JULIA

We just finished our 5th Discussion with Julia and Phillip plus they plan to come to church with us this Sunday. We are thrilled because the Langas Branch for them to travel is very far away. Every time we teach at their home we find additional people that come to listen to our discussions. Julia and Phillip live in a very beautiful village with large hills, dirt roads that turn very muddy and slippery when the rains come, large fields of maize with the corn now about four feet high. The village is peppered with small little mud houses with two rooms, plus a separate kitchen house with a small cooking area made of mud. They gather sticks each day to burn below an iron plate that sits over a hole formed into the mud cooking area that lays just above the burning sticks. Julia is a pro at her cooking and makes us wonderful chapattis that are yummy.

Julia's Kitchen

Julia is on the right with her friend Eunnis

 She is a midwife and brings many babies of the village into the world. She is a very beautiful woman, her English is excellent, and she is very smart. Julia is teaching us about 10 Kenyan words each time we come as well as getting us acquainted with the many vegetables, trees, and flowers growing in their 1 ½ acre lot. Oh how I wish I could just magically bring her to a Harbor Pointe Relief Society Meeting for all the HP sisters to meet. You would all fall in love with her. I believe Julia has a testimony of the Gospel, loves to listen and often translate for the Swahili-speaking neighbors. Julia I am convinced would make an excellent RS President someday—we will see for it will be a challenge for them to move from the African Inland Church to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most likely we will need enough interested neighbors to form a group in this small village. Remember this is the family that called us one night for a copy of The Book of Mormon because they had read a pamphlet we had left at a friend’s and our contact number was on the back. May the Holy Ghost bring both Julia and Phillip to a conversion of the truthfulness of the gospel. I would love to have a video to share with you of Julia’s face as we showed her a picture of the Johannesburg Temple and she said declared I want to go there.

 Phillip and Julia plus she is expecting and will have a baby next month! 

The girls wait for us and as soon as our truck comes down their slippery dirt road they come running to give Elder Babcock and I a huge hug.  They are darling and tons of fun.

Sometimes Grandma who is now 82, who hoes her own garden and gathers sticks joins our discussions.  We gave her a truck ride one day to the nearby market, waited for her so we could take her up the muddy slippery road, and found nearly the whole village turned out to watch her climb in our truck and drive home.

Elder Babcock and I are often greeted by the students just coming home from school and for many of the children a daily chore on the way home is to stop by the river to fetch water in their plastic jugs.