I
honestly don't know what to write for this week. This week has been
another rough one so to speak. We were juggling our own area with Elder
Slade's for half of the week until he got his companion, so we hadn't
had a full week in our area... again.
That
said, we had a good lesson in Elder Slade's area. We were teaching this
young brother of a member. His name is Chisomo. He's only about 9 years
old. If I'm correct, most if not all of the family are members of the
church, but they hadn't got him baptized when he turned 8, so it was
Elder Slade's job now to teach him the missionary lessons so he can get
baptized. It was a great lesson. It really put me to the test. I'm used
to teaching adults all the time, but rarely have I ever had to teach
younger children, and when you teach such children, you really have to
simplify things but still make sure that what you are teaching to them
is especially profound to them. In this case, we taught Chisomo about
him being a child of God, how he loves him and how he has given
commandments to make him happy in his life. It was a really good lesson,
and Elder Slade said after the lesson that he felt the spirit very
strongly in that lesson.
We've
continued to give service to Sister Khama this week. This week she
finally began burning her bricks. One of the things she had us do was to
move timber over to where they were burning the bricks. We're not just
talking about small sticks, we were talking about BIG, BIG logs!
We had to all work together to move them. For example, there was this
one log that was way too big for all of us, so Elder Chola devised this
clever idea of moving it. We got two smaller logs and put them under the
log horizontally on both ends. We lifted together on these smaller logs
and we were able to get it over to where we were going. We also moved
bricks again, but this time the bricks were much much larger, almost the
size of a shoebox! Surprisingly, they actually felt pretty light in the
hands.
A
cool thing that happened this week was that I unexpectedly got
something from Lusaka. A while back I saw Elder Allred had something
sent from Lusaka from a member of one of the wards I used to serve in.
The member's name is Sister Mooto, (pronounced almost like Moto in
Motorcycle) and she is a very skilled tailor. Anyways, Elder Allred had
her make a chitengi hoodie using some nice material from Nigeria. It was
finished after he left Lusaka, so it was sent to him when he was in
Blantyre. I got to see it myself and it looked sick. I'm not one that
really cares about clothes, but when I saw Elder Allred's African Hoodie
I was like, "Fetch, I need to get one of these for myself!" so I
sent a letter and some money to her via a trusted friend. Just this
Saturday, I was given a grocery bag addressed to me that had something
inside. I opened it, and to my surprise it was my own completed Chitengi
hoodie! It looks sick! The sleeves are just a tad short, but apart from
that I've fallen in love with this thing. I've sent some pictures of it
along with some of my new haircut.
Training
Elder Kapalanga has been going okay. He's slowly picking up things as
we go along the way, but one of the challenging things in our area is
that we hardly have anybody to teach, so it is hard for Elder Kapalanga
to really put the principles that he has learned into practice.
Likewise, finding has also been a pain. So far we've had no dice. This
is one of the reasons why I don't like finding. It is long, slow and
hard without the members helping us.
It
is safe to say that this is one of my most humbling times on my
mission. It's one of those moments in my mission that Heavenly Father
has leaned in and said that it's time for me to straighten up. I've
probably said it before, when things go well, my prayers slowly grow
less and less sincere and become more rushed. It is when I face the most
challenging trials in my mission where I begin to humble myself and
offer up more genuine and sincere prayers. Saturday night was one of
those nights. I was probably on my knees for a while just asking help
from God. I've realized though that perhaps God is withholding divine
assistance for a time to see how I respond to the challenges before me.
He wants to see how I react. I suppose it is much like the situation
that Job had. Job hit a really rough spell in his life and things really
turned south. Regardless of that, he was still faithful to God, but God
still waited to see how Job would persist in his trials. It was only
after a while that God saw that Job truly had humbled himself and poured
out blessings to him. Perhaps it is the same with me. I'll be frank
though, I've got a long ways to go before I'm like Job. God has really
magnified my weaknesses and I've seen how helpless I can really be
without him. I'm not always perfect at doing what I'm supposed to be
doing on mission, but it is my desire to do that which is right, and I
pray that that desire can overpower my human weaknesses and help me to
overcome the challenges that I am facing.
Wishing you all well!
Elder Massey
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