April 29,2007

Hello again to all!

Seems like yesterday I was here at the computer sending emails. . . .

Well, this week was alright. We found a family to teach who are really cool and there is another potential family as well (we just taught the husband, but we'll meet the family sometime this week). So that's great. Also, we were able to meet with Branch Pres Kapata and discuss a lot of different things as far as the growth of the branch here. We organized a weekly missionary devotional which we'll have on Friday nights at a different member's home each week. I think Elder Collins and I will give a short lesson, maybe 20-30 min, followed by an activity or a game. Collins said that they had a weekly devotional established in Malawi (Blantyre) while he was there and it really built unity and friendship within the branch, and that's something that every branch could use, right? We also are going to start having a separate correlation meeting once a week just with us and the branch missionaries. Only two have been officially called in the branch but more are on the way. We haven't really been using them very much, but I think if we start using them better, it will be really helpful in helping investigators and recent converts feel more comfortable and church and otherwise.

The best part of the week was we had a baptism yesterday! Attendance at church yesterday was meager at best, but both the baptismal candidates were there and 3 separate street contacts came as well (including one muslim! Who'dda thunk?).

After church was the baptism of Donald Manjimela (50) (baptized by Brother Kabonso) and Loveness Katongo (40) (baptized by BP). The house where we meet for church has a swimming pool and this time we had the baptism in the pool, as opposed to the above ground pool we have used for the previous two baptisms. Everything went quite smoothly and since the water was so deep, no one had problems getting all the way under it. We got some good pictures, but the internet is being lame today so no one can see them yet. Sorry!

Until next week! Love you all.

Elder Moline

April 23, 2007
Hello to everyone!

Another week gone! It really was a good one too. Wednesday we had Zone Conference in Luanshya with the Besters, which was great. We watched a short movie/documentary about a Malawian man who saved lots of people during the drought of 2000-2002 and we also read through and talked about D&C 109, which is the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland temple in 1836. It was really good and I learned a lot. Both Pres and Sis Bester are just great people to talk to and be around. Here in this zone it's especially nice because we are so small and we get to have ZC in the Swan's (mission couple from Hyrum, UT) living room, haha. And of course it's quite nice that Sis Swan cooks a wonderful lunch for all of us as well. Even though we were out of our area for a whole day for Zone Conf., we had really good numbers this week. Just so you get an idea of how we report things, I'll give you all the numbers that we reported to the District leader yesterday night.

Invgs Baptized and Confirmed: 0
Invgs with a baptismal date: 7
Invgs who attended sac. mtg: 8
Lessons taught with a member present: 9
Other lessons: 6
Referrals received and contacted: 2
New Investigators: 3
Progressing Investigators: 10
Recent Convert/Less Active lessons: 5
Street contacts: 73

So the things we report are much more basic than what missionaries did back in the day I guess.

4 of the investigators with a baptismal date were supposed to be baptized this coming Sunday, but it looks as if we will only have one or two. The interviews were all supposed to happen this past Saturday morning, but Donald Manjimela had a family emergency and had to go to Lusaka. If all goes well, we'll be able to have him interviewed this Wednesday and still have him baptized. Loveness Katongo, one of the other candidates, was interviewed and passed. Justin Kasanda came and was interviewed, but will have to be interviewed by Pres Bester for something (what the reason is, I don't know). Unfortunately, that means he probably won't be able to be baptized for at least 5 or 6 more weeks, because the Besters don't come up here to the Copperbelt very often. The last candidate, Alexander Said, completely missed the interview and missed church the following day (I can't say I'm surprised), so he will automatically be pushed back to the next baptismal date in May.

One of the great things we did this week was we committed 3 more investigators to baptism in the end of May. Two of them were street contacts (Peter, 30 and Patrick, 40) and the other is a friend of a recent convert (Bessie, 21). In the next two weeks we plan to give baptismal dates to at least 2 or 3 more investigators as well. One who we're really excited for is Brother Muti (45) and his girlfriend, Caphane. They both have come to church twice and really love the church and the gospel. Another family who really has potential the Mwelwas. Minch and I tracted into them some weeks ago, and the wife and one of the sons came to church a couple of weeks ago. The crazy thing about Sis Mwelwa is that she always tells us about how she receives revelation from dreams at night and that's how she knows the Book of Mormon is true! It's kind of outrageous, but man, she's a smart lady and her husband is pretty sharp too. They really have potential.

Anyway, we must go now!

Love you all!

Elder Moline

April 16, 2007

Hello everyone!

Another great week in the mission field. Last monday, we had a zone activity where the 8 of us Copperbelt elders went to the Swans' (missionary couple) and played Uno and other games. It was a lot of fun and good to be around other missionaries.

One crazy thing that happened this week was we tracted into and taught my first white man! He is an Italian Jehovah's Witness who is married to a Bemba woman and he knows his Bible like crazy! We had a nice discussion and he invited us back which is really nice, but to be honest I think he is pretty set in his ways and I don't predict he'll budge from his beliefs. It was an enjoyable lesson though.

Saxson, the man who is a bishop in another church, is doing well. We weren't able to see him for a couple of weeks, but we got to see him on this past Thursday. We plan on having the district president come with us to see him this week, because he can relate much more to his situation than we can. We really want to commit him to baptism in the next few weeks.

We have 4 baptismal candidates who will be interview this Saturday and the baptism will take place on the 29th. It should be a very good baptism. All 4 of them have been waiting to be baptized for many months now, and even though a couple of them are bit flaky as far as church attendance, they're quite ready!

Hey, you know what I just noticed? My 4 month mark was on Saturday! TIME FLIES.

Sorry this is a short one, but it's time to go already.

The Church is so true!

love,
Elder Moline

Happy Easter everyone!

Congratulations to Tanner for completing his Eagle project!

I had a very nice week. Elder Collins and I are getting along great. We have a lot in common and we are having a lot of fun together so far. He is a really good teacher and lots of fun to be around. He's a good missionary overall. Definitely different than Elder Minch in a lot of ways, but not in a bad way at all. To answer your question about Collins being colored, yes he is. His mother had him with a black man before she started investigating the Church. She and Elder Collins were baptized when he was 9 yrs old and shortly afterward she married a man (the one you talked to, Dad) who had 3 children from a previous marriage (including the Plano Elder Collins-- muzungu). Hope that makes sense to you.

P-Days are generally not to exciting here, actually. In other areas of the mission, elders have found fun things to do like go to animal parks, zoos, and other fun stuff. If they don't do that, they'll probably go hang out with other missionaries. Here in the Copperbelt, because we are so far from any other elders, we typically spend our P-days alone. We just take a minibus to town where we email, shop, and then go home, write letters, and be lazy the rest of the day. I hope maybe we can find some other fun things to do here, but so far we haven't been able to find anything reasonably affordable or worth the effort. We usually set one appt for 6:00p or 6:30p on Monday nights as well. Once every transfer (6 weeks) we'll maybe have a zone activity. We're having one today actually. I think we will just go and hang out with the other C/Belt elders in Luanshya and have a braai (barbeque).

I taught the piano/conducting class again on Saturday. I just taught Wesley and Elder Collins this time because no one else was there. It was good though. By the way, mom, we have the Church's "Conducting Course" book, which is nice, but not the piano or keyboard one. I just don't know if we really can help the people here to learn how to play hymns. The new keyboard we have plays a bunch of different ones by itself, so I think they will just rely on that.

Good news, we found Alexander yesterday! He came to church. He is supposed to be baptized on the 29th, but he missed the past two sundays at church, and we hadn't seen him in over 2 1/2 weeks! I guess he got a job where he works full time now. It's so weird; when people don't have any work they are home all of the time, but as soon as they get a job, they work 10 hours a day for 6 or 7 days a week! In the past few weeks, all our new investigators have had jobs, so our nights and the weekends are filling up really fast, but the daytime is becoming more empty. . . I think that is going to be a problem soon.

Our Easter here really wasn't all that great to be completely honest. It seemed really like any other day. I thought it would be more of a big deal, but it wasn't at all. Church was great though!. Elder Collins gave a talk in Sac mtg about the Atonement, and Branch Pres gave a really nice talk about the resurrection. The highlight of church was seeing the Mwape family. The Mwapes have been members for some years now, but they went less active because Bro Mwape was offended by someone and none of them have been to church in 8 or 10 months. We stopped by to see them on Friday night, and they showed up to church yesterday! That was really cool.

Well, I just found out that our grocery store closes early today because of Easter holiday, so we need to go do our shopping fast!

Sure love ya!

Elder Moline

Dear everybody!

The past week has been nice! Elder Minch left for Malawi on Monday and I was companions with Wesley Nzima, the branch mission leader, for two days until my new companion arrived all the way from Mutare, Zim. He's Elder Collins and he has been on mission for 13 months now, the same as Elder Minch. Elder Collins has served in Zim for most of his mission now, and coming to Zambia has been sort of culture shock for him, haha. He says it's so weird having electricity and running water at the house every night, and having enough money to buy things like cheese, or juice, or bread. He also has had to get used to our extended amount of walking that we do here, which he hadn't experienced yet. After the first week or two, I've gotten pretty used to it. Haha, he keeps saying that it's a whole different mission here in Zambia. Zimbabwe will be a completely different experience when I go there later, but I'm sure I'll be ok when the time comes. So Elder Collins is from Portland, Oregon, but just before he left on mission his family moved to Boise, ID. I was talking to him about his family and everything and he said he had a brother who served in the Texas Dallas mission. NO WAY. So he showed me a picture and it's the same Elder Collins that served in our very own Plano Texas 8th ward, haha! Pretty crazy, huh? I come halfway around the world to find a connection back to Texas.

So on Friday morning I taught my second week of "Music 101" to a couple of people. I've mostly just talked about conducting music so far, but I think next week when I'll talk more about how to read notes and then have them practice a little bit on the keyboard.

Yesterday at church really was great! We had sacrament meeting attendance at 85 which is quite above average. The blue tent that we meet under was packed with people and we didn't have enough chairs for everyone. 11 investigators at church, plus two more street contacts! Even better, most of them were on time! One of the investigators was Sister Mwelwa, who we tracted into a couple of weeks ago. She loved every minute of church and she said she really felt the spirit during sacrament meeting. It was fast and testimony meeting and as always all of the testimonies were great! A new member family who moved in from Ndola came, and even a few less active members came to church randomly. I've never seen the gospel principles class so full. The first hour of church, we watched the General Conf DVDs from Oct 06. It was torture knowing that even as we were watching, we couldn't watch the new live one, but I guess we'll be able to see them in a few months. Also, 3 of our recent converts received the Melchizidek priesthood after the services. Sundays like yesterday make everything worthwhile. The key now is just to keep it up! 3 of the 4 with a baptismal date showed up to church, which was just ok. Alexander has missed church twice now though, and we have no idea where he is. We've stopped by his house probably 5 or 6 times this week, but he's never around. I hope he hasn't just decided to disappear.

Well, I guess HAPPY EASTER everyone! I love you all! I'll just say I love doing the Lord's work here in Africa! Thanks for everything!

Love,
Elder Moline

P.S. I still haven't received the pictures of Bro Kabonso's baptism.

P.P.S. I don't have enough pictures to make another CD yet, but soon.