in October of 2021 called “To Be a Follower of Christ.” The missionaries talked about specific parts of the talk. The first quality of the Savior is humility. Humility brings peace and gentle answers. It is the source of a righteous character. “We act honorably with God by walking humbly with Him”. The second quality of the Savior is courage. Jesus at the age of 12 years old, was teaching the doctors of law, divine things in the temple. When it should have been the other way around. 2nd Timothy 1:7. “For God has not given us the spirit of fear: but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” We need to have courage to do what is right even though it is unpopular. Courage to accept our responsibilities and positions. Courage to repent and to accept God’s will. The third quality of the Savior is forgiveness. It is easy to forgive one who sincerely and humbly seeks for forgiveness. But the most difficult forgiveness is someone who has mistreated you or been cruel to you. The Savior will grant you the ability to forgive anyone who has mistreated you. The fourth quality of the Savior is sacrifice. The Savior gave us the supreme sacrifice His life, so that we could be redeemed. Sacrifice is the demonstration of pure love. We can give financially by paying tithing and fast offering, and other contributions. Grandpa Craven used to say "if it doesn't hurt, then your not giving enough". We can sacrifice our time to serve others, to do family history, to go to the temple. My prayer is that we will follow Christ by being humble, by being more courageous, by forgiving more and sacrificing more. They did a great job by giving this devotional.

Left to Right
Elder And Sister Ensign
Elder and Sister Sephenson
Debra, Ensigns visiting friend
Elder and Sister Craven

Early morning view of the pool and lake.
Need the pool, to many croc's and Hippos.

We went to Akagera with the Seniors. The Ensigns have a friend here. She is from the states. She is Africa American and wants to know about her heritage and culture, so she came to visit. The Ensigns decided to take her on a Safari and invited us to join. We did get to watch the devotional first. Akagera is about 4 hours away. We had a driver and got to ride in a big safari truck. It’s green, tall and the roof lifts up so you can stand up and look out when you start a safari. Safari's are not anything like you would imagine. You are looking and searching all the time to find an animal. There is a lot of tall grass, trees and shrubs. Sometime’s they are hard to see through, and it takes a long time to spot an animal. It’s nothing like the movies where you have animals running all around you. The big safari trucks look just like the ones in the movies, but the roads are very bumpy and straight dirt. Just like the red dirt in St. George. It does have a lot of bad roads, so you bounce around a lot. Our driver was amazing. Trust me he scared me a few times and we almost got in a couple of accidents, but he went everywhere to find us animals. He took us around before we had to be at our hotel. So we found a few animals before we ate. We then went on a night safari. We had a different driver for the night safari, he had a spotter. (An other guy) He had a huge spot light that he would shine to find animals. We saw a lot of water buffalo and a lot of rabbits, but I don’t think I would do a night safari again. We spent 2 hours and didn’t really see anything. We spent the night got up, ate breakfast and went on the day safari. We were gone by 6:30. We spent the whole day on the Safari. We did stop for lunch, but like I said our driver was amazing. He just kept searching until I saw what I wanted to see. Lions and elephants. We also saw a huge hippopotamus standing and suddenly opening his huge mouth. It was amazing to see. There are more people killed by hippos every year than any other animal. We saw impalas and bush bucks, bull elephant, eagles, lions and lionesses. Giraffes, crocodiles, wart hogs, rabbits, velvet monkey, zebra, baboons, water buffalo, great crown crane, hippos, rhinos, turtle, wild turkey (it looked like a wild turkey) but I don’t know their name. We saw a lot more animals this time than we did last time. It was great! It's always an adventure.

Water Buffalo

Baboons

Bird Nests

We had to come back to reality today. My very favorite thing, a temple prep class in Franco’s home. Crazy traffic to get there especially at night. There was a game going on at the colosseum, so even crazier. We were stopped by the police. We explained we were just going to visit someone down the street. They let us through. But let me tell you they were happy when we came back, an hour and a half later. I think they were surprised, we didn’t lie. The lesson went very well. Franco has to interpret for his wife, which can be difficult at times, but the whole lesson went wonderful. I got to see the cute baby but I didn’t hold her. I will ask next time. She makes Elder Craven uncomfortable at times, if the baby starts to fuss she just uncovers and starts to nurse. It's a very natural thing here and you just expect it.

2 of many!

My favorite!

Sister Craven calls them Turkeys.
Hard to see but they gave blue heads.

President Mavinga sent us a message, one of the Sister missionaries needed a blessing. He asked us us if we would please go and give her a blessing. We contacted Elder Stephenson and asked him if he could assist. He consented. We told him we would meet him there. Traffic was horrible! We went one way and got stuck behind a long line of traffic, so we went the other way. We got stuck again. We contacted the Stephenson's and told them we would be late. They said they would contact the missionaries and get them to assist. We asked them not to. The Sisters like their privacy. We ended out going the other way, it was worse. What was supposed to take us 20 minutes took 1 1/2 hours. Sister Edet had been having horrible nightmares and wasn’t able to get much sleep. Elder Craven gave her a beautiful blessing, I should say the Lord gave her a beautiful blessing through Elder Craven. She was in tears when we left and thanked us greatly.

Got to see a lot of Lions this trip!

I know it looks fake but I took it!

Nap time.

The heat of the day. They seem pretty bored.

I had my music classes again today, but something is wrong with the electricity. We tried my keyboard and went in the church and tried that one, but no electricity anywhere. So we spent our time pushing keys you could not hear, but practiced. Learned more notes and chords. Believe it or not we spent almost two hours. I hope next week is better. I’m beginning to really like these boys. Their willingness to learn is amazing.

The lions just had dinner!

Biggest Croc I've ever seem!

Massive bull elephant,

Lion King, these aren't your buddies!

Sunday was great. The power was still out and we were using a generator. It couldn't carry the load so most of the meetings we in the dark. We went to the first 2 Branches. We got to see Ensigns friend Debra. She is Catholic and they went to morning mass with her, then she came to our church. The Ensigns said their meeting was very quiet and respectful, they enjoyed being there. But no one came up to introduce themselves. In our church Debra had all kinds of people welcoming her. That was good to hear. We enjoyed our meetings. The interpreter did a great job. Relief Society was great we had a lady sit by us who was a new convert and she interrupted for us (us, meaning Sister Stephenson and I). The lesson was on prayer. Sister Ebet came up and thanked us for the blessing. She said she is doing much better. That was good to hear. Next we came home and watched our ward. We were excited because Parker Van Buren got his mission call to Tokyo Japan speaking Chinese. Boy, that’s a new one. But he will be amazing. The Lord calls us where he wants us. Last week I had the privilege of listening to the Goodrich's farewell in our home ward. I know they were excited to go. We were supposed to listen to Colton speak in his ward but we apparently we got the wrong time. I am so sad when that happens, we look forward to these special occasions with our children and grandchildren.