October 22, 2007

Dear everyone,

Another week gone! The week was quite nice. A few good things happened. Saturday we had that free movie at the church in an effort to have members bring friends, but it was sort of a flop. Only 7 or 8 people showed up. We watched Pioneers of Africa, which was awesome though.

Yesterday at church was nice. No investigators came, but the meetings themselves were very good. After church we had a very good lesson with a man named Collins Simbeye. We've been teaching him for a couple of months now and he has never been active at any church before, but he was telling us that he really needs to start coming to church and keeping his commitments. He's busy with school and other things at this point but he told us he realizes the importance and has a desire for baptism. Unfortunately, he is the only investigator of ours who is showing any promise at this point. We have started to move into some new areas and have found a few new investigators there. Our goal is to find the prepared ones. Obviously it's much harder than just saying that. It takes faith, commitment, prayers, and work. But that's what we're going to do!

I love the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Love you all as well,
Elder Mckay Moline

October 16, 2007

Dear everyone,

Sorry I am a day late again. Last Tuesday at DDM, we had a surprise announcement that yesterday (15 Oct) would be zone conference. We weren't expecting it because we already had zone conference once at the beginning of this transfer (with President Parmley). Oh well. It was quite a pleasant surprise actually. Zone conference is a wonderful break from the everyday routine of things. Plus feeling the Spirit there really motivates and inspires me to be more excited about missionary work. It's a spiritual refueling of sorts. President Bester spoke about keys to success in missionary work.

Transfers were announced yesterday. I will be staying with Elder Tibagalika here in Chainama for another 6 weeks. After that, Tibs only has 6 more weeks until his "death" on 12 Jan, so it's likely that I might kill him. We'll see though. So far we've been getting along fine on the outside, but ish he is a difficult person to deal with some of the time. We are complete opposite cultural backgrounds, opposite personalities, and everything else. It's alright though; we are going to do some great work here I believe. Any two people with testimonies of the gospel can work effectively together, and so we will. Elder Poche, my district leader somehow got a TEP in Zimbabwe (the only one this transfer) so he's going that side, and now Elder Musgrave will be our new district leader in this side of Lusaka. I'm excited about that. He's a great missionary. Elder Mogotsi, my previous DL from C/belt will be coming to Lusaka to be a zone leader.

The work has been a bit stagnant here for the past few months so we've decided to come out of the box and try some new things. We are currently finding LOADS of new investigators (over 200 in the past two transfers), but there has been little if any progression among them. So obviously SOMETHING needs to change. This week we started to move slowly into different areas where we haven't worked too much before. We've sort of been exploring and looking for where the Lord wants us to work next. President Bester suggested to the whole mission that we implement something he calls "the Book of Mormon Loan Programme." Basically, instead of being apprehensive about giving out copies of the Book of Mormon to people, we should be very free to loan them to people, even if we haven't sat down with them yet. For example we briefly introduce the book to someone at their gate or on the street and say, "we'd like to loan this book to you on the condition that we come and discuss your reading in it at your home in [one week, two days, 6 hours, etc.]. If you find its contents to be interesting, then we can discuss further from there, or you can just give us the book back, depending on how you liked it." I guess the programme isn't something entirely new, but just a better way to sift through people faster rather than sitting down and wasting our time teaching someone who doesn't even have a desire to learn. Less new investigators will be found, but we can spend time with more serious people instead.

This Saturday we're having that free movie that I talked about last week. I think we'll watch the DVD Pioneers of Africa. Wish us luck with that.

OH yes, there is some bad/strange news. The Church's pouch mail system has changed its standards. If anyone wants to send me anything through the pouch the new rule is NO ENVELOPES ALLOWED. It must be a single piece of paper folded into thirds with the address and stamp directly on the outside of the paper with two pieces of tape at the top (sides must be open). Yeah, it's pretty strange, but I guess people keep sending missionaries cash and stuff illegally so they really had to crack down on it.

So if you want to send me more than one piece of paper, put it in an envelope and send it directly to Zambia:

Elder Mckay Moline
Zim-Har Mission
P/Bag 325x
Ridgeway, Lusaka
ZAMBIA

All letters I receive will be very much loved and appreciate as well as responded to promptly. Thanks very much!

I love missionary work and I know that this is truly the Lord's Church.

Elder Mckay Moline

P.S. I'M TEN MONTHS OLD!

October 8, 2007

Dear everyone,

Hello again after yet another week! Seems like I was here emailing yesterday.

Our week was good. We taught 27 investigator lessons, although no one came to church yet again, which is a bit frustrating. We finally obtained a branch list and searched it to see if we could go visit some less-actives. There are only 4 less-actives in our half of the branch boundaries, and we don't even know if they are still around because they haven't been seen for some years. We did manage to visit one of them, a Lozi named Francis. He's about 35 and was offended by some of the branch leaders having something to do with the welfare program or something. We read Mosiah 5 with him, which is about the baptismal covenant, and we talked about keeping his covenants and stuff and he told us he could read chapters from the Book of Mormon on his own and he didn't need us to come back. Ish, can you believe some people?

One of our investigators, Sylvester Banda, who previously had a baptismal date and had disappeared for a while, reappeared! So we visited him this week and re-committed him to baptism on Nov 10 and to attendance at church EVERY week. Unfortunately, he got sick on Saturday and didn't come, but we're praying that he will really commit himself and attend every week from here on out.

We're going to be trying some new ways to find people in the next few weeks. We will have a "FREE MOVIE" at the meetinghouse in a couple of weeks; we made some cool flyers and will be advertising for it, and our hope is that members will come and bring friends as well as honest people who have heard ridiculous rumors about us will come and see what the Church is all about. I think we'll watch the movie "An Ensign to the Nations."

Well, I think that is everything worth writing about. Things are great. The work of the Lord is wonderful. I love Zambia.

love you all,

Elder Moline

October 1, 2007

Dear everyone,

Things in Lusaka are wonderful. Time is flying it seems. This week was alright. I received the birthday package from my family, hurray! Thanks so very much. I also received the envelope with all the notes from the Warr family reunion. It was nice to hear from everyone! I can't wait to go waterskiing again.

On Wednesday I went on exchanges with Elder Magero who is from Kampala, Uganda. He's a really funny missionary who came out just in June. He's the only member of the Church in his family and has a rock hard testimony. We had a good time together. At one of our appointments with an investigator named Ronald, we were sitting on his front porch (they call it a veranda) and this huge snake slithered past my feet so I stood up and backed away. It was probably two inches thick in the middle and 1 1/2 meters long. It slithered over to a bush and then Elder Magero jumped up and starting yelling at Ronald and myself, telling us that we needed to go find some big rocks and sticks to kill it with. So we gathered some rocks and then while Magero kept an eye on the snake, we said a prayer: "Heavenly Father, please help us to kill this serpent. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." Then he chucked a big rock into the bush and the snake slithered away along the house. Then Ronald and I both threw rocks and hit it as well. Elder Magero, in the mean time ran ahead of it and smashed a metal rake right on the head several times. It kept wiggling for several minutes afterward, but it was pretty certain it was dead. So that's the strange story of the week. Afterward Ronald told us that it was a venomous snake and it might've made its way into the house so it was a good thing we stopped it.

Other than that, nothing too exciting happened. We taught 25 investigator lessons, but we are still having trouble working with members. We set appointments for them to work with us, but they almost always flake out on us, which is a bit discouraging. This Sunday we're having a special fast so that the members can help find people for us to teach. Our prayer is to work with them more closely and have them give us more referrals to teach and baptize.

Nothing else on my end. As always, I love you all. Don't take the gospel for granted; so many people are lost and confused in the world. . . I love having correct knowledge about our Heavenly Father and His plan for us.

love,
Elder Mckay Moline