The gift of baptism and the Holy Ghost
African Christmas gifts and
THE GIFT OF A RECENT PHOTO!
It's been a good day!)
The big highlight of this week was definitely the baptism which we had for Moses. This week mainly consisted of preparations for that day. I'd say we still did work in the area, but all of it was really overshadowed by Moses' baptism. He asked that President Cimonwe perform the ordinance. I was a really big highlight for Sister Khama certainly! With Moses baptized, she's excited for the next step that's coming, which is marriage. Now that he's baptized, she can finally put in motion their wedding plans. They are planning the wedding for some time in late September, so here's hoping that me and Elder Chola will still be around for that time. It would definitely be a special moment for us and the soon-to-be newlywed couple!
Here's a question for you...Can you spot the Canadian in this photo?
Elder Chola (L) Moses, President Cimonwe and Elder Massey
Some other highlights of this week:
This
week I was able to finish my Christmas shopping. Yeah, I'm betting
you're giving strange looks right now. Even me, if I was in a normal
situation, doing such a thing at this time of the year would be
considered outrageous and maybe even sacrilegious. That said, this is
AFRICA we're talking about, and my time here is drawing near to a close,
so I got what I could so that if anything should happen - say an
unexpected transfer for instance - I'd at least have all the stuff that I
need to take home with me.
It was fun getting
that stuff too. I won't go into much detail, but I had to get the
Christmas gifts at a certain market, and you had to talk price before
you could get the goods. Unfortunately, for a pasty white azungu like
me, that made me a perfect target for somebody to rip me off. So, me and
my companion came up with a clever plan to make sure I got my money's
worth. I gave the money to Elder Chola, and we tag teamed that market. I
pretended that I was helping him 'find' things that he would want, and
he would talk price with the vendors. They would start at outrageous
prices too, upwards of 10 000 kwacha which was frankly, WAY too much!
However, Elder Chola was able to talk down the price way down lower to
what it was better valued at. The first day that we went Christmas
shopping, we got several items of significant size and quality for a
total of 15 000 kwacha, which was definitely an impressive feat. Sadly,
our following attempt did not yield such results. It was a Saturday, and
all the tourists were buying on that day and the vendors were feeling
very good of themselves selling things way beyond their normal price, so
despite our bartering, we paid a notch more for the items we bought on
that day. Still, we saved a lot of money in shopping. One senior couple
got fleeced with a painting for 50 000, which was probably worth ten
times - if not, much less than what they paid for.
The
only other thing that I could add was that we had some other
missionaries join us for the service at Sister Khama's. We stacked
bricks as usual, but a lot of the Elders tried being macho men or
showing how 'experienced' they were at throwing bricks and tried tossing
them as fast AND hard as possible, which left for a lot of cut up
hands. It will probably take time for my hands to heal from this last
round!
Apart from that, that war really the
week. We try our best with Alex and Lexa, but they can't get themselves
to take that leap of faith, which is rather frankly depressing at times,
but we are going to keep trying.
Missing you as always!
Elder Massey
No comments:
Post a Comment