January 9, 2012

Moni (Hello)

I am still waiting for letters.  The mail is really unreliable here and it has been really backed up since Christmas.  However, you can try sending letters through Dear Elder.com (they seem to always find the way here if you use them to send letters).

I have been very busy this week.  We moved in to a new flat with the Chinama with Elder Mahchi and Elder Horne. It’s very nice and seems more like a home. We stay in doctor’s compound in milestone. It feels really nice to come home to a nice house.  The apartment has a nice kitchen with a walk in pantry, a dining room, a family room with nice couches, three bedrooms, and two baths. However, it is a little far from our area and we have to walk quite a bit.  We can’t take transport, because the transport is too far away.  However, we have found a way to take a short cut.  

 The weather is a little crazy here. For example, during this time of the year the average temperature is about 60 degrees.  However, it has been super hot. It is like summer. As a result, the farmers are struggling and their crops are dying. The extreme temperatures are interesting to me, because as I have studied the scriptures more intensely I have taken note as to how the scriptures refer to a change in seasons in the last days.  Reading about it in the bible is interesting.

 My Mission is going well.  I baptized two people on Saturday; Emilda Njovu and Prince Bwalya.  I am extremely excited about the upcoming baptisms.  On the other hand, we had to push the Mwaywa’s family baptisms.  We change the date to the 21st of January.  We wanted to make sure that they were ready to be baptized.  Some of people here think we have lots of money, because we were nice cloths. Some people think that our scripture bags are full of money and we will give them money if they join our church.  Some of the people think that if they are baptized they will get money.

We hear some pretty crazy stories here from the people that we meet.  The other day we meet a guy who claimed that was Satanist.  He was telling us a crazy story about the “killings” that they do in his church that only the leaders know about them. He said the “regular” people don’t know about it. I think he was a little bit ‘crazy’ himself.  It is a little funny at times because when we are walking down the streets some people call us Satanist and that is just so far from the truth. For example, the other day we were walking down the street and there was a child crying, when his mother saw us she started speaking in Nyanja, and she said to her son: “you see those two Satanists, if you don’t be quiet their going to come over here and eat you” (Scary).  The child just went silent and he looked so scared.  I felt kind of bad for him.  So, we went over and said: “Muli bwanji” (a greeting for hello/how are you).  It was funny, because then his mother knew that we could speak Nyanja and her face just turned bright red. She was now aware that knew that we understood what she had said to her little one.  It was an interesting experience. In the end I hope they both knew that we NOT Satanist and we would NEVER eat anyone (especially a small child).

All and all, everything is fine.  I’m having fun here and enjoying my mission. I love Zambia and the people here.  

 Devin