J'aime le dimanche :)

I love Sundays. And today was an especially great one. We started off with church at the Smiley's beautiful apartment in a much nicer area (where all the Americans and Ambassadors live, clearly). Stephanie and Spencer gave great talks, and Stephanie & Melanie sang "Savior, Redeemer of my soul," which was so beautiful. My Sunday School lesson went wonderfully, thanks to the great comments that everyone gave, and for a closing song, Brother Smiley sang a solo of "A poor wayfaring man of grief." He was in some men's choir at BYU and was a music major, and has a beautiful voice. It was so nice. Afterwards, they prepared a little brunch for us of quiche, fruit salad, blueberry scones, carrot cake, and juice. It was so delicious, we felt very spoiled. But we had such a nice time, and some of us profited afterwards to use their piano to sing some hymns, it was so nice.

May, Sarah and Kylee after church:

Natalie, Melanie, Stephanie, Britt(any)... notice a trend in the names of the girls in our group here?...

The Smileys and Frere Lee :)

On our way home, we stopped off at a nearby beach to walk around, and tried to fend off the vendors by saying that we don't buy things on Sunday. That did not stop them from trying!

Brayden found a little baby octopus!

Britt and this guy with his crazy instrument:

Next stop was this sort of orphanage place where we gave some clothes away and exchanged some songs with a few of the kids (they sang for us, including "if you're happy and you know it...", and we sang "Je suis enfant de Dieu" (I am a child of God). It was cute. Kind of interesting going to an orphanage on Mother's Day, but it was cool to see women who work there and sacrifice so much of their time to be mothers to these children who don't have mothers of their own. How grateful I am for the wonderful family I have and the wonderful home I was raised in! We are SO blessed.

We passed by la grande Mosquée de Dakar on the way home and were able to walk around and look at it. Very pretty, but I think we're all excited to go to Touba tomorrow to see the main Mosquée, which promises to be very interesting.

This might be my last post for a while, because we are leaving Dakar tomorrow for Saint Louis (passing, on our way, what is apparently Mango paradise, huzzah), so I'm not sure when we'll get to use the internet again. But I will post pictures as soon as possible!