Thursday, 21 May 2015

Looking Up in Lilongwe

Things are still tough in our area, but we manage to keep pushing, and we are finding some success in the area. Even though we have few people to teach, the people that we do teach on a regular basis are progressing WONDERFULLY!

Prisca continues to progress towards her baptism on May 31st. We are really under pressure right now to make sure that she is prepared for her interview this coming Sunday. This last week we had to finish teaching both the Plan of Salvation and Gospel of Jesus Christ if we wanted any hopes of having her baptized on time. Thankfully, we made two appointments with her, and we taught some really wonderful lessons with her. She has been completing the assignments that we leave behind with her, and it helped us teaching her SO MUCH. Peter - our fellowshipper for Prisca - has left for Blantyre for an extended period of time, so we involved his sister Ruth in our discussions now. Ruth is a returned-missionary just like Peter, having served in the Kenya Nairobi Mission. She is a really good teacher and she could even expound some things better than we could. She has been a great deal of help to us, and we're excited to have Prisca interviewed this Sunday.

We also began teaching somebody named James. James is a referral from Peter and  was formerly taught by missionaries a long time ago and had attended church so often that he saw himself as a 'member' of the church. When he told us that he was a member, we were very confused because we were told that he wasn't baptized. After calling some of his friends who are members of the church, we figured out that he has yet to be baptized. We haven't taught him much though. His English isn't the best, so we are going to need an interpreter to teach him. That said, we've decided to commit him to be baptized on the last Sunday of June. It should give us more than enough time to get him ready.

Throughout the week we continued to do some tracting. We haven't had much success yet in that regard, but we do have maybe a couple of follow ups this week. We talked with someone yesterday for a few minutes explaining what we teach and what we do as missionaries. We bore testimony as well, and it was really nice. When we go tracting, we usually don't have experiences like this. Usually it goes for a minute where we briefly summarize something that we believe in, and then we leave a pamphlet and collect the necessary contact information - that is, if we do get to talk to somebody. Most of the time we just wind up speaking to the home owner's gardener or maid who know very little English. They usually go inside to check if the owner is home and they come back saying that he's either not home or busy.It's tough, but we keep trying.

On Sunday, we had some very unique visitors. There was a Sister missionary who served here named Sister Getts who has long since finished her mission. Well, yesterday she came back with a lot of friends from BYU. All of them are on some internship program where they spend the Summer here in Malawi. Apparently they will be here and attending our branch for the next three months! It will be interesting to see how it all works out. Yesterday after they realized no one plays the piano, one of them went up front and played the piano for all the hymns. I'm seeing that in the next few months the branch is going to be (too) reliant on these Sisters for running the branch. 

Well, great to hear from all of you guys again! Hope everything is well!

Elder Massey

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