Late June

Apartment Inspections II

We have had a good week inspecting missionary apartments, there are 26 on this island.  Here is a photo of Tarrafal, on the northern end of the island.  It's a beautiful little town.  We had fun at this stop, as the Sisters here locked themselves out of their apartment as they helped us with an errand......we stood by as these resourceful women got themselves back into their apartment after only about thirty minutes of creative thinking.  They didn't use a ladder (first idea) they did call on the Bishop for help (second idea) and ultimately got in with help from the neighbors.

Just south of Tarrafal the Elders in Chão Bom, who often do not have water, were having a good day because they did have water.  They had cleaned and were in the middle of a baking project.  It was interesting to see the system of water storage they had created, with big bottles for storing shower water and little bottles for storing dishwashing water.  Their drinking water was stored in the fridge.  They had their challenging water situation well managed

Further along our route we spied these Elders outside of Assomada.  They  were doing a little sight seeing on their p-day as there is a very large tree in that area.  We had inspected their apartment at 730 that morning on the other side of the island.  We hope to stop and see the Big Tree on a later trip and will post photos.

And then we were in Assomada, where we saw Elder Teela from Liberty.  

Just before we entered town the zone leaders texted "can you bring milk?  We are baking cinnamon rolls and we need milk".    Yes, we found milk and yes, they shared their cinnamon rolls!  And they were amazing.  Sister Martineau on Fogo had taught them how to make them.






Later in the week, these two Elders, Elder Cañizares from Ecuador and Elder Vieira from Portugal, shared brownies they had won at the zone conference the previous day.  So the Elders are feeding us well!!!!  Bless their generous hearts.

A visit to Hospital Agostino Neto

Thursday was a medical day.  We began by participating in another immunization of our 316 chickens.  We were greatly blessed, we got most of them taken care of in a little over an hour, but whew, catching chickens to immunize them, that's a job, and in the Cape Verde heat it's a real job.  We were grateful to the technician who helped us.

Later in the day we visited Augustino Neto hospital, the large community hospital in Praia.  It was very interesting to see the pediatric area.  Our contact person, Raimundo Monteiro, with Nos Saude, an NGO we are building a relationship with, works in the plaster room at the hospital.  Putting casts on children.  I had the privilege of watching him and his colleague perform an intervention on a small boy, under a year of age, who had been born with twisted legs, rotated inward, as in 'pigeon toes', but severe, one of the assistants showed me a photo of the child as a newborn.  The boy now had well aligned legs but his feet were still not straight, so the four assistants held the child in place and a plaster cast was set to hold the feet pointing outward.  What an experience to watch that procedure.