Anyway, sacrament meeting on Sunday mostly consisted of confirmations for the 13 people that were baptized the previous Sunday. One speaker had time for a few minutes of remarks, but that was it. The ward is really outgrowing our rented building. When the Stake President was visiting the previous Sunday, he said that he knew the ward needed a new building and the church has plans to build us one, but he is forced to ask for an "exception to policy" because our ward doesn't have the expected percentage of tithe payers to warrant a church built meetinghouse. He pleaded with the members to pay their tithing so the church would approve a new building for our ward. This is not at all to imply that the church needs the tithing donations to fund the building -- the little bit that members would contribute won't cover a small portion of the building. The church just wants to know that there are faithful members to support the ward if they are going to invest in a permanent building. I certainly hope they get one -- the present building is pretty bad!
There was some other ward business and, for the second week (so I know it isn't just a momentary slip in word usage), the Nigerian counselor doing the sustainings, asked the ward members to raise their hands to so "magnify" (instead of signify). It gives a little different twist on the meaning of sustaining someone in a church calling.
It was SO hot in our meetings! But, as I stayed late to teach piano lessons and rehearse some other music, and didn't get home till around 2 PM (leaving the apartment before 8:30 AM that morning), I decided it's probably a good thing that I sweat so much because then there's less need to use the restroom! I made it through another week without having to make use of the facilities!
On Saturday we had a women's/young women's joint meeting in the afternoon. It was pretty fun. We were on the back balcony in an attempt to get a breeze, as the power was out. We had a Young Woman speaker talking on "Who am I," then a fabulous Young Adult speaker -- a Nigerian who recently returned from a mission to Washington DC, who is now in law school here (pictured in the center in the photo on the right below) -- she spoke on "What I can become." And then an adult woman talked on eternal marriage. The Young Women sang a song for us. Then we had a question and answer session on how young women and mothers can strengthen their relationships. Then it had been planned that we would have a dancing activity, where they would play music and all the women would get up and dance together. That would have been fun to see! But because the CD player wouldn't work with the power off, they decided not to do that. Then we had refreshments of warm meat pies (quite yummy -- an English empanada -- and better for us than the sweets we would probably have had in the States) and sodas. It was a good time to get to know some of the women in the ward better. Here's a couple of pictures from that event -- in the picture on the left, the women on the right is our Relief Society president. She always really impresses me with her grace and calm demeanor.
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