May 19, 2008

Dear everyone,

Hello again! Things are going well! Well this is the first week of the transfer and yes, I am staying here in Lusaka with Elder Musgrave. Elder Mokolobate has somehow gotten a TEP for Zimbabwe and will be going there to train and be a district leader at the same time! I will be a grandfather, haha. We have 6 new missionaries arriving from the MTC on Thursday night so we'll have a fun time shuttling them to their areas then. The new AP in the mission is Elder Bitter, who was my companion in the MTC. I haven't seen him since we parted ways in Harare 17 months ago

Starting this week Sister Woolley and Sister Chimfwembe will be taking a part of our area which we really liked. So we will suffer for a little bit as we look for some new investigators but we really feel good about the decision and we feel the work in the branch will increase as a result.

Remember how I've been telling you about the Chembe family? They were taught by Elder Musgrave and Elder Sisneros before I got here and they were coming to church quite consistently for a while and were preparing for baptism, but then all the sudden they started missing appointments, stopped reading the Book of Mormon, and stopped attending church. All we knew was that Bro Chembe wasn't keeping any commitments so the rest of the family was slacking as well. So we hadn't taught the family with Bro Chembe for a good 3 weeks and we had set an appointment to see them Saturday night, but during the day we got a call from him saying he was out of town and couldn't make it. So we went over just to see the rest of the family, but only Mom was home. We sang a song and had a prayer and then I asked her what we could do for her family. Then she started crying (by the way, the FIRST time I have ever seen an African cry in a lesson). She then told us that her husband had been seeing another woman in Ndola recently and there was no love in their home at all anymore. I guess that explains why he has been so reluctant to meet with us; the Spirit can make the guilty feel awful. Well, Elder Musgrave and I didn't really know exactly what to say so we both just shared our testimonies about the atonement of Christ, and committed her to pray earnestly about it. She asked us to teach about love the next time we come over to see the family. The next day the family came to church (which we were surprised about) minus the father who was out of town. So they are definitely going through some trials now.

Saturday we found a new family named the Shawas by tracting. They're SDAs but were very receptive to the message and committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about the restoration of the gospel.

We also met a new less-active family, the Makinishis. I guess they used to be quite poor but something happened and now they are rich and although they claim to have testimonies are too busy to attend church, etc. They now have a "mansion" though quite different than what we would call a mansion in America. They welcomed us into their house and we tried to teach them but the father was drunk and the mother was quite rude and busy watching a Nigerian movie (the worst kind of movie on the earth). Can you say pride cycle? We were with a member of the branch presidency at the time and afterward he said, "you would never have guessed that less than a year ago she was in the BP office begging me for money." Sad story.

Thank you everyone for all your love and prayers! I know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true!

Love,
Elder Mckay Moline