February 26, 2007

Hello!

Ah, it is good here in Africa. Yesterday at church both Isaac and Sister Kabonso were confirmed. We had 96 contacts through the week and zero came to church again, but we'll keep trying. Maybe you remember a couple of weeks ago I said I was really excited about this guy, Saxson Sinyenza, because he finally came to church for the first time. Well, we met with him this past Wednesday and he kind of "confessed" to us that he really is higher up in his church than we originally thought. Apparently he is Lord Bishop and also District President of all of the Kitwe and all of the Luanshya branches of African National Church. Ish! And he has brought lots of family members into that church as well. So he says he feels like if he joins the Church that he will be leaving all his sheep behind. The killer thing is that he knows that his church is wrong! He knows that what we teach is true! He's even said it himself. He also said that he had to make arrangements far in advance to attend sacrament meeting that one time. We'll continue visiting him and try to get the branch president to visit him as well but I can tell we're in this one for the long haul. He really would be a powerful member of the branch.
Let's see, what else happened this week.... Oh yes, Friday was Elder Minch's Humpday! He has been on mission for just over a year now. So on Friday night we went to town and ate at a pizza place called Mona Lisa's. We were going to get chocolate shakes as well, but the shake machine was broken. The pizza wasn't spectacular, but I imagine it's probably the best available in Kitwe. It used quite a bit of our allotment, but a Hump day is only once in a lifetime, right? So that was a nice activity to kind of mix things up. Mission life easily gets into a routine, but doing special things like that is always fun.
I'm still playing the keyboard at church every Sunday. It's a lot of fun, but I get exactly zero time to practice. I can't even play prelude because people always need us to do things or greet people coming in, but I can still play a healthy variety of hymns. Prior to my coming here, the members only knew 4 or 5 hymns to sing, but because someone (me) is playing the keyboard they can now learn some more! That's something I'm proud of. (thanks mom!) Also I hope to be able to teach one or two other members the basics of how to play so that when I leave they can have someone play the keyboard, even if it probably is the Easy Hymns version.

Hope everyone is having a great week. Love you all lots!

Elder Moline

P.S. I'm planning on making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies today when we get home. Wish me luck. Hopefully they will be up to par with my premission efforts. (I hear yours are quite delicious, Saryn!) We have to convert fahrenheit to celsius and cups to mL, etc. I'll report on them next week.

P.P.S. Dad, try attaching a picture to an email to my myldsmail address and I'll see how it works next week. If not, you could send film paper here to the Lusaka address or the Harare one(no film paper in the pouch address).

P.P.P.S. Mom, did you send the pictures of Bro Kabonso's baptism yet? Please do that this week if you can. . .thanks!

Hello and good morning!

We had a good week. On Friday Elder Minch and I went to one of our investigator's (Donald Manjimela) and helped him in his garden. He was growing okra, maize, and paprika. We helped him spread fertilizer and do some other things. He was really glad we helped him out, even though he probably could have done the work that we did in half the time. What can I say, I really haven't had a whole lot of experience in gardening. He really is a good man. He and another sister we are teaching should be baptized on March 11.

This past week there hasn't been a lot of rain. Just a lot of sunshine. Rainy season won't be over for about another month or so, but it's starting to slow down so it's been hot hot hot recently. At DDM last tuesday, the zone leaders really emphasized contacting people. Elder Minch and I haven't been too good about that in the past. Most of the time we are in a rush to get to our next appt so we don't have a whole lot of time to stop and talk to people about the gospel. So we resolved to make our appts further apart and really try to open our mouths more. We were told to try to get 20 contacts per day (by the way, dad, I think that's another reason we don't have bikes: you can't contact), even though in this past transfer the most we ever got in a whole week was 40. So between tues and sunday we ended up getting 101 contacts! It really isn't that hard, but we just hadn't even made an effort before. We will continue to do that in the future as well because the message we have really is important! And people do need to hear it so we should make use of every opportunity to share it. Unfortunately, even though probably 85 of the contacts said they would meet us at church on Sunday, none of them showed up. That part is a bit frustrating. You can't really trust anyone, because everyone is too nice to tell you if they aren't going to come. But, we've been told that if we have the courage to open our mouths, we will be blessed; not necessarily that the people we contact will progress but the rest of the work will have more success. So that is what we will do.

Yesterday (Sunday) was my second baptism on mission so far. Sister Jessy Kabonso and Brother Isaac Mulinga were baptized in our above ground pool at the church. The water was greenish in color, but hey--this is Africa! The tap water isn't very clean. Bro Kabonso was able to baptize his wife (cool!) and Branch Pres Kapata baptized Isaac. Sis K was so excited afterward. District Pres Kapata invited them over for family home evening tonight and she was really excited about that as well. The Kabonso's oldest child will be 8 in December and they were telling us how they are going to help him to learn english faster so he can be baptized then! It's so cool to see people embrace the gospel like that. Being a missionary is really great. I love it so much. Zambia is excellent! The Copperbelt is fantastic! The gospel is even better! See you next week!

love from,
Elder Mckay Joseph Moline

P.S. My Bemba is steadily getting better panono panono ("little by litte").

P.P.S. I'm two months old now! Yikes!

P.P.P.S. Thanks so much for the package! By the way, Zambia is a lot nicer than Zimbabwe, in that we have access to toothpaste, stick deodorant, and all manner of luxury items including cheese and pickles. If/when I go to Zim, I might need that kind of stuff, but for now don't worry about it, haha. I have enough toothpaste and deodorant to last me for quite a while.

Dear family and friends,

Happy (early) Valentine's Day!

It's nice to write to you all again this week! It was a good week. Last monday night, the copperbelt couple missionaries (the Swans, from Cache Valley) called me and told me that the next day I would be going to Lusaka to get my temporary employment permit. So the next day after DDM, Elder Zimmerman (Ndola) and I took a bus for 4 hours to Lusaka where I spent the night with the zone leaders. For dinner we went to this pizza place and for a few minutes I forgot I was in Africa at all. It was just like Pizza Hut! The next day (wed) they drove me to the immigration office (wow, so many white and chinese people!) where I filled out the necessary paperwork in order for me to stay in Zambia. The nice thing is that there is a member of the Zambian Parliament in Lusaka named Bob Sichanga who also happens to be a member of the church. I guess he is pretty high up there because a few people who saw me at the bus station asked me if I was a part of Bob Sichanga's church, haha. Anyway, so he met us at the immigration office and helped us out. If he wasn't there, the whole process would probably have taken all day, but we were in and out in an hour! I got to see Elder Mugwandia again at the office as well. As soon as we finished there, the zone leaders drove us right back to the bus station and we got on the bus to go back to the copperbelt again. Even though the trip was short, I was really anxious to get back to Kitwe. It's my home now!

On Thursday and Friday, we were able to teach some really good lessons. Man, there is this one investigator we have, Brother Chali, who has been coming to church almost nonstop for about 10 months, but every time we make an appt with him, he doesn't show up. We've made 3 appts with him since I've been here and he just is never there. Saturday, all but one of our appts fell through. For some reason, saturdays generally seem to be the worst days for proselyting. Most people have a little plot of land somewhere where they grow corn, and a lot of people just forget about everything else and go tend their "farms" on saturdays. So the one lesson we taught was to Brother Kasanda, who is committed to be baptized in April. Seems like a long time away, doesn't it? He's going out of town to Lusaka for a few weeks in March, and we figure you really can't overprepare someone for baptism. Also, we hope to be able to start teaching his wife and maybe have her baptized the same day. He really seems to be committed. Sunday/yesterday was district conference. It was held in Luanshya and was for the Kitwe, Luanshya, and Ndola branches. Most people who would have normally come to church didn't come, because they don't have enough money to get transport. So we only had one investigator there. But the conference was very good. Pres and Sis Bester came as well as Elder and Sis Kimball (the Lusaka couple) and all of them spoke. Afterwards all the missionaries and the Besters and Kimballs were privileged to have a delicious lunch at the Swans' house in Luanshya. This was only my 3rd time to see Pres Bester, but I just love him! He is always cracking jokes and is just really fun to be around. After we got home last night we taught a really good first lesson to a new investigator and he seemed really interested. So we plan to teach him and his family about the Book of Mormon on wednesday. It should be really good.

I hope everyone is doing well. I love you very much!

I absolutely love Africa and I love missionary work here!

Elder Mckay Moline

P.S. Reminder to everyone: Use the pouch address for mail, but make sure not to send cash/checks or any film paper because all of the mail I've gotten so far has been inspected.

P.P.S. I sent an email to Saryn, Maurie, and Dad, but myldsmail is being strange so I don't know if they were sent at all... sorry!

Kuli (Bemba for "dear") everyone,

I just barely was handed my first stack of real mail! I haven't had a chance to read all of it yet, but I am so excited to read the mail from all of you. Here in the Copperbelt, we get mail usually just once every 3-6 weeks! We have to wait until someone drives from Harare (Zim) to Lusaka (Zam) and then wait for someone to drive from Lusaka to the Copperbelt. Then we get the mail the following Monday or Tuesday. So it doesn't come too often, but it's nice because they are nice big stacks of letters when we do get them.

So this past week was our most successful yet! We taught a lot of really good lessons and helped a lot of people to come to church. Last monday we had a zone activity where we (8 elders) went to Ndola and had a braai (barbecue) and then played some games and some football (soccer). Actually, there were a lot of people already playing in the field we went to, so we just joined them. Of course all of us muzungus are really out of shape and we haven't been playing soccer in the streets since we could walk so we took a few of their best players on our team and played a really fun game. It had just rained the day before so there was mud everywhere and people were slipping and sliding like crazy, haha. The final score was muzungus: 2, Zambians: 2. Both of our goals were scored by our zambian teammates but I don't think us elders performed too terribly at all. The Lord blesses his servants!

The following day I went on exchanges with Elder Carruth in Luanshya, which just means he and I switched companions and areas for a day. It was good because he has been on mission for a while now and he had a lot of good insights on teaching and studying etc. Man, it's crazy because before I came on mission I thought I really knew a lot about the scriptures and how to study effectively, but over the past few weeks I've just started to realize how endless the treasures in the scriptures really are! Scriptures I've read so many times before will all the sudden change my perspective on something that I had never even thought about before. I don't know if that makes sense, but I'm really starting to grasp how to study them and use them. I guess that's just another blessing of being a full-time missionary. The more I learn, the more I learn how much more there is!

After exchanges ended, Elder Minch and I continued to visit and teach people. We are teaching two pastors right now. One of them is named Saxson and he is a Lord Bishop of some church (we really haven't talked much about it) and wow he is so cool! He has been dropped by previous missionaries twice because he hasn't come to church, but he really understands the gospel and loves reading the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. The last time we visited him we invited him to church again and he said "God willing," but we told him that of course God wants him to come and it's his responsibility to show up! So guess what? He came to church yesterday! He showed up a bit late but Elder Minch was so excited to see him because they have been trying to get him to come for months now. Altogether we had 9 investigators at church. The blue tent we have sacrament meeting under was packed with people. It really was great! Testimony meeting was really powerful as well. My favorite church meeting in Africa so far. This week we are already packed with lessons to teach to people. It's really a great feeling. We can only work hard and hope and pray it continues like this!

It's good because I think I am finally starting to get into the groove of missionary work and missionary life in general. I am comfortable with most of the lessons and material, but I'm still using Preach My Gospel to slowly improve my teaching skills and my knowledge of the scriptures, which I'll do throughout the rest of my mission as well.

So thanks for all the mail everyone! I love it here and I know this is the Lord's work that I am a part of. Keep me in your prayers!

Naleka,
Elder Mckay Joseph "Moreen" (Bemba people have trouble saying "l"s)