Feet on the Mountain Tops

Well, this has been another hectic week. To spare any tension there may be, I can assure you that I have NOT been transferred for another consecutive week. I am here in Blantyre to stay.

Tuesday came and my bus was leaving early at 7 AM, so I had to get up early-ish so that I could make my ride. It was actually pretty cool that morning. It was about 17 degrees outside, but it wasn't bad for me. Winter is finally coming in and people are starting to get into their winter garb, but being a cold-blooded Canadian it was just another nice day for me. By mid day the temperature had gone up to 26 degrees.

On the bus to Blantyre I was sitting next to the only other mzungu on the bus. The ride from Lilongwe heading south to Blantyre took 5 hours. It was a pretty scenic ride too. It was foggy in the morning which was really nice because I like it when there's weather happening like rain, snow or even just a cloudy day. As we headed south the relatively flat prairies turned into rolling foothills and gradually turned into more and more hills that grew larger and larger. We also drove through several villages along the way, and I should say that when I mean villages, I don't mean those stereotypical African huts in the middle of the bush. It was just basically like the compounds I've served in such as Mtandire, Chazanga and what not except smaller. Back to the scenery: it was basically driving through Southwestern Alberta, and I grew tired that I eventually fell asleep. When I woke up, I saw that we were driving through an area that had a lot of small shops at either side of us. I thought we were driving through another village, but then we started coming through some very packed streets and large buildings, and I realized that we were in Blantyre.

If there's one word that I could describe Blantyre's city centre to compare with Lilongwe's, it would be condensed. While everything in Lilongwe is spaced out a bit, Blantyre is all packed in together. The city centre is all gathered together and it is much tighter. There's lots more traffic too. It seems as if the city centre of Blantyre is much larger than that of Lilongwe's.

The Zone Leaders picked me up, and they took me to my new flat. I'm back to living in a big flat like Chainama again. The flat I stay in is quite large. It used to have four elders living in there, but now it's just me and my companion Elder Etiang. Elder Etiang is a really cool guy. He was friends with Elder Owor and they lived together before they both went on missions, so he has generally the same personality as Elder Owor. He's really chill but hardworking. One thing that I admire about him already is that he can just talk to anybody naturally. The bus system here isn't as good, so we often have to hitchhike to get where we want to go, and Elder Etiang can naturally start a conversation with anybody, so we often have people who we can follow up with or refer to the other missionaries. It's something that I admire because my communication skills aren't anywhere near as good as Elder Etiang's is.

Anyways, back to Tuesday. Get to the flat, and I basically unpack for the afternoon. Transfers in this mission really take a beating on your energy, and I was dead tired. I slept for much of the afternoon.

Wednesday I was finally able to get back to teaching. Here are some of the people that we have in our area.

Albert and Grisham:

Albert and Grisham are brothers. Albert is an investigator that we just baptized yesterday, while Grisham just came down recently to visit some people for a short while before going out of Blantyre. Grisham is a Seventh-Day Adventist, and he took interest in learning about our church a little bit. He doesn't seem interested in joining the church, but rather he just wants to know what we believe in. We brought the Jospeh Smith movie to watch with both Albert and Grisham, and I feel like Grisham took real interest in the movie. I bore really powerful testimony of Joseph Smith. It was really good.

Moment:

Moment is an investigator that we hope to baptize next month. He's a really good tailor and he made his own suit to wear to church this Sunday. He looked really sharp. We taught him about the Plan of Salvation this week and we tried comitting him to baptism, but he wants to be really sure that he has a confirmation that this chruch is true before he can commit. Of all the investigators we have, I think he is the one closest to baptism.

Alex and Lexa:

Alex is the father to Lexa. He's been a Presbyterian for over 70 years, but he recieves our message very well. He has a real interest in it. Lexa also participates in the lessons, and they both asked some real in-depth questions. Nothing wrong with that at all. Our challenge is to get Alex to be able to be willing to leave his former church if he commits to baptism. He knows our message that is true, but he has that strong bond to the church that has helped define him who he is all these years.

We have some really good members in the area as well. The area we work in is called Chilimoni, and it is much more rugged than any of the other areas I've served in. We have lots of climbing to do in our area, and it is exhausting at times. That said, when the night comes and you are on a good look-out point of the valley below us, you get a really beautiful night view of the city. It's even more beautiful with the stars out.

The Blantyre 1st Branch is fantastic as well! We got some really solid members in the branch, and we actually have our own building. It's basically a Stake Centre, so it has all the cool bells and whistles of any church building, so it felt like home when I first went to church on Sunday.

Given how much I've written though today, I'm certain I've worn your brains out, but simply put, I'm LOVIN IT in Blantyre. I'm so thankful to work in such a wonderful place. Still miss you all though!

Love you all!

Elder Massey

Climb Every Mountain

Again, this week was a pretty crazy week. Lots of work was to be had, and lots of things happened as well.

So this week was effectively a 'back to work' in my own area. Lilongwe North had really dried up in the time that me and Elder Kampelya were together, and it was more than expedient that me and Elder Shabalala gave it our all to rebuild the area. For me, I really wanted to go out there and take charge in leading the effort for getting the job done. The only thing was that as much as I wanted to get things right, I was really discouraged by what would needed to be done to achieve that. Effectively, we had almost absolutely nothing to work with in finding new investigators save for tracting. For myself, there's nothing more that I would enjoy than having a magical 'new investigator button' where every time you pressed it, you would get a brand spanking new investigator that is serious and really interested in what you had to share. 

Likewise, I really would have loved it if members here actually gave us referrals to people who would be interested. I guess it's due justice though that we lack such people. Before I left on my mission, I always remembered that whenever missionaries asked me for referrals I was always like, "But guys... talking to my friends about the church is haaaaaaaaaaaaaaard! I don't want to do that!" So I'm guessing the powers that be are having a really good chuckle about my woes.

Back to the point: If we had any hope of rebuilding our teaching pool, we would have to tract - and tracting is hard for me. I'm generally one who is pretty introverted so to speak, and talking to strangers is like in my top 5 of 'Things that Mark Massey does not like'.  Adding to that, I was pretty confident that several hours of tracting in a single day was going to kill my motivation, because all that had amounted from tracting was some Garden Boy or Maid covering their boss saying that they were away, bathing, sleeping and any other barely valid excuse. So, the idea of having to do that for several hours straight - not just for a couple of hours - was really unfun to me.

It had been the subject of some of my prayers where I asked God if he could give me strength to be able to simply do the work that needed to be done in this area. I guess that I had expected that strength would come out of nowhere and that the following morning I would wake up out of bed, chest puffed and full of fire saying to my companion, "LETS GO COMPANION! IT'S 6:30 AM AND WE ONLY HAVE TWELVE HOURS TO FIND PEOPLE! WE MUST GO NOW!"  

What really happened though was that in the mornings as I was about to head out, I was thinking to myself how this was going to be a rough day and wondering how I would be able to pull through. Somehow though I was able to get myself out the door and into the area and knock all those mean-looking gates, even if nobody wanted to listen to the message we had to share. Even when we were turned down, it didn't bother me that much and I just shrugged it off more or less and moved on to the next gate. I hadn't really thought much about it, but looking back at it now, I realize that the Lord must HAVE given me strength to get out there, it was just subtle and sufficient enough for getting me out the door into the area.

Tracting actually yielded some success this last week. We had some initial success in Area 15 and had a couple of lessons here and there, but the people that we taught for the most part did not honor their commitments and did not make themselves available for the return appointments we made for them. On Saturday though, we had some considerable success in finding in Area 18, the area furthest from the chapel. We found a number of people there who were willing to sit down for a few minutes and listen to the message we had. None of the people we found came to church yesterday, but at least I felt like we actually got something done this week. I think we actually taught the most lessons ever since I came to this area.

After labouring so hard in this area, our Zone Leaders came by Thursday with some news: Elder Shabalala was going to get a new companion and I was going to Blantyre! I thought that I would be serving in Lilongwe for the rest of my mission, but I'm certainly glad to be able to serve in a THIRD zone on my mission. I can safely say now that I've served in more than half of the Zones in my mission! I'll be leaving for Blantyre tomorrow, and my new companion will be a Ugandan (again) name Elder Etiang. I've heard very good things about both Blantyre and Elder Etiang, so I'm super stoked to go there. I hear that Blantyre is a very beautiful part of Malawi as well. You are surrounded by mountains there. Having grown up just a hop away from the Rockies, I'm looking forward to being somewhere where you can actually see mountains. The only catch is that I'll have a lot of climbing to do. Blantyre is supposedly rugged and hilly, so I'll have more than my fair share of exercise. A lot of missionaries have lost a lot of weight there, and seeing as I am a very weight 140 pounds, I stand to shave off a few pounds!

One last thing: So it became apparent to me that I needed a haircut, so this week I went to a barbershop to get it cut down. Now usually, I'm indifferent about how my hair is. I usually just get it sheared short like a sheep and grow it out before repeating the process. However, I've seen a lot of my fellow mzungu Elders rocking some haircut where the sides are shorter than the top, and it looked pretty nice, so I was like , "Why not?". Anyways, I got it cut that way, but I'll have you know that it isn't extreme like Macklemore's. The sides are only a length shorter than the top, so the difference is very subtle. Nevertheless, it looks very sharp and if I were to send a picture of me with that cut wearing my aviators, I'm pretty confident that I would get a lot of letters from 'potential investigators', but to spare my e-mail inbox of hundreds of love letters I won't show it off to you! ;)

Well, this has been quite a long one. Hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Massey 

On the Road Again!

Well, this week continues to hold more and more surprises for me!

On Tuesday, we had a really great Zone Conference. Lots of great
things were to be had in that meeting. For example Sister Stones (one
of the senior couple missionaries) shared a very POWERFUL family
history experience that she had. It really hypes me up to do my own
family history work when I finish my mission. Heck, even this indexing
thing that the church keeps talking about is starting to sound
interesting.

The Lilongwe Malawi Zone

 (Thanks to Sister Erickson for posting this photo on the mission blog...pretty sad when you have to resort to stealing photos....)

 One of the things talked about in Zone Conference was becoming
Full-Purpose missionaries. In the past, the end goal of missionary
work was to baptize those who were worthy into the church,  but now
the church really wants those who join this church to remain fully
active and to raise up active future generations of members in the
church as well. That means instead of having our investigators' eyes
set on baptism, the church wants to shift the focus on getting those
people to the temple for the saving ordinances that can be had there.
Basically, the church wants to make sure those who are baptized endure
to the end rather than have a strong two months of activity in the
church after baptism and then sputter out and go less-active for the
rest of their lives. On that same subject, we talked about improving
the experience we have on the Sabbath Day. We were showed some
leadership training videos meant for the leaders of the church on that
subject, and it was really inspiring and it actually led to myself
contemplating how I can make the Sabbath Day a more special day for
me.

At the end of our Zone Conference we got to FINALLY watch Meet the
Mormons. It was really awesome. The movie was nicely done. The part I
think I liked the most was the one where they got to talk with 'The
Candy Bomber'. Being somewhat of a history aficionado I took interest
into this story in particular because of the historical context and
what not. Hard to believe that guy is 90+ years old and he's STILL
flying. He's in good shape for somebody his age. Elder Bennett already
had a DVD copy of the movie that his family sent, so after Zone
Conference I checked out the behind the scenes stuff, and I actually
watched the Director's Commentary - you know, that one part of the DVD
that NOBODY ever watches?! And it was really good too. I got to learn
a couple more things about the people featured in that movie. It was
absolutely incredible.

As for the rest of the week, it was really good. Working with Elder
Bennett and Elder Shabalala was great. It was much busier than the
work I had in the Lilongwe Branch. We visited a lot of members in the
area. We came to this one home, and there was this skinned pelt of a
CAT nailed on one of the walls inside their home. It really took me
aback quite a bit!

We continued to prepare Vasco for his baptism on Sunday, and he was my
favourite person in that area. He was really outgoing and friendly
with us, and those are generally the ideal attributes that one wants
in an investigator. I personally think that Vasco will make a very
strong member of the church in the future.

Another great person in that area is Don. Don is a recent-convert. The
missionaries gave him a Book of Mormon to read, but his literacy in
English is very poor, so he could not read the scriptural language
that was in the Book of Mormon, so to compensate, the missionaries
gave him a Book of Mormon Stories Picturebook that the church
generally makes for children, and it has really helped Don to take
away important lessons from the gospel. He really comes away with a
lot from those stories and it helps him to understand what's going on
at the very basics. Hopefully he'll be able to read English better
someday so that he can read the FULL version.

During the week, I really had some great moments during personal
study. I've come to the part in the book of Alma where the most
doctrine in that book seems to be and it has helped me draw away much
knowledge from it. I was really pleased of myself when I connected a
scripture related to what a particular verse was saying, only to find
that it was already mentioned in the footnotes. There were ones though
that I found myself that I quite liked. For example, in one verse Alma
asks a rhetorical question saying that everybody is of the same value
to God, whether they were born before or during the time of Christ's
coming. I compared that to the Saviour's parable of the servants in
the Vineyard who were all paid a penny's wage at the end of the day,
no matter what time they started their labours.

Then on Friday, we got some unexpected news. We got transfer news! The
same day we got transfer news, me and Elder Shabalala reuturned to the
Lilongwe North area where I served with Elder Kampelya, while Elder
Bennett is now training a brand new missionary from Tanzania. Saturday
and Sunday, me and Elder Shabalala were already at work doing our best
to rebuild the teaching pool by tracting in Area 6. We've found a few
potential investigators, but we're not entirely certain how things
will shape up in the future.

Elder Shabalala is another great companion. Like some of my past
companions, he's a hard worker. He was also a former ZL. I think the
both of us are alike in that we just want to get to work and do our
best. I'm looking forward to the time we have ahead of us. Our area is
tough right now, but I know that we can really work hard together,
knowing that the both of us are still relatively fresh in the area and
have a positive outlook on the area.

Hoping everything is well at home, I miss you all!

Elder Massey

Watch Your Mouth!

So this week was another interesting week. Things seem to keep happening and happening.

Elder Kampelya has been in the same area for area for upwards of ten months now, and when that happens you begin to get kind of loopy and start going a little crazy. Recently one of the things that he has been doing is that he has been tricking all the other missionaries and members into thinking that he was getting transferred. Many of them believed him, and I honestly didn't understand what was going on with him.

On Tuesday, the Zone Leaders came by our flat. They had some news for us. Turns out that they had transfer news for us! Elder Kampelya was transferred to Blantyre. My fate however is not too certain. The transfer was another Emergancy transfer because quite literally, somebody sneezed in Lusaka. A Zone Leader in Lusaka got very sick so they had to send him home, so President Erikson was forced to make transfers to fill in all the holes in mission leadership. With that, I won't know who my permament companion will be - let alone if I even STAY in my area. For the next couple of weeks I'll be with Elder Bennett and Elder Shabalala in Kauma. I've already spent a couple days there, and it's been really nice - if it hadn't been for me getting sick!

 

 Elder Massey with his district before transfers

(Able to find this photo via stellar blog stalking on the internet....I hope Sister Rasband doesn't mind!)

 

So the rest of the week was basically preparing for transfers, and I started getting sick on Thursday. Friday I came down with a bad cough and the next thing I know I'm leaking more muclear radiation than Chernobyl! So Friday, I could hardly work at all, notwithstanding that I had to pack for my own temporary move out of the flat.

It was slightly supplemented though by a very early birthday package that came in Thursday. Had transfers not happened, I would have left it unopened but knowing that there were some things in there for my companion and my fellow district members, I opened it for their sakes. Thankfully, the collateral damage from the premature opening of my birthday package (**Editors note:  Elder Massey had actually written Christmas instead of birthday which gives me insight into how it must feel to get a package from home!)  only involved a bag of Strawberry Marshmallows, a box of Smarties (by the way, clever new design for the box!), and whatever stray Ferrero Roche's I could find in there! The Ezra Taft Benson biography also made things much more tolerable, and as it is with books, I've already plowed half way through it. 

 

(**Editor's note:  Last year, Elder Massey birthday package took over 2 months to get to him using Canada Post.  Needless to say, it arrived well after his birthday on July 9.  So this year, I made sure to mail it early knowing he was in Malawi and it might sit at the mission home for a while waiting for someone to go there.  The fantastic United States Postal Service got his package there in less than 3 weeks and consequently this year's birthday package not only arrived early but sounds like it arrived at a time when he really needed a little extra love from home! Another tender mercy for a missionary mom!)

Since I've only been in my (temporary) new area for a couple days, there's not much to report save that we baptized a sister named Jessie yesterday, and we have somebody named Vasco who passed his baptismal interview for this coming Sunday. Looking forward to letting you know more about that area!

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Massey

Working Hard

 Editor's note:  When Facebook hit it's popular phase with teens, I was very skeptical about my kids Facebook "friends" and connecting with people they didn't even know.  My words have come back to bless me....I had another missionary mom reach out to me with a picture of Mark and her son, Elder Brewerton.  It's the first picture we have had in several weeks!  Can't be a Facebook hater any longer!

 And now from Elder Massey:

Well, not much to say this week. Things kind a went a little crazy. We got some random transfers out of nowhere. Both our Zone Leaders got transferred to different areas, so we have new Zone Leaders. Elder Barton will be my new Zone Leader again, and I also have an Elder Cunningham as the other Zone Leader. Sadly, Elder Brewerton got affected in the transfers and he's gone to Lusaka now. It's a real bummer.

Because of transfers, we were kind of out of the loop a little bit. We tried our best to get things done in the area, but unfortunately things didn't shape up for us just because of the transfers and what not. On the lighter side though, Prisca passed her interview and she was baptized yesterday. Her boyfriend Peter was able to come up from Blantyre and perform the baptism himself! It was awesome to have him there for such a big moment in his girlfriend's life. It was looking like for the longest time that he might not be able to make it. It was the highlight of the week to have him there.

Last of all, we had an all day service activity at a member's field. His name is Ackras. He's finishing his maize harvest and needed us and the ZLs to help quicken the pace as people were stealing his crop, so he wanted to haul it all back to his place where the maize would be safe and sound. It was so funny too coming back the last trip. Some neighbors of his came to help as well, and we had to cram them all in the back of the truck, which was crammed halfway up with maize. I forgot to bring a camera, so I don't have a picture to show of it, but it was quite something.

Hopefully with everything settling down now we'll be able to do some good in the area. Now that we've finished with Prisca, we need another person to work on to get baptized, time to get back to finding!

 Elder Massey and Elder Brewerton (Lethbridge) harvesting maize