New Year

Dear Dad,

Happy belated birthday! Hope that you had a good one!

Ya new years is a big holiday. It is celebrated much like how it is back home.

Wow, your getting surgery? (Chuck has a minor tear in his left knee that interferes with his tennis so at the beginning of the year he is getting surgery.)Hope it goes well and everything. Update me on how it goes.

Hooray for Green Bay!!!

Love you dad!

Dear MOM,

I LOVE all the things mentioned in the package! Thank you so much! The only thing in that package that you can find in Uganda are the pringles, but they are kind of expensive (8 or 9 thousand shillings). Thank you soooo much for that! The things that I am most excited about are the potato packets (cheesy potatoes), and the taco and sloppy Joe packets.

Thanks for sharing that missionary moment, You are doing such a great job at looking for opportunities to share the gospel. You will be able to help this lady Ann, I have faith in you.

Love you mom!

Elder G-lot (The people in Uganda have a difficult time pronouncing Gril-liot so they call him G-lot)

Christmas in Uganda

In 3 days I'll be calling home so I won't make this email too long.

   It's been a nice week thus far as I have been trying not to think too much about Christmas. We've already been invited to eat at several peoples homes. Christmas in Uganda is much different from back home. I would compare a Ugandan Christmas Much more with an American Thanksgiving. Not too many gifts given out or anything like that, (although on occasion they do if they have some excess money that time of year) no Santa or his flying reindeer, and no Christmas tree with the fancy lights. Just lots and lots and lots of food. Chicken is the most common thing to eat on Christmas here, but sometimes there will be Turkey, or pork. They also eat plenty of Motoke (it's like a steamed banana), Posho (I don't even know how to describe Posho) and rice. The whole family gets together and then feasts on this special time of year. And of coarse lots of people get drunk on this day of celebration.

  Anyway Enjoy your Christmas Celebrations. For those of you in my immediate family, I talk to you on Wednesday. 

Kentucky Fried Chicken in Uganda

Hey guys, I'm going to apologize in advance. Today I'm sending a very brief email. I went to Kampala today (it's pretty far from Lugazi. Was about a 2 and a half hour ride there and 2 and a half hour ride back) Went there to eat Ethiopian food with some other missionaries, but then the restaurant was closed. However we found something much better. We found out that it was opening day for the first KFC in Uganda! I had REAL AMERICAN FOOD! It might have been the best thing I've eaten it Uganda. It was a little expensive but it was worth it.

  Anyways everything is ok in Uganda. Love you guys!

P.S. I will be calling home on Christmas (for me it will be around 6pm, not sure what time that will be in America). And no I don't think that I will be able to Skype. But I will let you know next week. 

Robert and Jennifer

   This last week has been pretty good. I met lots of the members of the branch here in the last week, Including the Branch President and several other Auxiliary Leaders. The branch might be young but it has some good leaders in place. The branch Pres. is a really well put together guy and I'm glad to be able to serve him. 

   To report on the two families that I mentioned last week: Innocent and Topista have been super busy this last week and we haven't been able to meet with them (they have been out of town for the holidays, but should be back later this week). Robert and Jennifer however are doing really well, They have read about 5 or 6 chapters from the Book of Mormon and are willing to come to church this Sunday. We are planning on taking the branch president and his wife (the Primary President) to their house tomorrow so that they can be their fellowshippers. I hope that they continue to progress as they are. 

   This week we met a lot of crazy people. I met a lot of super old drunk muslims (like 5 or 6 of them), and one lady that followed us a quarter of a mile down a road shouting at us in french. And another lady who became really upset at me when she found out that us missionaries just preach the gospel, and that we can't pay for her children's schooling, or pay for her rent. She called my companion and I con men.

   But overall it's been a nice week. Love hearing from each one of you guys. Keep emailing me.

From Elder Grilliot

Answer to Dad's questions:

I've heard a lot about Nelson Mandela as well. People in Uganda Love him because of the things that he had done for the black community. They also see him as one of the only non-corrupt Black African Leaders, so naturally they love him.

Yes my companion has been able to tell me a lot about Mugabe (I've also heard a lot of things about him from other Zimbabwean Missionaries). One thing that they always talk about is about the inflation that they went through (I think it was in 2008 or 2009 or somewhere around there). Basically Zimbabwean money became worthless because of inflation and ruined everyones life. It was tough for everyone there. But ya they don't love Mugabe, but they have to tolerate him. 

New Area- Lugazi

    Finally in my new area! It feels so strange to leave an area after being there for so long. I miss all of my old converts in Seeta, and the members that I grew close to from there. But at the same time I'm really excited about being in Lugazi.

    The church is extremely young here in Lugazi.  The branch has been opened for less than a year so far. To give you an Idea of how small the branch is here, when it opened it had about 10 members of the church living here. 3 of them have moved, and about 20 have been baptized since it's been opened. So there are less than 30 members of the branch here. There are two or three that are less-active, but from what I've heard the rest are fairly active.

    Lugazi is really, really small. There are lots of people that live here but about half of the town is slums and the population is extreamly compact. You could walk around the whole town in a matter of hours but there are probebly like 25 to 30 thousand people living here. It's a conjested little settlement.
    The whole town is based around a sugar plantation there. There is a massive sugar plantation that sits in Lugazi that employs about two thirds of the town. The whole town is sorrounded by sugar cane, for miles and miles and miles and miles. You can drive for 30 min outside of Lugazi and still see the sugar cane that is processed for this sugar plantation. The whole town's economy is based solely on this one company. Someone told me that Lugazi supplys all of the sugar for Uganda and for large parts of Kenya and Rwanda. So pretty much everyone in this town works for this sugar plantation.

    Just in my first few days in Lugazi we found a few really good families. One of them is Robert and his wife Jennifer (They're both teachers who work in Njeru, but they live in Lugazi), and the other is

Innocent and his wife Topista (Innocent is a firefighter and his wife is a elementry school teacher). They are both really intelegent and recepive famillies, and I know that they could really help out the branch here in Lugazi and help it to grow. Please pray for them.

    Also please pray for this branch in Lugazi. It is still young and is struggling alot. The members here need to help us to do missionary work, but they havn't been too cooperative yet. Plus over half of the branch are recent converts and still need lots of help and support.

    My companion is a good guy, Elder Alfred. He's been out almost as long as I've been (he's been out for like 9 months) so he's pretty experienced, and we work well together. It's a nice change in contrast to training twice in a row.

    Miss all you guys back home and I send my love and prayers your way. Keep looking for and praying for missionary opritunities each day. The Lord needs your help and your service.

-From Elder Grilliot

Nsenene

I had completely forgotten about Thanksgiving. If not I would have bought a turkey. It's strange to think about it but Thanksgiving was the first Holiday that I missed when I was on my mission. I missed it when I was still in the MTC. Next Thanksgiving I will be in America, just that thought makes me realize how fast time go's by and how little time I really have left on my mission.

Shoes are going nicely. Already busted one pair of shoes pretty badly, but the other pair is doing nicely. I hope it can last me another year.

Interesting fact about Lugazi, I didn't even know that they had a little league team in Uganda, let alone Lugazi!

My companion is actually from Zimbabwean, not South Africa (if that's what I said last week).

“Nsenene” or the season for cooked grass-hoppers. I love Nsenene! It's like popcorn, but a little more juicy. I watched how they catch them too. They put up all of these great big iron sheets surrounding a really bright light. The iron sheets act like mirrors reflecting the light. The grasshoppers see the light and fly towards them. Seeing the light reflecting from the iron sheets they fly head on towards them and run right into the sheets. After running into the iron sheets they fall to the ground where there is a great big plastic garbage bad hoisted up around the bottom of the iron sheets. Once in the bags they can't fly directly out because their bodies won't allow them to fly directly upwards, only at an angle. It's pretty cool to watch all of these grasshoppers by the hundreds get trapped like that one after another.

I looked in my suitcases as I was packing up and found another 2 memory cards (2gb), so I think I'm set for now.

Sorry pictures were having problems sending this week. Internet was really slow. Next week I should have some good pictures for you. Anything specific that you want pictures of?

Love you

Love- Elder Grilliot