President Kretly is in Angola right now with his Wife. Elder Cook of the seventy is there with
them. In president’s absence we’ve been
working as hard as we can in the office.
Before he left he went over some things with elder Largent and I. It’s crazy to think that in just two weeks,
I’m going to have a new companion to train here in the office. It takes about two transfer to train someone
here, but President has mentioned that he thinks I can do it in one and then
head out to a different area. Speaking
of areas…..
(right now would be a good time to cue some good
inspirational music, maybe…chariots of fire?)
Laivino, Presalina, Joaquim and Argentina are……awesome! They are doing so well. This past week Joaquim has been so busy we
weren’t able to sit with him until last night, but he still is keeping the
commitments. Since day one, he hasn’t
been drinking or smoking either!
Laivino is going strong in that sense as well. Throughout this week, Elder Largent and I
have been working on finding new families to teach. This past week we found one and have taught
them twice so far. Their names are
Enoque and Nilza. Nilza wasn’t able to
make it to church (she’s coming along a
little slower) but Enoque is reading the
book of mormon and he came to church.
This week we had 11 investigators again. Back to Laivino and the others that we are
teaching in that house… The collective
marriage date is coming up on the first of march. We’ve been a little concerned about their
documents. It seemed like things weren’t
going to be done in time. Especially
with Laivino and presalina, because the lost everything in a housefire.
Last night, at their house, we followed up with how those things are
going, and set goals of when they could
get things done. Joaquim said that today
he would get his wifes documents done.
Laivino said he would get his wifes done by Tuesday, and do his on Thursday. We told them we want them to call us when
they get their stuff. They have until no
later than the 20th to register to get married on the first. So they are running up against time, and
money is also an issue. Last night we taught about the importance of
enduring to the end and how important it is.
This morning we received a call from Laivino saying that he had managed to get his B.I. (ID, which is the hardest) we weren’t
even expecting the call. We’re super happy for them. They are all changing so much.
This week has been a little crazy because something
blewup. That something happened to be what
gives electricity to the whole city of Maputo.
So yes, the past two days we’ve been out of electricity. Our apartment, like any house here, is
literally a brick oven inside without
AC. Luckily it’s all getting fixed and
we’re getting the electricity back.
Yesterday at church the first speaker in sacrament meeting droned on for
30 minutes saying nothing at all….. leaving less time for the second speaker
who actually did have something to
say. The second speaker spoke about the
law of chasitity. It was a very good
talk, and about 15 minutes after the hour, the branch president put a not on the pulpit letting her know that it was time. At this point she apologized for taking so
much time but still spoke for another five minutes. Those last five minutes are where things got
interesting. (take note that the church
is still young here and there are a few tendencies to go pastor john style and
yell at the congregation. She started
yelling telling the men that the need to respect women better, that the women
should respect their husbands, that we should all stop swearing, that the
missionaries need to have patience with the members and families and then a
pause… then she started shouting that AIDS is bad. And that the teenagers need to be careful.
It was definitely one of the most interesting sacrament
meetings I’ve been to.
The other day I was
thinking about how things have changed so much in this mission. When I arrived I was told that this mission
doesn’t baptized people, that married people don’t exist, and before I arrived
the was a mindset that the PMG manual is not useful in this mission. Since then so much has changed. Right now in this mission over 100 families
are being taught that will be baptized within the next three months. That number doesn’t include Angola. IT’s amazing how your paradigm can change
your results. President Kretly taught us a very powerful principle.
If we change the way we look at things, it will change the way we go about doing those things, which will change the results we will get.
Well that’s all folks.
Until next week.
-Elder Greenman
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