family home evening

we had an innagural family home evening last night. Around 10 Young Single Adults came. Well...young single adults is a liberal label. But i think everyone was single at least.

Let me explain the church house.

It used to be an old mansion but now it's an incredible villa. It's 2 stories with a huge wrap around porch balconly thing on the second story. The balcony is supported by big southernly columns that kind of remind me of tennessee. Except that the windows are tinted blue which i have yet to see in Tennesee.

The entrance leads you directly into the chapel, or the main room. It used to be a big living room in the house i think. The doors are a thick beautiful oak and the door handle is pretty glamourous gold. Directly behind the living rooms facing wall is a wide stair case that leads to the second story. Half way up the stairs we have 2 rooms. One's an office/library and the other is the missionary room. At the top of the stairs is a big room with a sliding glass door. This room faces the balcony rotunda. On either side of this big room are 4 more classrooms. One for the young women, one for the primary, one for the priestood, and a few more that don't have occupants yet.

Since we've only been in this chapel 2 weeks longer than i've been here (just over a month), there's not much for way of decorations or function. But we do have chairs, portable chalkboards, a kareoke machine turned av system, and a whole lot of love. We just got the plaque thing that holds the hymn numbers and the members were so excited.

It's a beautiful building that is still getting fixed up. The grounds are all mud at this point but there are plans for grass. The best part is the outdoor baptismal font that was made out of an old water well.

Anyway - FHE functioned much like any other YSA FHE. We had a lesson on happiness versus joy. We sang a song. We played a few games. and we had snacks. But Africa style is so much better. Playing do you love your neighbor with accents and multilingual complications made things fun. Then we played a blindfolded animal game. Everyone stands in a circle and one person is blindfolded in the middle. The it person points to someone in the circle and says can you make the noise of "insert animal here" and then tries to guess who it is making the noise. Somehow every animal noise here sounds like a man eating terradactle. You've never heard a cat sound so fierce! And our snacks beat any american snack. Baby bananans, tomato flavored potato chips, and ginger flavored caramels. Yummm.

My favorite part? At the end of the night we were all talking about food and snacks. One man said "Shai I'm going to start drinking lots of milk so i can be like you." "Like me?" I reply. "You want to be a whitey? I don't think milk can change skin color." He immediatly clarifies and says, "no no no. I don't want to be white like you. I want to be FAT like you."

Thanks nice african man. Thanks.

Blessings,

Shai

PS. I learned later the real meaning after asking my host family to ressurect my murdered self esteem. It was quickly explained that larger women are really beautiful to African men because it's a sign of health and vitality. So what he meant was he wanted to be healthy and strong like me. FAT = BEAUTIFUL in Africa.

I love this place!