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!