I thought I would show you Sierra Leone's version of Walmart that we saw driving from Kissy back to Freetown after a Zone Conference held in Kissy on Thursday May 5th.  Top picture is charcoal.  They use charcoal to cook all their food and they do it all outside.  They wrap the charcoal in leaves and bundle in these packages.  You can see people walking down the street with them on their heads also.  The next picture is the mattress department.    They have mattress stacked all around this building. 

 I loved this picture of the family walking around the market.  They carry their babies on their backs like this one.  They little ones are so content and I have never seen one crying that is on their mothers back like this.

 Below you can see the stands that have lotion, soap, cookies, crackers, small containers of a lot of things.  Further down the street is the food stands, mostly mangos, cucumbers, avocados, bananas, pineapples, watermelons, plantains.  We buy all our fruit and vegetables from these street vendors.  We have started buying our bread from a bread vendor just down from our apartment.  We go every few days to buy produce because it is very ripe and needs to be eaten within a couple of days.  The mango's, pineapple and avocado's are in season right now and are delicious. 

 These pictures are for Greg.  They are the Polaris Sling Shot vehicles we saw on our way to Freetown from Kissy.  There were several of them and later we saw them all driving down the road.  They were advertising Air-Tel, which is the African cell phone service. 

I like this picture also because it shows one of the 2 stop lights they have in Freetown that we have seen.  The light was blinking yellow our way, but of course nobody obeys the traffic light because most of the time the power is out and it doesn't work.  They don't even obey stop signs.  "OIA" (Only in Africa)

 After our walk one evening there was a parade along the road in front of the mission office.  They were playing some music from a local composer.  The top picture was the sign advertising the launching date.  Sister Clawson and I started dancing to the music and suddenly the people playing the music came right up the driveway we were standing in, and everyone started dancing with us.  It was a little suggestive and there were some people from the church that told the people in the parade to keep going down the street.  Before they left this man asked to have his picture taken with me.  He is the composer of the music and they said he is the Michael Jackson of Sierra Leone, so I have stood by a famous composer.  Wow "OIA"  My new saying, "Only in Africa" 

 This shirt is advertising his music.  I will need to see about getting some of it.  I really liked it. 

 We have a little Gecko that lives behind the sign outside the mission office.  The bars to the right of Brent he unlocks each day and locks at night.  He has a leaf and is trying to get the Gecko to come out.  Below is a close up picture of him.  Sometimes there are two of them. 

 They are pretty tiny.  In the bottom picture you can see how little he is.  He is on the wall just below 

the brown beam near the ceiling.  Maybe one of the grandchildren can come up with a couple of names for our new friends.  

 This is a wedding held outside our church on Saturday April 30, 2016.  The bride and groom said I could take a picture of them.  Below is the bridal party.  They got all the people together just for me to take their picture.  They were so beautiful and several of the older sisters were in their traditional dress.  I love the bright colors. 

 They decorate the cars like this for the couple to leave the place where they are married.  The cars we have seen so far are either white or black that the bridal couple uses.  Below is the back ground for the reception.  They draped big pieces of fabric.  They set up tables around and chairs and served a meal.  They covered the chairs with a light fabric and tied them with a silver fabric, like they do at home sometimes.  You can see the chairs in the lower right had corner.  Off to the right was a big set of speakers that they played music into the night.  We could hear it really well in our apartment. 

 Family home evening Monday night 25 Apr 2016 with Brother and Sister Doe.  Sahr Doe is a counselor to President Clawson and they are the nicest people.  They had a dinner for all the Senior Couples to thank the two senior couples going home.  On the table just to the right of Sahr Doe is a huge fish that Sister Doe cooked.  It was delicious.  The whole meal was delicious.  It was the best food we have had since coming here.  She said she would e-mail me her recipes. 

 Elder and Sister Lauritzen back, Four Elders of our Elders who live in the Doe compound.  The Carly's and the Myles live in this compound also. 

 Back left Elder and Sister Barney, Sahr Doe standing in the red, Sister Clawson taking a picture of the fish, Sister and Elder Carly on the right and of course my favorite companion Brent on the left. 

                      Brent, Sister and Elder Carly, left and Elder and Sister Myles Right.

Elder and Sister Barney back left, President Clawson back right, Sister Doe standing and the sister on the left is an investigator and tends the Doe's little boy sometimes. 

 We walk past this Banana tree every day when we walk over to the office.  We also dump all our wet garbage in this little banana stand of trees here in the compound.  Our wet garbage is like cucumber peelings, banana peels, pineapple parts we don't eat.  Anything that would be compost matter we dump there. 

Brent's garden spot, behind our apartment.  His vegetables are coming up nicely in the apartment in little containers.  James, one of our guards got this ground ready for planting.  He dug it all by hand with a little hoe type instrument.  James also brought chicken manure and mixed it in.  When Brent told him what he wanted to do, James said he wanted to help.  James is quite educated on plants, he went to school and studied it.  I think he is as excited about the garden as Brent is.  Also Sister Clawson is excited.  She said she wanted to plant a garden, but has not had time.  They can look right out their window and see the garden so she can watch things grow and then they can help us eat it when it is ready.