May 28, 2007

Dear everybody,

Happy birthday dad! 47 years old? Ish, that's ancient! The other day I met a woman who was 98 years old! You're lucky you're not there yet.

Well, this week was quite good. We have really cleansed our teaching pool recently. This week we found 13 new investigators, most of them near our home and the meetinghouse in Riverside. We spent a lot of time tracting and contacting people and we got into quite a good number of homes. Church attendance yesterday was a bit discouraging, but I really feel like Elder Weeks and I are doing what the Lord wants us to. While we were tracting this past Saturday, we taught some INDIANS! I've seen some of them around occasionally, but I never thought I would get the chance to teach any. There were 3 men named Rakesh, Ejey, and Ghensiam, and they were Hindu. I had never taught a non-christian before and I felt so awkward there. The house had a very dark, lonesome feeling about it, so we taught a 15 minute lesson about God and Jesus Christ as our Saviour and then left. I don't know how well they knew English but they didn't talk very much, so we left them a couple of pamphlets about the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration. Maybe we'll stop by later to see if they read through them. Also, later that same day, we met a white woman from Belarus (Eastern Europe). We didn't teach her, but we spoke with her for a few minutes about the Church and some other things. Who would've guessed Zambia is such a diverse place? I love it here!

Oh, I guess I should say that yes, I got the package from my family this last week and the oreos and candy are already gone. They were delicious! And the pedometer has been working nicely. On days that we leave Riverside, we usually hit between 8-12 miles a day! More than I thought. When we stay in Riverside, it's more around 5 or 7. And to answer my mom, no, I haven't received any other package yet. I'll be on the lookout though.

My favorite lesson of this week was to a great man named Brother Muloboko. We met he and his wife last week and we gave them the Book of Mormon to read. When we saw him on Friday, he was alone, but he hadn't read anything in the Book of Mormon yet, so we read through 3 Nephi 11 with him which is where Christ first appears to the Nephites. I've read that chapter at least a dozen times with investigators before, but I've never felt the Spirit in it so strong as I did that night. I can testify from that experience and others like it that the Book of Mormon truly is the word of God that He has sent to us as an additional witness of the Saviour Jesus Christ. I think I'm beginning to understand exactly how the Spirit works, especially in myself as a missionary. Brother Muloboko was really touched and I could tell that he then had the desire to read the book even though before that it really wasn't a priority for him. After we left the lesson, Elder Weeks and I were almost walking on air, haha. I loved it! When we got home, Elder Weeks' told me his conversion story. I guess he had been inactive from age 16 up until he was 22, until one night before he went to bed he picked up the Book of Mormon in Alma 5 and read for a few minutes. The next night he did the same and he said the Spirit spoke to him so strongly that he just knelt down and prayed. That next Sunday he cut his long hair, put on a shirt and tie and went to church. A few weeks later he started attending institute and then he started submitting his mission papers. Now almost two years later here he is, teaching people about the book that changed his life! It's so cool to hear the experiences behind testimonies.

As always, I love all of you, and thank you for your prayers and the strength that you give me! I couldn't do this without it!

Love,
Elder Mckay Moline

May 21, 2007

Dear everyone,

Well hello once again. Good week. It really was. A lot of things are happening here. Elder Weeks and I are getting along fine. We dropped 2 investigators this week because we really weren't going anywhere with them. It's funny because both of them had completely different problems. One of them just wanted to study the Bible with us and never took the step of praying about the Book of Mormon (and from his attitude probably never would) and the other was an old man who just couldn't comprehend the whole "one true church" idea. He loved the Book of Mormon but wanted to continue going to his other church.

Elder Weeks and I have decided to try to work even closer to the meetinghouse in just a few areas. So we did some tracting close to the church and found a family to teach. We got in a few other doors as well. We tracted even part of the neighborhood where we live and we found and scheduled a time to meet with them tomorrow night. We also ran into a white Irishman named Eric in his 60s. He was a nice man, but come to find out he had a bad experience with some LDS missionaries 40 some years ago in Ireland and since then he's held a grudge against the Church and everything we believe. We only talked to him for maybe 15 minutes but I guess he is a missionary as well here in Zambia. He's very educated and smart, and he said he has read the Book of Mormon numerous times, but he kept on commenting about how it contradicts the "accepted greek texts" and the "hebrew roots" of the Bible. Of course he knows his Bible ten times as well I know it, and he speaks greek and hebrew much better than me, but we kept asking him about personal revelation and prayer and he just denied it. What's interesting is that I have met so many many people who know their Bible backwards, forwards, and even diagonally, but guess what? Every single one of them belongs to a different denomination. Funny how that works, isn't it? All of them claim to have studied Greek and Hebrew to better understand the Bible, but they all STILL disagree. It really makes "when they are learned they think are wise and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside" seem a bit more real. Personal revelation isn't closed to anyone. If Eric or any other man or woman knelt down and sincerely asked God about something in faith, he would give them an answer! But so many people refuse to believe it so it never happens. Anyway, I found that quite interesting. Moral of the story: "ask and ye shall receive." Inversely, "ask not and ye shall never receive." If we're following a true prophet of God, we can know for ourselves that we are in the right path.

I love being a missionary! Until next week. . . .

love you all,
Elder Mckay J. Moline

P.S. I've been teaching Elder Weeks a bit of piano. We took the old keyboard from the meetinghouse and brought it to our house and now Elder Weeks is pretty much a virtuoso pianist. He can play the top note of a few different hymns and can tear up the "heart and soul" duet with me, haha.

P.P.S. I got a package yesterday! Thanks, family! I've hardly eaten anything yet, but I am oh so excited to later today.

May 14, 2007

Mulishani emkwai!

Well, happy mother's day to all the mothers who are reading this! Especially my mother and also Grandma Shirley and Grandma Jan! Without you I wouldn't be here for sure!
Another week gone again. Elder Collins and I had a good last few days together. He left Wednesday night so I was companions with Wesley Nzima for a day and a half until Elder Weeks arrived on Friday afternoon. Wow, I'm going to miss Elder Collins. He was only here for a short time, but we got a lot of things done and we had a good time together. Hopefully I'll see him again before he goes home. So Friday the zone leaders came and dropped Elder Weeks off here and then we had our weekly devotional that night at the Phiris' house. Quite a few more people showed up this time (this was only our 2nd week), but everyone was late so we didn't start until 6:30 or so. We decided that every week we'll go over a couple pages from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet so this time we talked about Agency & Accountability and Gratitude. It went nicely, but we ended too late to play a game with everyone, so we just went home

Elder Weeks is much different than Elder Collins and Elder Minch. He is definitely committed to obedience, hard work, and talking to absolutely everyone! He is from Paradise, UT (in Cache Valley) and his family is full of berry farmers, so he knows how to work. He's the 7th in his family to serve a mission. I think we'll work well together. It's so interesting to me how different missionaries have completely different styles of working. He has a strong testimony that has been through a lot of trials, I can already tell. He loves bearing his testimony and did so in sacrament meeting yesterday. It was powerful.

Church was pretty good yesterday. There was a sister missionary serving from this branch who just barely arrived back home from 18 months in the South Africa Durban mission. Her name is Maria N'gambi and she bore a really good testimony in sacrament meeting. She'll really be a strength to the branch. Her brother, Aaron N'gambi is actually serving in this mission (Zimbabwe Harare) and has been out for 16 or 17 months now. Another sister from the branch, Sister Irene Chimfwembe received her mission call to the ZHM yesterday as well. She will be going to the MTC in July sometime and she is so excited! It was really cool to talk to her about her plans and everything for mission. I guess the only downer of this week was investigators at sacrament meeting. We have 6 with baptismal dates and only two showed up to church. We'll have to work on that during this week.

Of course, after church it was very very nice to call and speak with my family in Texas! I love my family! That's one thing I don't think I could ever be grateful enough for: a loving family who is strong in the gospel and who supports and prays for me. I can truly feel the prayers of my family and friends helping me here. This is one work that would be absolutely impossible were it not being guided by the Lord Himself. That's one thing I've really realized since I've been here. This Church honestly could not even function the way it is functioning if it was being run by men and their own minds and wisdom. It just couldn't. Jesus Christ is the head of this Church. There is no one else who has wisdom enough to do it. I was talking to a man the other day and I told him that we have a living prophet and he said, "Oh, I understand the name of the church then; the Church is run by Jesus Christ! That is cool!" Haha. Anyway, I love this gospel and I love my family and I love our living prophet today! He is truly inspired by God and it's a privilege to be a minister of that truth!

I love all of you!
Elder Molinator

P.S. Dad, I'll answer your questions next week. I'm going to think about them first. Also, computer was being slow. No pictures.