January 21, 2008

Dear everyone,

Well, the week was very good. I forgot to tell you all something kind of important last week. I'm the new Copperbelt district leader! So I'm supposed to conduct DDM each week, do baptismal interviews, and go on exchanges with other missionaries in the district. It'll be quite a bit of work, and to be honest I'm a bit nervous, but I know that it will become easier as time goes on.

So on Saturday I conducted my first baptismal interview in Kitwe. And guess who it was? A 14 year old boy names Moses Katongo. If you remember, back when I was in Kitwe we baptized a lady named Loveness Katongo. After her baptism we were even teaching her son, Moses, but he never was 100% serious; he just came to church off and on and would read the Book of Mormon on occasion. But now, nearly 9 months later he is ready for baptism. His 16yr old brother, Collins, was also supposed to be interviewed but he changed his mind or something at the last minute. So it was very cool to see Moses again. He'll be baptized this Saturday I believe.

A funny thing happened on Saturday night at a member's house just before we left to go home (which was on the opposite side of the city). The power went out (which isn't too unusual) so we finished the lesson by candlelight and then caught a bus home only to find the power was out of the whole of Ndola including our flat. . . strange. Then we found out that the whole COUNTRY had the power go out. It was out for about 20 hours in all of Zambia. The place where we meet for church is in a former furniture store which only has windows at the front entrance so we held combined elders quorum/R.S. just near the windows, skipped sunday school, and had sacrament meeting there as well. So we had a shortened church service, but it was still nice.

The missionary work in Ndola is fine. Brother Mumba went out of town last week but is back now. He's scheduled to be baptized 9 February. We have started to work a lot more with less actives. This week we taught several different less active families including the Zimbas who were some of the pioneers of this branch, baptized back in 1995 I believe. They are great people but they haven't really told us what is stopping them from being active. They have testimonies, but my suspicion is that they were offended by someone in leadership and are using that as an excuse to not come. So we are adding quite a few more members to our "teaching pool" so we can use them to find new investigators. To answer your question, Dad, we have nearly no investigators who have been in the pool for more than 3 months. Mostly because if they were in the pool that long (and not progressing towards baptism), we lost contact with them since we whitewashed this area 7 weeks ago. But we do have a few people who were taught earlier by other missionaries but were dropped and now we've picked them up again.

Well, I love you all very much, and as always, I have a testimony that this work is of God and His hand is in it much more than mine is. Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer and He lives even today to direct His work and Church.

Love,
Elder Mckay Moline

P.S. Weather report: it rains nearly everyday. Torrential downpours happen unexpectedly but only last for 5-20 minutes at a time usually. When it isn't raining, it is quite hot. Sometimes I wear a hat to keep the sun out of my eyes.