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Sunday was Pentecost, and another lovely day with our brethren. We spent a lot of time getting back in the groove of things, including going grocery shopping again, and heading to the post office.
I have to tell you another story about the post office. I hate the post office. There is always a long wait; the people who work there are disinterested at best, hostile at worst. So, we pay for a P.O. Box, but for some reason they no longer deliver our mail to our box, we have to go into the main post office building to get our mail. If you read my blog from April 30, you'll know we had a terrible experience getting our mail before we left for the U.S., at least things are consistent, as the following story illustrates. On Monday Lewis and Michala and Brennan went to the post office to pick up our mail from while we were gone. There was a huge stack of cards, most of which were for Alfred Mitomoni (our deacon fighting throat cancer) from all over the world. Mixed within this stack were two letters for me (yay!) as well as a slip of paper saying we had a package waiting (I love packages!); so the next day we headed back to the post office. I handed the slip to the lady and she disappeared in the back. About ten minutes later she returns and tells us that we don't have a package, that the slip was old and from a package that we had already picked up… we hadn't picked up a package since the end of March, this is June… she began hunting through all of her slips to prove that we had already picked up the package, because she remembered us; and she remembered us picking up our package. I tried to get Lewis to tell her if we'd already picked it up we would just leave (I was tired of waiting), but as he went to tell her she disappeared in the back again. When she returned Lewis went to tell her not to worry about it, only to find that we did indeed have a package. A package that had arrived in Malawi in January. six. months. ago. I'm not sure I can adequately express my level of irritation. Back in January I ordered a 99 cent book from Amazon, and had it shipped here, just as a test. It showed delivered in January, but I never got it. I chalked it up as a loss (it's why I only paid .99), and decided to tell people to only send letters from now on. Well, at least it showed up.
On Thursday we had a game night at Miracle Kachali's home, along with her sisters, husband, and son. It was a really nice evening, but after driving Juliana back to her home, we were out much too late for our early morning departure the next day.
Friday we headed to Blantyre for the weekend. We had planned to leave by 7:30am, but we were dragging from our late night, and didn't get out the door until nearly 8:00am. We made a quick stop by the LifeNet's shop to drop the coffee pots off with Juliana for services the next day, and then headed to Gateway to pick up some high calorie food for Alfred Mitomoni and a fill up for gas. As we pulled out we were supposed to turn left off of the circle, but we went right. We ended up driving for 20 minutes before we realized our mistake. I was already cranky because I wasn't really looking forward to traveling again so quickly, and Lewis had been nagging at me for leaving late; meaning by the time we left town we were about an hour and half later than we had intended. At this point, I was ready to just go back home and they could go without me. Wisely, Lewis refused, and after thirty minutes or so of pouting, I got over it, and we actually had a really good trip down south.
We stopped and had lunch with Dr. and Mrs. Chilopora in Ntcheu. They're such a wonderful couple, and we love getting to spend a couple of hours with them as we go to Blantyre. Alfred, who was down south to see a cancer specialist, stopped by to pick up the food we had gotten for him.
We arrived in Blantyre just before sunset; we had booked a place on AirBnB, and we were happy to get to bed that evening. The next morning we headed out and had services with the lovely brethren in Blantyre, and had lots of fellowship with everyone over peanut butter sandwiches and tea.
After the Sabbath we headed to Hostaria, an Italian restaurant that has been open since 1988, for dinner. The food was phenomenal; the service was great; and the atmosphere was very intimate. We loved it. If you end up in Blantyre, we highly recommend it. It seemed really late when we got back to the AirBnB, so we headed to bed early. We have an early day on Sunday.
- comments
Gayle Hoefker Thanks for your openness Lena! And thanks for enduring all the inconveniences in serving the brethren. One positive thing about inconveniences--it makes for good blog material! Have a super day!
Patricia A Fisher Great blog! :-)
Lucretia strange When you were back with us you mentioned ordering the 99 cent book and that it had not arrived. Glad to know that you finally got it and your letters. I am still going to try and get a letter off as often as I can. Take care