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

Bikes and a Whole Bunch of Maize

It was another short week, but it was better than the last. We still did a lot of tracting through the week, but we got to have a couple lessons here and there.

One of them was with a new investigator named Lindiwe. She studies in Russia during the school year, but now she's on break until classes start. We had tracted to her home the week before and we set a return appointment with her, so this week we were able to get our first lesson with her. Usually in our first lessons we just do a brief introduction and talk about how the our message can help our investigators, state our purpose and generally help our investigators feel comfortable with us. As we taught Lindiwe we told her how the atonement can give her a peace of mind in her life despite the mistakes that we make in life. Lindiwe then opened up a lot and asked us A LOT of questions about how the atonement works, and we got to explain that a little more with her. She has a lot of questions, and she seems to have the desire to progress.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Tembo family. We restated our purpose and explained about how in the end we invite people to be baptized. Brother Tembo frankly told us that they weren't interested in baptism and that they weren't interested in joining the church, but we could certainly come by to strengthen them spiritually. It is a source of frustration for me when we have people like that. A lot of people here think that we are here just to have Bible Study and help them have their 'Daily Bread' of the gospel. While it is good to teach and encourage others about the gospel, it concerns me how some people are overly dependent on others to help them with the spiritual needs. Personally speaking, I see missionaries like us as providers of the information and resources necessary for one's personal salvation, but the responsibility of one's spirituality relies heavily on the individual him/herself. We can teach everything that we've got in the book that can help somebody to find salvation, but if they don't act for themselves, it won't do them any good! Salvation comes from doing, not listening! It's just like the old saying, "Give a man a fish and he'll be full for a day, but teach a man how to fish and he'll be full for life." Truly teaching others about the gospel is an important duty, but the teachings will have little impact if the people receiving the message only nods their head and say amen. 

Ranting aside, we still had some good lessons. We are progressing with Prisca, a friend to Peter the returned missionary in our branch. We have almost finished teaching her about the Plan of Salvation, and then we need to keep going until her baptismal date on May 31st. It looks like things will shape up with her, but we might be going a little tight heading closer to the end of the line.

This week we also got to do some more service. Peter asked us and the Zone Leaders to help him transport some harvested corn back to his home. We took the Zone Leader's truck and put all the corn in the back. We made two whole runs with the tailgate full to the brim. It was hard and heavy loading them, but it was certainly fun UNloading them! 

There was a day where my companion wanted to ride bikes in our area. On our porch of our flat there's two bikes that are chained up. They aren't good bikes at all. They're one speed bikes, and they are in desperate need for maintenance. I made the mistake of riding one of the bikes which had problems gaining speed, so even when we were going downhill I was pedaling hard! I thought at first that I was way out of shape, but I soon realized it was the bike that was the problem, not me! Me and my companion switched bikes and things went much better. That said, I hated the fact that the bikes are one-speed, meaning I can't go into an easier gear when climbing hills. Even small ones really work your legs. I don't think I plan on riding those bikes again, but at least I can say I rode a bike during my mission like other missionaries.

Thanks for all the support, and I'm looking forward to hear what's new from home! I miss you all very much and hope everything goes well for you!

Love, 

Elder Massey

Keep on Buidling....

Well, if last week was a tough week, this week was even harder. Boy this was really a tough one. It's just one of those weeks that you have so much planned for, but it just all falls apart on you even when you do your best in the area.

It was just a week full of fall throughs. We had appointments set, but for the most part people didn't keep their commitments and we got our whole week messed up because of that. 

We came up with a new method of tracting though. When we tract, we usually introduced ourselves and explained what we did and try setting an appointment. Now, we decided to briefly teach about the Restoration and invite to share more about it in a future appointment. We haven't had much success from it, but I get a better peace of mind doing it that way because the people we come into contact with actually know WHAT we believe in.

We did though get the chance to teach one new investigator this last week. We were tracting on Saturday in Area 47, and a lady who we contacted actually invited us in to share more, and she was very enthusiastic too! Her name is Moire, and potentially we will be seeing her again this week. It is really exciting because she was really receptive to us and was really grateful that we were doing missionary work like this. She even gave us a referral. We may just progress with her, but time will tell. That said, it really is great to see fruits from your labours. That's the catch about finding ideal investigators sometimes: You have to invest a lot of work, time and effort just to get a small taster of success. Really, it's going to take a lot to really get things going well for us, but at least that experience gave us a glimmer of hope!

Best of wishes everybody!

Elder Massey

 

 Elder Massey's Zone

(when he doesn't send pictures....I have to resort to "borrowing" them from others!)

Maize in Malawi

(*It was a busy PDay and he had very little time to write...Sounds like it was a tough week.  Keep him in your prayers.)

 

 

Not much to say for this week. This week was awfully slow with lots of tracting. It was one of those really tough weeks where nothing really goes your way. It was really tough for me especially because we put so many hours just reverting back to tracting and finding people to teach, to which there are few to teach here. Unfortunately, a lot people don't seem to be interested in us but we keep trying to do our best. One of the small things that made me feel better this week was that yesterday instead of throwing more time into tracting we gave service to a member's wife by helping her with some harvested maize. Harvesting has begun, and people are harvesting their maize so they can make mealie meal that can be used to make Nshima and the like. We spent over an hour just helping this wife pluck off corn kernels so they could dry it up. It really made me feel a lot better.

We also had General Conference which made all the difference. I really enjoyed the inspiring talks (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland continues to give great talks) and I really learned a lot from it. It was good to lay back a little and to take in some spiritual food for thought. 

Hoping that this week will shape up a lot better. I think we just need to keep pushing and things will shape up. I apologize for the short letter. That's just how it has been this last week.

Hoping all is well with you back home. Miss you all and I love you all very much.

Elder Massey

PS. Go Flames Go!

Double Dippin'

In terms of missionary work this week. I t was a lot slower today than in the past couple of weeks. We had lessons, but we also had our fair share of fall-throughs. Also, given that we have been teaching Ackim so much lately, we have taught every lessons possible with an investigator. All that remained would be sharing some spiritual thoughts from the scriptures, and that's it.

It doesn't mean work was bad though. We had some really solid lessons.

First of all, the BIG BIG highlight of the week for lessons was that I got to teach my first real family in my whole mission, and it only took me 17 months to do that! By family, I'm talking about teaching the mother and father with the kids. This last week we began teaching the Tembo family. They are Presbyterians. It seems like that faith is a lot more dominant here in Malawi than in Zambia. Anyways, we were tracting the Sunday before, and we wound up contacting somebody who had been formerly taught by the missionaries. She was not interested, but at the same time we were contacting one of here relatives (which was Sister Tembo) who was interested in us having a return appointment. That first appointment, we taught Brother and Sister Tembo, and they warmly received us and accepted our invitation to come back and teach more. So towards the end of this last week, we visited them again, and we taught the family with some of their kids about part of the Restoration. We spent a long time teaching there. They had some really inspired questions, and we were able to answer for them those same questions. Brother Tembo really appreciated our visit and actually encouraged us to come at any time so that we could teach the children. The only catch was that he was hesitant about coming to church with us. He basically had commitments to keep at his own church, but he said that he would come NEXT week! Fingers crossed!

Also of note was a lesson we had with John this last week. We followed up on his experience of coming to church the Sunday before, and he really enjoyed it. He had some questions about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon heading into that Sunday, and given that the whole Sunday was going to focus on Joseph Smith and the  Book of Mormon, all of his questions were answered and then some! He was very satisfied because of that. Just goes to show how you really can receive personal revelation through church attendance! We've committed him to be baptized on May 19th but unfortunately he didn't come to church yesterday, so we were kinda bummed that he didn't show up. We want him to be attending church regularly before we get him baptized. He's planning to move to America later this year with his family (who live in the Congo) and where he'll be going has a decent presence of the church there, so we're hoping that if we get him baptized and active in the church, he'll be further strengthened by the members there.

Best of all though was the baptism of Ackim and Evelyn yesterday! It was a wonderful baptism. Both gave some really wonderful testimonies. Evelyn herself had to work especially hard to be ready for that baptism (She had come to church like 20 times!) so she really is enjoying the fruits of her labours. We won't be able to confirm them until May though because this coming weekend we will be watching General Conference. I'm super excited about that. After this Conference, I will only have ONE (!)  left on my mission! Hard to believe how fast the time goes by.

Loving life in my area. I guess I have been a little lazy about updating you guys about that. We are basically neighbors with the Zone Leaders (we live in the same compound) and we often chat with each other every so often after we've finished the day. They're awesome. Elder Chola - one of the Zone Leaders - is the best. He keeps talking about how he's excited for a talk called, "Why Marriage?" He's finishing his mission in November or so, so he's already thinking about the M-word! He's hilarious sometimes.

Got to go now. Lots to do again today. I'll just drop a line and say that last Monday we got to go to a small Wildlife Sanctuary in the heart of the city where they kept a couple of lions. One is too crippled to be released in the wild. The lioness is blind in one eye and is crippled in the hind legs, so it always walks like it has a bag o' bricks sitting on its hind. They are smaller than I expected to them to be, and when we saw them, they were acting an awful lot like house cats. They were brushing themselves against the fence and looked real happy. We were told it was feeding time. What a surprise!

Have a good day!

Elder Massey

LIfe in Area 47

Well, I've just finished my first full week here in Lilongwe. Work here is somewhat different to that which I did back in Lusaka.

One of the things that we do a lot more of here is tracting. In our area, we have Mtandire, Area 18, Area 47 and Area 6. Apart from Mtandire, all the areas we have are gated or are generally middle to upper class - at least, what defines those groups here.

Elder Kampelya's vision for this area before I came here was to start teaching the more wealthier and educated people in the area. That came with the introduction of the standard of excellence which included an emphasis on teaching such people, as they are more likely to be active in the church and honor the responsibilities given to them - in short, help build the church. For Elder Kampelya, this meant making a great change in the work he did. I've come in just as he's started focusing more on the areas other than Mtandire. While there are great people to teach in Mtandire, there surely are people in these more wealthier areas to teach. The only catch is that we need to find these people, and that means tracting.

I could make many analogies to how much I don't like tracting, but in short I really REALLY don't like it sometimes. I hadn't really tracted for a while until now, so I wasn't looking forward to all the tracting. It is one of the things I struggle with most as a missionary, which is one of the reasons why I don't like tracting. Anyways, I prayed early this week that the Lord would give me strength and help me to do my best in tracting, and that same morning I feel like we had some pretty good finding opportunities. Doesn't mean I still like it, but at least I'm on the right track now.

We have two people we will be baptizing this Sunday. One is named Akim. Akim was taught by the missionaries that came before me and my companion, so we came in to finish the job. We taught him more than several times these last couple of weeks, and now he's ready to be baptized this coming Sunday. The other one is named Evelyn, and she was taught everything already by the time I came here. She had even come to church some 26 or 27 times, it was just a matter of her working some things out. 

We also had an investigator named John come to church yesterday. He works at a Salon in Area 18. I've only taught him once, and we basically taught him the importance of receiving an answer to the things we teach through prayer. He accepted the things we taught at face value, but we really want him to understand that it's important to have a spiritual confirmation from God.

President Erikson came to do interviews this weekend, and yesterday he was going to come with us to a teaching appointment. He had to cancel on us though because he had to attend to District business. It was good actually, because the same appointment we were going to go with President Erikson fell through on us, and it would have been emberassing to have President with us and have nobody to teach.

Lots more to talk about, but my companion just got an urgent phone call from somebody, so we need to wrap it up. See you later!

Elder Massey

From Mtendere to Mtandire

(They had power problems at the internet cafe they were using and the computer was being powered by a questionable Chinese generator...so no pictures.....)
Also, I think the title is a reference to 2 cities, the first in Zambia and the latter in Malawi.  We all thought that going to Malawi would mean more humble living conditions but it appears he has hit the jackpot....read on!
Allison


Well, this week's letter is going to be a short one because of transfers, but here we go:

So transfers (as they usually are) went less than smoothly. On Tuesday when Elder Owor was supposed to go, his trip to the Copperbelt had been delayed because the missionaries in Malawi who were also going there had their flight to Lusaka delayed, so we had one last day together before he left. We visited Robson and the gang for one last time, and it was certainly a bittersweet goodbye for all of us, but I'm hopeful that these people will continue to grow strong without us.

Wednesday, we had to get up at 4 AM (!) so that the Zone Leaders could get him to the bus that goes to the Copperbelt on time. It was raining hard. I did have the pleasure of meeting my old friend Elder Mwambu who was also going to the Copperbelt.

Throughout the whole day I was a bit of a companion to the Zone Leaders as they did the transfer work. We also took my old trainer Elder Daniels and some other missionaries later on in the day.

Our last trip to the bus station concluded with picking up Elder Barrett, who is my new Zone Leader here in Malwai. Fun fact: Elder Barrett was supposed to be in my MTC group, but there were some visa problems (he was originally assigned to the Botswana mission) which delayed him for a couple of weeks. We slept at the Chainama flat overnight before the transfer. 

Our own transfer did not go smoothly. A Sister missionary with us named Sister Aidoo was supposed to come with us, but the customs officials would not allow her to board as she is a Ghanan national and needs to have an approved Malawian visa BEFORE entering the country. Our flight was supposed to leave at 11:30, but then it got delayed to 2 PM so the airliner gave us a free lunch at one of the restaurants at the airport. They swapped planes as well, and we flew in a smallish jet plane rather than the propeller one we were going to be flying in, so we reached Malawi rather swiftly.

Elder Fisk and Elder Birrer (two senior couple missionaries) picked us up at the airport, and we were dropped off at our flat, which is called Avon Gardens. By far it is the NICEST flat I've everstayed in. It has built in air-conditioning. The shower has hot water and we even have a swimming pool. The only catch is that missionaries aren't allowed to swim, so there's really no way I can enjoy it. 

My new companion is Elder Kampelya. He is actually a Zambian that was re-assigned to this mission because of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone where he was originally assigned. He even comes from the Matero Ward, the first ward I served in. He's a good guy.

The area is good. Haven't seen much of it yet. We spent our first area in Mtandire, but I have nothing really to report. We've been doing a lot of tracting. Not really fun at all. We got rejected HARD sometimes, but we've kept pushing. We do have some investigators on date for baptism here, but I haven't really gotten to know them well, so I'll update you on that another time.

Lots to do today, so I've gotta run. Thanks for your support!

Love,

Elder Massey