Freedom and cleaning

We’re driving our car today!  After having the car in the basement of our apartment building for 2 ½ months, we’re finally able to drive it.  Everything came together yesterday with getting our license plates and local insurance for $300.  It’s $300 for the whole year!  We’re guessing that there’s not much covered on this policy—maybe a headlight or something.  Luckily we’re able to carry insurance from the United States that gives us international coverage.  Heaven knows, we need insurance driving in Luanda!

The first place we drove to was the church to help clean it this morning.  I had the cleaning assignment as part of the Relief Society, but we decided to go as a family so Bri could help the Elders Quorum clean as well and the kids could help too.  It was a good thing we all went since only Anne, one other R.S. sister, showed up as well as a young woman named Edna.  There were also a few men that helped for a little bit while they were waiting for keys to the third floor rooms that never showed up.  So we all started on the first floor sweeping out each room and mopping them.  The kids also helped wash windows.  Then Briant and I went up to the second floor and swept out each room and the stairs.  The church is not all enclosed, so every room is covered in a layer of dirt.  The wind blows it in especially when the windows are open, and the people track it in from outside as well.  

Sweating and kicking their feet up

I was so impressed with Edna.  She's fifteen and I found out after all of the cleaning that she was just baptized last weekend!  And already she was ready and willing to show up and clean the building.  She's very excited that I'm going to start teaching English at the church soon because she loves English and has been wanting to learn it.  So as we cleaned, she and I taught each other how to say "chair," "mop," "sweep," etc. in our own languages.

The king of sweat today.  He was drenched.  There was no a/c on in the building, plus the humidity makes everyone and everything more wet.

All done!  After a few hours of hard work and a lot of sweating, we went home and relaxed for a bit by studying Portuguese Disney songs that the kids like.  It’s easier to learn another language with songs that you like and that you’re familiar with in your own language, so we sang songs from Frozen, Mulan, Brother Bear, Lion King, etc.  Thomas is very motivated right now to learn Portuguese, and the girls are picking it up as well, so we’re taking more time as a family to study it.  Each of the kids has a little notebook to write their new words in.  After we cooled off for a bit, we decided to go to the embassy pool to really cool off.  

FREE is the word that would describe how we felt today with our car!  It was so great that we could hop in our car and drive to the church, the embassy, and the store afterward on our own without having to call for a driver and wait until they were available to drive us.  Luckily we've driven these routes enough with the embassy drivers that we didn't get lost.  That's really amazing now that I think about it--Luanda is not an easy place to get around, especially because there are very few street signs and there are NO street numbers for addresses.  We just looked for what seemed familiar with landmarks.  We just bought a Garmin GPS that we can upload African maps to, but I'm wondering how helpful it can be if we can't input addresses.  :)  Anyway, we’re going to enjoy this new level of independence!