July 2, 2007

Hello everyone!

Happy Canada Day (yesterday)! We live with two Canadians so they wouldn't let us forget. Today actually is an African holiday, Heroe's Day. Tomorrow is Unity Day (also African), and to top it off, Wednesday is American Independence Day. Lots of holidays this week.

Anyway, this week was nice. Not too productive as far as plain numbers go, but we did a lot of good work. Elder Rasmussen is a great companion and we're getting along great. Even just in the 10 days I've been with him, I've learned a lot of great skills in teaching, contacting, and especially loving the people. Elder Rasmussen just has this deep abiding love for the people of Zambia. It's funny, because he actually becomes an African while we're out proselyting. He speaks Nyanja and Bemba both fairly well and people just love it. We are still working to increase the number of investigators in our teaching pool as of now. We have one with a baptismal date named Sylvester Banda who is 23 years old. We plan to have him baptized on 28 July. He is a very quiet guy, but he loves reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church. We have just a handful of other investigators who have been taught more than once. Our goal is to contact 140 people every week and to find at least 10 new investigators each week, including at least two families.

This past Saturday we taught a man by the name of Ben Bulawayo (40). He had previously only been taught the Restoration and given the Book of Mormon, and Saturday we decided to share with him the Plan of Salvation. We only had time to go through half of it, but it was one of the most (if not the most) spiritual lessons I have ever been in! Brother Bulawayo is a very smart man who attended a Bible college for 2 years, but he was sick of the corruption etc. in so many churches so he has seen. He took about 8 pages of notes as we taught about the Fall of Adam and Eve and the purpose of life and he just soaked it all up like a sponge! Then he gave probably the most sincere prayer I've heard ever. It was a long prayer, but it was really from the heart. The Spirit was incredible! Wow. Elder Rasmussen and I walked out of that lesson spirits soaring. It was just a testimony to me about how this is not our doctrine or our work, but the Lord's. It was pretty humbling.

Also, we taught a young man named Moses Samalama (21) who is actually the son of a pastor. He also has been reading the Book of Mormon, but says he hasn't yet received an answer to his prayers concerning it. We read through part of Jacob 4 (quickly becoming one of my favorite chapters) with him and he really felt the Spirit as we read. Even though he said he has heard all sort of rumors about us, he really wants to know for himself. He has more integrity than most other people we meet.

Funny story: We also met a man this week who is a pastor of the Berean Baptist Church in Chelston. His name was David and we had a really good conversation with him. Just as most pastors do, after a few minutes he began to preach to us, but the interesting thing about David was that when he switched over to his "preaching mode" he immediately began speaking with a southern drawl; no joke! He abandoned his Zambian/South African accent, and changed to a "howdy y'all!" type of southern baptist voice. Afterwards, I just couldn't stop laughing.

Friday, all the missionaries in Lusaka did a service project at District President Mulenga's farm. We got large sticks and beat large bags of shucked, dried maize to make the kernels fall off. Then we had to sift through them and pick out anything that wasn't a maize kernel. We were there for a good 3 hours and got a lot of work done for them.

Yesterday, Sunday was a good day. Fast Sundays are always nice. Church attendance was a bit low, but the testimony meeting was really great. I taught the gospel principles class about baptism. Elders quorum was a bit odd. The man who taught forgot to prepare a lesson as so often happens, and it was a bit slow. But overall, the sabbath was good. Last night we visited Branch President Likonge at his home and watched a short video about how Wilford Woodruff found the Church.

Well, I think that's about everything.

I love you all! My testimony of the Saviour and His work is growing more and more every day. I love being a missionary and working in His name.

Elder Mckay Moline