I'm frustrated with having to come up with titles
for my e-mails, so I decided to just go for the heck of it and
put in something incredibly stupid and nonsensical instead. Hope
you don't mind!
To follow up on the Birthday Lunch, it was absolutely
wonderful. All the people I invited were able to make it. We
went to Debonairs for pizza, and it was really nice! All the
companionships looked at the Menu, and they all agreed that
each should get a triple stack pizza. All of us got the Meaty
Triple Stack pizzas save for Elder Kampelya and Elder
Lemperle. They shared the chicken one instead. As I saw the
total price for all the food ordered, I saw that I still had
some money left, so I used the remainder of the money and
bought every companionship some Cheesy Garlic Bread as well.
Can I just say - and this isn't meant to be blatant
advertising - Debonairs' Garlic Bread is super delish. They
melt like wads of white cheese (white cheddar or mozzeralla?
Who knows!) in between the garlic bread and dang is it
B-E-A-utiful! Debonairs is like one of the few chains here in
Africa that I would kill for to come here to Canada. It's so
nice!
Temporal matters aside, Elder Etiang left Tuesday
afternoon, and Elder Chola wasn't going to come until late
Wednesday night, so I was with the Blantyre East Elders again
(Elder Slade and Elder Ouma) for the day. We saw more or less
the exact same people when I went on exchanges last week.
Thankfully, there were no delays for Elder Chola, and he
came on time Wednesday night, and we got to go back to our own
flat for the night. Thursday was another goofy day, firstly
because we needed to do our weekly planning and I needed to
brief him on the area as well. Secondly, because me and Elder
Etiang thought at first that he would be leaving the week
before, we hadn't really bothered buying groceries. We more or
less just ate a hefty lunch in the area, and we were more or
less at the mercy of whether the people we visited wanted to
feed us or not, so when Elder Chola came, there was probably
more food in the Sinai Wilderness than there was in our
kitchen and it was more than expedient for us to buy food so
that we didn't starve and that took another big chunk out of
our time to work that day. HOWEVER, we did have time to get Elder
Chola introduced to some members and investigators on that
day, but they were more or less formal introductions and not
lessons.
Friday had something else divert us from work. The Zone was
having their routine Pre-Zone Meeting meeting with the
District Leaders, and since Elder Chola is a District Leader
he had to attend that meeting for the whole morning. Fun fact:
Did you know that the past four companions I've had have all
been District Leaders? This has been so since the time I've
been transferred out of Lusaka.
Back on track, we were able to have the whole afternoon to
work. We wanted to visit Albert, but he was a little busy at
first, so we wound up teaching his neighbor Chimwewe - which
means Happy in Chichewa. It was funny to discover that,
because in the White Elephant that we had last Christmas, I
got these toy Nunchucks which I named Chimwewe not knowing
what Chimwewe meant. It was a happy coincidence that I gave
them such a funny name.
We also saw Sister Khama that same day, and she shared some
really wonderful stories to us about her conversion. She told
a lot about the opposition that she faced - especially from
her family- and she told us how she prayed to God asking for
some way to help her show to her friends and family that the
church was good. At that time, she had a non-member nephew
that was staying over, and that nephew had been beaten by this
one person. This person who beat the nephew got thrown into
jail, and the family was incensed and wanted to press charges
on the fellow. Even Sister Khama was mad, but then she went to
church that following Sunday to watch General Conference and
heard President Monson speak on forgiveness. She knew then
that she had to forgive the attacker. Since she was the legal
guardian of the nephew at the time, she was the one who had
the power to press charges or not, so when she went to the
police post she forgave the attacker and had the police
release him. It was quite shocking to the family and the
nephew because they knew Sister Khama to be generally
unforgiving, and they were upset because they thought the
attacker got off scot free, but as Sister Khama explained her
reasoning to them, they realize that Sister Khama made the
right decision, and that the gospel had a huge role in that
decision. Eventually her family came to accept her beliefs.
She also told some great stories of how she was pressured to
break the Word of Wisdom and withstood it, but I won't
elaborate on that simply because of time.
Saturday, we began doing our Mormon Helping Hands service.
The church is helping the city of Blantyre to keep the streets
clean. Here in Malawi and Zambia, they don't have proper
street cleaning equipment, so they typically use labourers
(and very few at that) to do the work, which can be really
tedious at times. With our force of members and missionaries
though, we rolled over that assignment like nobody's business!
We'll be back doing that again on the following Saturday.
Sunday was a bit of a bummer. None of our investigators
came. :( Alex and Lexa need a little more nudging before they
can be truly converted. Elder Chola used to be a member of the
same church they went to, so he knows what they need to be
taught to help them be converted.
I'm loving working with Elder Chola already. He's a very
hard worker as it has been with everyone else, but he knows
how to have fun too. We've been messing around with each
other, and we've been having a really good time. They way I
see it, things are going to be very good for us. We are both
down to work hard and teach, and I think that's what will
carry us forward.
Miss you all,
Elder Massey
