December 17, 2007

Dear everyone,

Christmas is coming! Ndola is wonderful and the work is going nicely. Last Friday (14 Dec) was my "hump day" as they say. I'm now "over the hill" as pertaining to my missionary life. One year serving a mission and nearly one year in the country of Zambia. It feels great to know I've been out for a year but at the same time it's a bit depressing because I know I have less than half left to be a missionary. To celebrate my one year, all four of the Ndola elders (Elders White & Lawrance, and Elder Mokolobate & I) went out to eat at a restaurant called Starscape here. It's probably in the top five nicest restaurants in Ndola. It had Indian and Chinese food and we had a couple of Indian dishes and a couple of Chinese. I was quite impressed; it was probably the best restaurant food I've had in Africa. The bill between all four of us was equivalent to about $55 so not a bad price either.

So Elder Mokolobate and I are getting along just fine. As I said before he's very small and people always think he's a little kid which is funny. He's very prim and proper especially for an African; he spends 10 or 15 min each morning combing his already almost non-existant hair, ha ha. He's really a great guy though and he has a great memory for people and their names which is quite an advantage to have.

So Ndola is very similar to my green area (Kitwe) which is about a 40 min drive away from here. The Church has only been here for 4 or 5 years so most everyone are recent converts. The YM/YW programs are pretty nonexistent, but there are a decent amount of YSAs so they have seminary and institute regularly. Like in Kitwe we don't really get fed very much, but occasionally when we visit members they will feed us (probably once every week or two). Distance is the biggest problem for members. Years ago, the members used to meet at a rehabilitation center at the entrance of the city and so they had a decent amount of members in an area near there called Twapia but about 2 years ago they moved the church to the middle of town center to a former furniture store which is where it is at now. At this point it's the nicest and biggest meetinghouse in the Copperbelt. Since it is in town center everyone knows where it is and sometimes we just stand right outside the front doors and contact people. Quite an advantage. Sacrament meeting attendance is pretty random, usually between 60 and 80 though I'm told sometimes it has gone over 110 or as low as 40. I still play the piano (there hasn't been a sunday in the past year where I haven't; somehow someone always figures out that I play) and we'll be starting a weekly music class so at least one person in the branch can conduct music correctly.

Our teaching pool has some quality people right now. We currently have 5 people with baptismal dates (quite a lot more than I was used to in Lusaka-- zero). The first is a great guy named Charles Kalaba, who will be baptized this Saturday. He stays pretty far from the church in a humble home in one of the poorest areas of Ndola. Yet every time we go over he has his wife prepare us something to eat, whether it be nshima and chicken or eggs and rice. He has been investigating for 6 or 7 months now and is quite excited to be baptized. We're also teaching a husband and wife, the Mumbas. They are both Congolese (from the DRC) and so they speak French, Swahili, Lingala, and English. The husband is a doctor who studied medicine in France and now has his own clinic here. He's a wonderful man and he and his wife are set on being baptized; the only setback is that they also stay far from the church and so we have to go pretty far out of our way to visit them. They have been 100% faithful in coming to church ever since they met the missionaries in October. We have two others with dates named Sharon Mwaka and Precious Kunda (from a part member family) and probably one or more two on the way as well. So we are pretty busy with all of them and several others right now.

I love this work so much and am so grateful to be a part of the work of my Father in Heaven right now right here.

Elder Mckay Moline

P.S. We just got a new branch mission leader who is AWESOME. So we'll probably start having weekly coordination meetings now.