Elder D. Andrew Greenman

Our son, Elder Andrew Greenman, has been called to serve in the Mozambique Maputo Mission. He has asked me to create this blog so that you, the reader, can read his letters to home. His current writing address is found below along with the most recent letter.

Monday, July 2, 2012

One Month!


I've been in Mozambique for one month now.  Surprisingly, I've learned a lot of good things. Its wonderful to see the progress  investigators have made in this past month.  I was also extremely surprised when I got two letters last week! I thought that I wouldn't be getting any at all. Maybe, just maybe, I'll get more next transfer.

Okay,  this week has been pretty crazy.  The church leadership in the Dondo Group consists of Elder Bonnini, who is a senior missionary that lives in Beira, My companion Elder Gergetz,  then there are two Mozambicans who are have not been in the church for too long and don't quite understand the whole leadership thing.  One of the Mozambicans was converted in Maputo about 7 years ago and his work has transferred him a few times and now he's here in Dondo.  He's extremely prideful and has offended a couple members and he's full of excuses.  The other Mozambican has been a member for about 5 years, he's lived in Dondo all his life and therefore knows everyone here.  He's very humble and has a kind heart but many times is pressured into following Crispin (the other Mozambican)  Every week we meet together to see what we can do to make the group stronger.  He just recently started this and we had our first meeting last Wednesday.  In that meeting I learned the importance of having a strict agenda, in that particular meeting we had nothing for an agenda. We came to talk about the church and all Crispin would talk about is that we needed too baptize as many people as possible, especially teenagers whether those people are ready or not.  We told him that our mission president said that we could only teach and baptize families.  (Families take up to a year and a half to get baptized around here. First off,  no one is married here, and it takes for ever for them to go through the process and cost nearly 900 metacais which is a lot for these people.  Second off usually when we're teaching a family the husband wants in but the wife doesn't or the other way around.)  After we had explained that we couldn't just baptize anyone he began to say that we still need to.  It was extremely frustrating, but throughout the entire two hour meeting we showed love and patience.  Now we now that this next meeting will have an agenda so that we can talk about the important issues.  Organization is extremely important!

Aside from that, it's still winter here in Dondo, but it feels like the middle of summer on a hot august day.  With every passing day I learn something new here in Mozambique.  I'm coming to understand the culture here better, and my love for the people here grows daily.  My love for the Gospel grows daily as well.  I'm so glad to be a missionary now that I've grown a foot or four, I'm truly having the time of my life out here.  This work is good.  2 Nephi 28:24
-Elder Greenman

P.S.  Theres this really cool site called Dearelder.com where you can send me letters for free!!!  But it's only free if you write one within the next 24 hours!!!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment