November 26, 2007

Dear everyone,

Lusaka is great. Thanksgiving was, as I said last week, quite
nonexistent except for our zone thanksgiving dinner prepared by Sister
Sanford on Monday. We didn't have turkey, but we had mashed potatoes,
chicken, and a lot of vegetables. It was quite nice, but nothing like
unto Mom's homemade Thanksgiving feast. We even had pumpkin pie and
some other pies. Delicious.

Rainy season is here again. It rained all night last night. We're
going to be muddy missionaries pretty soon. I'm not entirely excited
about that, but I am excited about the weather cooling off a bit.

The week was alright. We taught a good amount of lessons, and found 3
different families to teach, including one with a Brazilian mother and
Zambian father (you don't see that everyday). We're still doing a lot
of finding and dropping and we're just waiting to find those who are
willing to come to church! So far it hasn't happened as planned, but
we have faith it will!

On Thursday we had our branch mission leader work with us all day,
which was nice. He has finally finished grade 12 and so I think he'll
be able to help us out a lot more now.

We are very excited because tomorrow is zone conference. We will be
singing "A Child's Prayer" as the zone song and I'm conducting it. It
should be very nice. Transfers will be announced and it's quite
probable I'll be leaving this area. I've been here for six months and
to be completely honest I'd love to go to another area.

Love you all very much. I know that I'm engaged in the Lord's work and
His servants are at its head. I know the plan of salvation is REAL!

Elder Mckay Moline

P.S. Christmas is coming soon now!

November 19, 2007

Dear everyone,

The week was good. Not too many things out of the ordinary. We have
pretty empty days currently. As always, we are doing a lot of tracting
and finding people and this week we found and taught 3 different
families, which is pretty exciting.

Friday morning we did a service project at Sandra Mboma's house (the
nurse/investigator I told you about last week). She lives in a pretty
nice area and has a lot of hedges that needed trimming, so Elders
Ulloa and Mugwandia, and Tibagalika and myself took a few hours out of
our day and cleaned up her yard. She came to church again yesterday
and was participating in the classes and everything. She will be a
powerful member when she is baptized in a few weeks!

Saturday we were supposed to teach the muzungu and his family again
but he had gone out of town suddenly so we rescheduled. While we were
there it started raining cats and dogs so we stayed there and talked
to the wife and children for a bit. Her name is Thandiwe and she
speaks English, Nyanja, Bemba, French (Canada), Swahili (Congo),
Chinese, and Indonesian! I thought that was pretty amazing. So we'll
teach them probably this weekend.

Yesterday at church we had a slight surprise. To be completely honest,
we really weren't expecting any investigators to come, but just barely
after the meeting started two investigators whom we had "dropped"
earlier in the week came. They were two sisters whose nephew was
baptized in another branch and we've been teaching them since the last
eternity and for whatever reason they just haven't been keeping
commitments so when they weren't home when we came for our appointment
this week we decided we would wait to find them if they came to
church. And they did! So it was a pleasant surprise. The meetings were
very good and they felt the Spirit so we hope that gave them the extra
boost they need to keep their commitments.

For everyone's information, no, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in
any form here. BUT if I'm not mistaken there is a Thanksgiving-like
holiday in South Africa which takes place sometime in October each
year. Notwithstanding here in Zambia there is KULIBE (nothing).
Because we have 10 or so Americans in this zone, we're all having a
thanksgiving dinner tonight at the Woodlands branch meetinghouse,
complements of President and Sister Sanford. I hope we'll have turkey.
. .

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love this gospel and know that
it comes directly from our Father in Heaven!

Nalikukonda (love you),
Elder Mckay Moline

November 12, 2007

Dear everyone,

Good morning! This week has been quite nice. Elder Tibagalika and I
are doing well. We taught quite a few more lessons this week than in
the past few weeks. On Wednesday, I went on exchanges with Elder
Magero (from Kampala, Uganda) in his area. We worked in an area called
Ngombe where members walk for 2 hours+ to get to church each Sunday.
There are no buses to get there so we walked the whole way (about 1
1/2 hours each way). Add to that that rainy season has officially
begun again! So we had to walk home in the mud Wed night. It hasn't
rained for more than 2 or 3 minutes at a time for probably 6 months
now but soon it will be raining everyday again. I'll be carrying my
umbrella with me this week just in case. The rain is quite nice
especially in the heat of the Zambian sun. Also on Friday we went on
exchanges again, this time with Elder Musgrave and I in my area. We
had a good day actually. We found two families to teach, both which
seem very good at this point. Also we had a member work with us for a
half day, which is a miracle in this branch.

On Saturday we had an appointment with a muzungu! For those of you who
don't speak Nyanja or Bemba, that's a white man, the word that I hear
yelled at me every single minute of every single day. Last week we
tracted into him and he told us we could visit him and his family, so
Saturday we went there and found him and his wife. He is actually a
French Canadian from Montreal and his wife is a Chewa from the Eastern
part of Zambia. They have 5 "coloured" boys. So it was a good lesson;
we left them with a copy of the Book of Mormon and we'll see them
again this Saturday.

Yesterday church was alright. Again no investigators unfortunately.
The highlight was the primary program in sacrament meeting. It was
quite nice. Reminded me of home except there were only 15 or 16 kids
in it. The funny thing to me is hearing little children speak english.
Usually here they don't learn English until they have been in school
for a while, so you hardly ever hear small ones speaking chizungu
(english). All of them are good singers as well. One thing that made
me crack up was a primary song, I've forgotten the name, but it says
something like "This is my beloved son" in the chorus, but all of the
children sang "this is my be-Rov-ed son." Hahaha. Sometimes I catch
myself saying things like, "would you like to pLay for us today?"
Zambians love to switch their L's and R's. Anyway the primary program
was very nice and the spirit was strong during the rest of the
meetings as well. Yesterday we had another member work with us as
well. A 17 year old priest named GORGEOUS. Haha. People here have
crazy names sometimes. I just call him George because I feel a bit
awkward referring to him as Gorgeous. He worked with us for a few
hours during which time we had 7 appointments set up, EVERY SINGLE ONE
of which fell through. Such is missionary work!

OH! I forgot to tell you a story about a wonderful success in the
missionary work in this branch. A month or more ago I and my companion
and Elder Ulloa and Elder Musgrave boarded a bus to go to town and I
sat next to a 35 year old smart-looking lady so I began to talk to her
and we had a good conversation about her family and her profession
(nursing) and a number of other things and I introduced the Book of
Mormon to her and she told me she stays right next to our meetinghouse
and promised to pay us a visit the following Sunday (just like
everyone else we meet). The different thing about her is that she
actually came! She stays in Ulloa and Musgrave's side of the branch
and ever since then she has come to all 3 hours of church every Sunday
(I think four times now) and she now has a baptismal date for
December! How exciting is that? Even her 16 year old daughter has been
coming to church with her and she is now best friends with many of the
sisters in the branch. SO even though I'm not one of the missionaries
teaching her, it's pretty exciting to think that my choice of having
that conversation with her on that bus helped her to receive the
restored gospel! Each companionship in this mission is supposed to get
140 street contacts per week and to be honest most of the time it
seems pretty fruitless and of no use, but 10,000 contacts to find one
golden, prepared person is worth every ounce of effort! My testimony
of that has certainly been strengthened because of her.

I love you all and I know this is the truth!
Until next week!

Elder Mckay Moline

P.S. Zone conference is in two weeks!

November 5, 2007
Dear everyone,

Hello yet again! Things in Zambia are good. Elder Tibagalika and I have been spending a lot of time tracting and then some more tracting and then a bit more. We've pretty much dropped our entire teaching pool (which was enormous, but full of "jokers" as you might say) and we now are starting from scratch again. We knocked tons of doors this week. It's so interesting that now I look at my old area (Kitwe) and I realize how much easier it was to find people who would listen and keep commitments. It's so easy to see that success in missionary work is a gift from the Lord. We are just praying that we can qualify for the Lord's help to find the right people.

Mom, you asked if the area here is more affluent than Kitwe, and the answer is yes, but not by a whole lot. People just love to spread rumors about us and people in general are quite afraid of us (though they don't show it usually).

Our zone song this transfer is An Angel From On High (#13) but we're singing it to the tune of Rejoice, The Lord is King (#66). It should be quite powerful. I'm conducting it.

Yesterday at church Benson Kanyembo showed up in the middle of sacrament meeting. He was a recent convert I worked with a lot in Kitwe and he was in Lusaka for the baptism of his older brother so he decided to come visit me in Chainama branch. It was great to see him and talk to him about how Kitwe is doing. He said that Sister Loveness Katongo (who I taught when I was there) is now the first counselor in the Relief Society presidency. That's wonderful news to hear. I guess Donald Manjimela is doing alright, though he travels alot and as a result, misses church sometimes. It's nice to hear about old areas. Benson is now preparing to serve a mission and will be a powerful missionary for sure.

I love you all very much and I love being a missionary of the Lord's gospel today. Have a great week everyone!

Elder Mckay Moline

P.S. I'm sorry my emails are so lame nowadays. What do you want me to talk about? Feel free to ask me more questions and things so I have some more things to write about.

October 29, 2007

Dear family and friends,

October is almost gone already! I am still here in Lusaka doing the same thing, missionary work (the best kind of work there is!).

Elder Tibagalika have really been shifting our efforts slowly but surely in our branch to an area called Avondale. This week we spent a lot of time tracting in Avondale, looking for new investigators. It's a nicer area and harder to get into people homes, but we did make it into a few doors. We weren't able to set many return appointments, mostly because people are just "too busy" to have us come back. So we are still struggling in sort of a drought here, but we are fighting hard to come out on top. As happens most weeks, we were expecting at least one or two people to come to church yesterday, but no one showed. Our goal now is to use the Book of Mormon in the very forefront and have it do the sifting and teaching for us, because we need to find people who have the desire to read and the desire to learn. Otherwise we are just teaching people who want to make us happy.

October 24th was Zambia's 43rd Independance Day! Most people had off of work so we met a lot of good people. There were signs all over that said, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOTHER ZAMBIA!" and everyone was wearing the Zambian colours: green, black, orange, red. We didn't really do anything special but it was fun.

My companion and I are doing well. No problems. I put some more pictures on the photobucket page (http://s144.photobucket.com/albums/r182/eldermoline/ ).

I love you all. Thanks so much for your prayers and love!

Elder Mckay Moline