July 21, 2008

Dear everyone,

We've had a wonderful week. A lot of good things happened. We met a wonderful family called the Phiris.They live in Emmasdale and have 6 children. The father is the one leading everyone, and he just loved when we taught them about the plan of salvation, especially the part about the purpose of life and the Atonement of Christ. They all go to the catholic church except the husband who has never wanted to be a part of a church before. They were supposed to attend church yesterday but weren't able to. We have great hope for them.

We also began teaching the sister to the branch's YW president. The sister is Bwalya Mpange and was excited to read the Book of Mormon.

Friday we did an exchange with Elder Sithole (Swaziland) in Lilanda branch. I was with Elder Sithole in his area and Elder Woldemichael was with Elder Bisaso (Kampala, Uganda). Now I can say that I have done missionary work in every branch's area in Lusaka! Chainama, Munali, Lusaka, Matero, Woodlands, Libala, and now Lilanda as well! All seven. I'm not sure if that has ever been done in recorded history. I've been in Lusaka for a total of 10 months or so now. Crazy. Elder Sithole is awesome. A great district leader and just a good friend and missionary. I enjoyed being with him, though the number of lessons really wasn't all that great for the day. We did some service and cleaned up the outside of the Lilanda branch meetinghouse. It's right on a main road where lots of buses pass as well as drunkards. I think I heard the word "muzungu" yelled at me more in those 2 or 3 hours than ever before, haha.

Saturday Elder Sithole interviewed both Harsha Safeli and Eric Bwalya for baptism. They are both 9 year old boys and will be baptized this Saturday. Excellent!

Sunday we had 11 investigators at church, which was awesome! One of them was a sister we met in Chazanga named Esnart Phiri (23yrs). We were walking on the road in Chazanga on Saturday and this man stopped us and said he was a member in Chainama branch (I had never met him while I was there because he was out of the country or something) and he said he wanted us to meet his girlfriend and that she wanted to become a member of the Church. So he took us to her place and we taught her the Restoration and she came to church the following day! We have good sisters in the branch who have already started fellowshipping her and everything. We watched both Sunday sessions of the April General Conference yesterday at church. Reading from the Ensign is nice but watching them speak is different and quite nice. I loved Elder Christofferson's talk and Elder Holland's as well.

I love you all very much. Thanks for everything you do!

Elder Mckay Moline