Maxixe 43rd - June 9th 2014

Last P-day marked the start of my eighth transfer. It was a good start. We started the day with a run then transfers. I was to stay here in Maxixe and Elder DePina headed to Motola 1D with Elder Thomas. My new companion or rather companions were to be Elder Jarvis and Elder DaSilva… a triple… I was not sure how that would work out but hoped it would be good. The office elders gave me permission to look for a new house as our current living conditions would not accommodate a triple very well.

  

We got some good lessons in on P-Day. One with Lxxx Txxxx and one with Jxxxxxx. Both went really well. The lesson we taught Lxxxx was the first or the Restoration lesson.

We had planned to teach Jxxxxxx and his wife Baptism and Confirmation, but his wife Lxxxx wasn’t home so we decided to just follow up on his reading and go from there. He skipped and read in 2 Nephi 31, where Nephi talks about why Jesus Christ was baptized. Well! If that wasn’t a screaming spiritual acknowledgement to still teach baptism and confirmation I don’t know what is. The lesson went really good too. On Saturday we (my new companions and I) taught Jxxxxx and Lxxxx about obedience and following the prophet and obeying the laws of the country. They of course accepted to live and obey God’s laws and the law of the land.

Monday afternoon, Elder DePina wanted to say goodbye to the Branch President. After that we went about our P-Day stuff. Compras, internent, just the norm. I can’t complain, I just hope that this is a super good transfer. We have some high potential here. I hope we can make it work.

Tuesday was my last day walking with Elder DePina. Sadly, it wasn’t a super productive day but we still got a lot done. Most of our lessons fell through. It didn’t help that we didn’t really have any solid plans due to not knowing prior as to exactly when Elder DePina would be headed out. We visited Axxxxxxx and Exxxx first thing in the morning so Elder DePina could say goodbye to them. While we were there, I got to hold a bunny rabbit. I do have to say, it was a cute little sucker, but it doesn’t have much of a future in this world as the landlord raises bunnies for food. I had no idea that bunnies are suppose to be held by their ears. I was rather surprised and how strong their ears are. It is really impressive.  Jxxxx had these super cool keychains made for us, He is awesome.

Tuesday we also went to help Axxxxxxx, President Chambals wife, a bit to know what her talk subject will be. It’s going to be on the law of chastity, which should be really good. Axxx was there, he was harassing some poor cat. I hate cats but I felt for cat. It was sleeping and Axxx stepped on its tail. The cat tried attacking Axxx’s foot and leg, but it turns out jeans and shoes are cat proof. Then Axxx told a story. The night before he was with some friends. They ended up talking about Americans. The friends said Americans are super smart and can go to any country and master their language. One friend said “yeah, those in the white shirts that walk around two by two, there are a bunch of them in Maputo, they learn our language way fast.” Axxx said he just laughed to himself when he realized they were talking about missionaries.

Elder DePina got on a bus Wednesday morning, so I stayed with Axxx for a bit afterwards. We walked around the city looking for a house to rent. No luck, but soon enough it was time to wait for the bus that was to bring Elder Jarvis and DaSilva. They arrived safe and sound but dead tired. We hauled all of their luggage back to the house, and went to buy another mattress. Once we bought the mattress we walked it back to the house, carrying it on top of our heads. 

In the afternoon we did some contacts. Elder Jarvis is huge on contacts, big time! He loves knocking on gates so we did a lot of that. Hopefully some of the contacts we made will go though. That night we had to figure out how to hang a third mosquito net. It proved difficult but para-cord came to save the day.
“No” they said, “You won’t need para-cord in Africa”. They said “That’s dumb”. If I didn’t have that para-cord, we wouldn’t have been able to hang the net. I had to tie it to an electrical junction and to another cord and Walla! A mosquito net ready to use.

Thursday was good and interesting. We started out the day with a good lesson and a lot of contacts. I have been really enjoying Elder DaSilva and Elder Jarvis, they are friends. We talk about random stuff throughout the day and weekly planning feels like a completely different experience. It is awesome. I had thought I wouldn’t like walking in a triple but the truth is I am actually quite surprised how much I like it. Teaching is quite a different experience. Having three people teaching with different styles of teaching makes a fairly good mix. However, Elder DaSilva and Elder Jarvis are killing my healthy eating! I plan to continue exercising and not to go off the deep end. I think we will have fun P-Days with fut-sol, beach bask and grilling. It’s gonna rock. I really feel like this is a transfer with a lot of purpose. I like my companions and feel like we can help each other be more obedient, diligent and happy.

On Thursday, we had another lesson with Rxxxxxx, he brought in another family member. I can’t believe house sound he is! It really amazes me. Saturday we met with them again. That day, we taught them about O.L.A. or Oror, Ler, Assistir (Pray, read, and come to church). They seem to understand the importance of all of them. Rxxxxxx makes me laugh. When we invited him to do those things, he said I’m in front, I’m number one. He also bore his testimony that he truly knows that this is the true church. I honestly think he is amazing. He has so much faith. I can’t wait to see him baptized. He will help the church grow a lot.

Friday I bought some peri-peri sauce off the road. I think it gave me food poisoning. It didn’t help that it rained and we were soaked. After lunch I was freezing. All of my bones ached mesmo  (even). My stomach hurt really bad and my head was exploding. Needless to say I don’t remember terribly much about the day. We had a couple of lessons and one with a guy from Zion’s church. Not a single word we said entered into his head. We left him with a pamphlet and went on with our day. Later, I was feeling like a zombie. We sat for a bit and as we were resting, a group of drunk jovens (youth) came up. I lectured one for drinking because he himself said it was against God. Then I taught him the first lesson. I wasn’t really in my head though, so I don’t remember what happened I just know he didn’t accept it. We were headed back to home base so I could get some sleep and get better. I literally went insane, I was in intense pain and going crazy. I have no idea how to explain what was going on inside of my head, I just know it wasn’t a good thing. I never want that to happen again.

Saturday I was a bit off in the morning. I slept a little and got up. I tried to eat and was feeling really bad so I slept another hour. After that I felt more or less good. We went out and contacted.  Sadly, most of our lessons fell though but we were needing more contacts and Saturday we got 13 contacts! Woo! We also taught the temple preparation class. I felt like it went pretty well. I am still really new to teaching big groups of people, like in classes. It is quite a different thing than teaching a lesson to an investigator family. After the temple preparation class I had my first Branch Presidency meeting (Elder Kanaga is the 2^nd counselor in the branch presidency. He said “I won't lie that is pretty scary for me. I hope I can be able to help the branch here or at least not hurt it”), it was scary. I hope I can be of help in the branch. I really feel like this branch is going to see lift-off this transfer.

Sunday church was nice and we had a frequency of 48. We had an awesome sacrament meeting. Afterwards, we had a lot of contacts and a super good meeting with the Branch President. We are now able to proselyte in Expansão and  Chicoque and other places.