September 24, 2007

Dear everyone,

I have now officially left teenagerishness behind, and moved into the big, scary world of adulthood. The big 2-0 happened last Wednesday. The celebration wasn't terribly exciting, but it was fun. Myself, my companion, and Elders Ulloa and Musgrave went bowling at the only bowling alley in Lusaka. American oldies were playing over the loudspeaker and everything, haha. It was a good time for all, even though my companion refused to play because he was quite sure he would break something if he did.

Elder Tibagalika and I are doing fine. He's much different than any of my other companions. He has a thick Ugandan accent that people have a hard time understanding a lot of the time and he's very quiet most of the time. We're doing well together though.

The week itself was a bit disappointing. As with the past few months, we are still finding tons of new people, but none of them are sticking with us. This week we have 5 members scheduled to work with us, so we are hoping that helps some of our investigators become a bit more serious, and have more of an incentive to come to church. Speaking of which, we actually had some investigators at church yesterday! Three, in fact! Wendy Nchena and her niece, Matilda, as well as another guy named Robert Chimbo. So that's exciting. I think the Lord is showing us that it actually IS possible to have people progress here, but it does take a lot of effort on our part, especially on our commitments and invitations to them.

Strange story of the week:
We were knocking doors in a nicer area called Avondale and we met a muzungu (white man) from America. He politely invited us in and we sat in his yard and talked for a few minutes. During our conversation he called us pagans, not Christians, who believe in a false god among other things. The funny thing is that he was very kind about it all, haha. We just told him what we knew, bore our testimonies, and then left.

I know this is the Lord's pure doctrine, in His true church.

Love you all!

Elder Mckay Moline

September 18, 2007

Dear everybody,

Another week GONE! My companion, Elder Tibagalika is a cool guy. By the way, I lied last week when I said he was from Ginger, Uganda. The city is actually called Jinja. Because of his accent, I honestly thought he was saying ginger, haha. Anyway, he has been on mission for about 20 months now so he's pretty "seasoned" I guess you could say. His accent is still a bit difficult for me to understand: quite different and much more harsh than a Zambian accent. He's a good guy, but he's very much in a routine as far as teaching and contacting people; he says the same things in every single lesson, contacts in the same way, etc. He's the 3rd missionary in his family; his two older brothers have also served missions as well.

Sorry I'm a day later than usual; we had zone conference yesterday, so P-day was postponed until today. We had a pretty eventful week. On Thursday President Bester was here in Lusaka so we all had President's interviews with him. Man, I love Pres. Bester. Just 15-20 minutes in an interview with him made me so excited for missionary work and it just really made me feel like the work I'm doing actually has an impact even though a lot of the time it doesn't feel like it. He read Alma 37:35-37 with me: "Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings." One of my favorite scriptures in the Book of Mormon. So we have a great mission president. It's good to know that the Zimbabwe Harare mission is in the hands of such a good man. Thursday we also had two new missionaries arrive in the zone, one from Orange county, CA, and the other from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Both of them are quite cool. It's strange to think that somehow I've gotten past the stage of being a "greenie," because I feel just as green as I did when I first arrived in Zambia. Weird.

Friday I hit my 9 month mark which blows my mind.

Saturday we had another appointment with Bro Bulawayo, who we haven't taught for at least a month now. We taught him about the importance of baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was a good lesson and we challenged him to be baptized, but he said that he still is trying to stabilize himself as far as his job and family. He did say that he feels he has received an answer that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and he knows he needs to be baptized. This Saturday night we are going to teach him with Brother Wamunyima, a member of our branch. Our prayer is that when he sees and hears the joy the gospel brings to families in the Church, it will sort of give him a kick in the pants towards committing to baptism. He still has only come to church once.

Oh yes, and on Saturday we found out that one of the branch missionaries in our branch is a total drunkard and that the previous night he had come home smashed and attempted to beat his own mother. After he was chased from his own house by his father, he proceeded to go to the neighbor's houses and caused a huge ruckus among the neighbors. The sad part is that he works with missionaries in our branch one or two days every week, so now he has not only stained his family's name, but the Church's and the missionaries'. We also found out that this wasn't the first time he had done this either. Alcohol truly is ridiculous and evil.

On a better note though, Sunday was Lusaka district conference! All 7 branches in Lusaka met at the Libala chapel. It was excellent! William W. Parmley, president of the Africa Southeast Area and his wife were here and spoke to us. Also Pres. and Sis. Bester were there and they spoke as well as the district president, Pres Mulenga. The chapel was so full that people had to stand up! Afterwards, a member named Brother Cleverly gave myself and Elder Tibagalika a ride back to our flat. Bro Cleverly is a white American who works for the US embassy here. He's in one of the other branches and he was just called to be district Young Mens pres., so he wanted to find out where our meetinghouse was so he could know if he ever would have to go there.

Monday (yesterday) was zone conference! It has been 8 or 9 weeks since the last one so it was especially nice. Pres Parmley and his wife were there and they and the Besters all spoke. It's so cool to have general authorities visit. Pres. Parmley mainly just spoke about missionary work (surprise surprise) and how we as full-time missionaries need to be involved in conversion, retention, and activation. So he spoke with us on how to work specifically with dys/un-functional branches in re-activation efforts, etc. I learned a lot of really good stuff. Zone conference is wonderful. Last night, the Besters took Elder Ulloa, Elder Musgrave, Elder Tibagalika, and myself out to dinner. We ate at this incredible hotel called the Taj Pamodzi. I thought we were back in America for two hours. I had the Greek chicken: delicious.

Tomorrow is my 20th birthday! Today after emailing we are going to go bowling to celebrate!

Well, again I love you all. I love the Lord's work! Tiwonana futi!

Elder Mckay Moline

September 10, 2007

Dear everyone,

Today marks the beginning of another transfer period. This last one seemed pretty long to be honest. Mostly because I was with two different branch missionaries, which gets pretty stressful. Both of them were cool guys, but they're just helping out so they feel no accountability or stewardship for the area or a branch that is not their own, so it all falls on me. BUT, now I have a full-time missionary companion once again. The switch was made this morning. It turns out my hunch was wrong and I'm not training. My comp's name is Elder Tibagalika and he is from Gingertown, Uganda. He only has 4 1/2 months left on mission so this likely will be his dying area. He was actually serving in the branch right next to us (the same one Joseph was from) for 6 weeks, so it's kind of strange. It doesn't happen too often that an elder is transferred within the same zone. But now he's with me. He's not a very friendly person and not all the stories I've heard about him are good, so I'm a bit scared honestly. We'll see how it goes.

Last Monday, Elders Ulloa & Musgrave, and Joseph & myself, visited a place called Kalimba Reptile Park. It's sort of outside Lusaka in the bush so we took a taxi to get there. Since it was a Monday it was quite empty. They had tons of huge crocodiles and lots of small ones. I found a huge croc tooth on the ground that I kept. They also had a bunch of snakes, including the black mamba, the second most venomous snake in the world. The park itself wasn't really that big, but it was a lot of fun. They even had a ghetto minigolf course and a ping pong table. I was able to get back into my groove and beat E. Musgrave at ping pong. It was a fun trip.

So Elder Musgrave and Elder Ulloa are still companions living in our same flat. Last week, Musgrave bought a crock pot for $40 US and this whole week, we've been making stuff in it everyday. I had NO IDEA how cool and useful and delicious crock pots were until this week. We usually just throw in raw beans, raw mince (ground beef) or chicken, a lot veggies (potatos, corn, carrots, onions, tomatoes), and some soup mix and/or spices. Anyway, it is nice. I usually make Ugandan chipati to go with it. (mix flour, water, salt and a bit of sugar, and then roll out like a thick tortilla and fry it on the stove). YUM.

The work here is going alright. For the 4th week in a row, zero investigators at church. A bit depressing, but the work goes on. We have so many people in our teaching pool that are pretty good, but no one who is solid. We're trying to keep the sifting going, but there is so much pressure from our leaders to teach tons of lesson so sometimes we have opted to teach a lesson to get a number rather than to drop and try to find someone else. Obviously that's not a good thing. Our member present lessons still are struggling quite a bit, but we finally had a branch mission leader called just a week ago, so we're hoping that things start changing now. We will now have a weekly coordination meeting every saturday after institute at 11am. The branch mission leader, all branch missionaries, and any members who want to come will attend and we'll talk about our progressing investigators, less-actives, and set up specific times that the members can work with us. We're really hoping and praying that people will come. It will really help the work in the branch. Member present lessons = investigators at church = fellowship/learning/progression = baptism & confirmation = celestial kingdom! Well I guess it's not that simple, but you get the picture: we need to have more help from members.

Yesterday after church we taught this street contact named Joshua who was a bit slow of learning, but really eager to hear our message. We were sitting in his house along with his younger brother-in-law and mother. We taught them a 10 minute restoration lesson and just at the end as we were telling them how to pray to know the truth for themselves, Joshua's older brother busts in, straight from work. "Sharing the word of God, are you?"
"Yes."
"What's your doctrine?"
"Well, we don't just have one, but many so ----"
"---NO. WHAT'S YOUR DOCTRINE?"
". . . uh, well we share about how the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth in it's fulness through a prophet of God named Joseph Smith."
"Oh, so you're teaching the Smith truth are you?"
Yada yada and it went downhill from there.
Anyway, a perfectly fine lesson again was ruined because of misunderstanding, ignorance, and prejudice. The man had never heard of our church before and was judging our message from one sentence from my mouth. Then he accused us of trying leading his family to hell, saying that us whites only lead people astray, and that I only believe what I do because my parents taught it to me when I was young and I've been brainwashed. Then he proceeded to try to judge me because I haven't yet been saved. Probably the most extremely offensive lesson I've been a part of since I've been here.

Such is the life of a missionary!

Truly this is the Lord's gospel. I know it independent of anyone else and I love it.

I love you all!
Elder Mckay Moline

P.S. Haven't received the bday package or keyboard course yet.

September 3, 2007
Dear friends and family,

SEPTEMBER ALREADY! In just a matter of 2 weeks I will be 2 decades old. Strange.

This week was quite nice. Joseph Piyolo is still my companion and things are going nicely. We taught 27 lessons to investigators this week and found 25 new investigators, which are both quite high for this area. Our problem, as almost always is, is getting them to come to church. Again, yesterday we had no investigators at church. I think the area we need to work on most is getting members to come teaching with us. Otherwise people just see us, the elders, over and over again and not anyone who has anything in common with themselves. So that's our biggest goal at this particular time. I think after we start getting members to work with us regularly, investigators will naturally want to attend church.

So now it's week 6, which means we will probably find out transfers tomorrow. I am almost certainly going to be companions with a full time missionary after next week, and there is a likelihood that I will be training a new missionary. . . that could be the spirit of prophecy in me, or maybe just my own wisdom. I guess we will see next week! Also, the word on the street is (yes, missionary rumors are funny) that 4-7 unnamed missionaries have gotten TEPs for Zim and next week will be going to that side. The mission doesn't really keep us elders informed on what the Zim govt is doing as far as TEPs so we know almost nothing. It's funny to speculate and then later find out that it was all just made up by some goofy elder.

We just received word last week that a general authority will be visiting Lusaka two weeks from today. Not just any general authority, but President Parmley, who is now president of the Africa Southeast area. President Golden (who I met my second week in Zambia) was recently moved to the Africa West area, so now Pres Parmley, who used to be one of his counselors is now the president. Anyway, he is visiting Lusaka for district conference on the 15th and 16th of Sept and then 17th is Lusaka zone conference. Man, I'm excited! The only lame part is that because of it we don't get a zone conference this transfer. Oh well. It's worth it. I can't wait.

Our missionary schedules changed this past week. Because of some strange things that have happened after dark in some areas of Lusaka, Pres Bester has decreed that we implement a makeshift daylight savings time. So now instead of arising at 6:30, we get up at 5:30. And instead of being home by 20:30 and in bed at 22:30, now we have to be home by 19:30 and in bed by 21:30. So that's been kind of weird to get used to, but now I think I like it. Getting up early makes me feel more productive and useful.

Well, I think that's everything. I love this work so much. I'm learning more about prayer, life, scriptures, trials, and pretty much everything else every single day. Coming on a mission was the greatest decision of my life. I love Zambia and I love being on the Lord's errand.

love,
Elder Mckay Moline