Dumela Botswana

 It's coming on to winter in southern Africa, so it's cool in the morning but a pleasant 80 degrees in the afternoon.  And something is always in bloom! My favorite are the colorful bouganvilla everywhere, but Aaron is quite intrigued with the poinsetta trees.  Seems missionaries assigned to the 9 missions in Nigeria have been supplied from the western African countries for several years.  When southern Africans and Americans were assigned to serve in Nigeria some years ago, too much robbery, kidnapping, crime and murders finally closed Nigeria to this group of missionaries.  Well, the church is trying to get southern Africans back into Nigeria, and several went to the Missionary Training Center in Ghana for 3 weeks of training before entering Nigeria.  But Nigeria, it seems, is rejecting them from entering, so several have been reassigned to our mission.  Today we picked up our first one and several more are coming.  That is keeping us busy as well as checking on the status of

 Frequently we look at each other wondering if it's real and that we truly are in Africa.  It's my dream of a lifetime, and I worry that I've already used up 3.5 months of my alloted 18.   Elder  Adams said he wanted to go Rhino Tracking on his next P-Day, and since these elders get transferred every 6 weeks and we might lose him to a distant assignment (and partly because Aaron has a hard time denying anything to his Elder Adams), we sponsored 8 young elders on a Rhino Tracking Safari.  They work so hard and so dutifully, and we believe they should also experience the unique culture and the wild bush of Botswana. So we loaded up... and laughed until our sides hurt watching the boys jossle and fool around and sing Lion King songs and smack each other in playful comeraderie...  We observed warthogs and impala and kudu and giraffes but got super excited when the safari vehicle finally pulled over for us to get out and track the rhinos on foot. Our tracker was a bonfide bushma