Our First Haircuts in Africa

After being here in the Congo for 8 weeks we realized that it was time to face the fact that we needed haircuts. Dad cut mine first.He went with me to the beautician for my last haircut before leaving America, and watched how she cut it. He did a great job!

(The rest of this blog is written by Dad. )
Remember how Mom learned how to cut my hair in the MTC? Well, here in Africa, things are a little different. Mom gets to get off the hook, a bit.

We have been playing basketball every Thursday morning on P-Day. We go at 5:30 am. We started playing an African group of boys and 1 girl, who like to use the court after us. We play "best of 3," but remember that Elders are not to play competitive basketball, so we never officially said that. After being beat 3 weeks in a row, we went down 1 to 2 games, so our elders asked me (the coach and player #4), if we could go a 4th game. We did and we tied it up. Their coach said, "OK, we are done." So we went home feeling good that we had at least tied.During the week, I decided that they needed an incentive to win. I had an idea... "If you guys win 2 of 3, I will let you shave my head." They were psyched. They thought that was a great incentive, and they were determined to win the next week. After 3 games, the Africans had won 2 of them. (We always win the first game.)

Needless to say, the boys were a little bit down, so they asked if the bet would still be on if we played 3 out of 5? I said OK... knowing that these poor guys are so tired from walking the dirt paths and roads all day, all week in the Quartiers (or neighborhoods). So we were on. We won game 4 and then we won game 5. It wasn't until after we were done that we noticed they were missing 2 of their best players for game 5. A deal is a deal... so Voila! And Soeur Gates was off the hook.

Soeur Gates had the honor of taking the first swatch. Comment by Soeur Gates was "Wow, you are gray!"
All the elders took a turn and their comments were "Wow, you are bald!"
We will put a photo in of our roommate, Elder Lamm, so you may see him, and he doesn't feel left out.

Some of the Elders got a little creative. This is an "almost bald Mohawk."
We have one elder who is a sports fanatic, our other roommate, Elder Lee. When he sees someone in a team jersey, which is very often because everyone in America gives their old clothes to Africa, he knows the name of the team and the player from the number. He decided that I should have a Nike Swoosh left on the back of my head. However, I didn't think it was appropriate because we have a general authority visiting us this next week. So they finished it up and VOILA... Here I am!