“Elder Ellis told the congregation that the Lord blesses not only us and our families but our entire community
and nation when we pay tithing”
This was a pretty good week. As I told before, there was a special meeting
for members and investigators last Monday with two members of the quorum of the
Seventy visiting our region. Elder and Sister Ellis both speak Portuguese, they
lived in Brazil in the past, so they were able to speak to the people in their
native tongue. Elder and Sister Clayton speak Spanish but not Portuguese, so
they needed a translator. All the messages were focused on how to create a strong
marriage and about the blessings of paying tithing, two things that will help
the members a lot. There are many that don't pay tithing here, and as long as
they don't the church won't progress as fast as it could. Elder Ellis told the
people that the Lord blesses not only us and our families but our entire
community and nation when we pay tithing. So even though conditions here in
Mozambique are third-world, if members are faithful in keeping the
commandments, the Lord will bless this land and things will improve here as the
years go on. I took a lot of notes on the things that they said, especially in
their meeting with us missionaries. It was a pretty special experience to have
them here.
Because of the meetings last Monday, the only p-day thing we were able to
do that day was internet. So we had our official Pday the next day on Tuesday,
we got together with the other missionaries to play soccer, did shopping, and
relaxed a little. I think having P-day on Tuesday made the week go by really
fast. This week we saw progress with our
investigators. Pereira and Sara are really close on their marriage documents;
hopefully we can finish everything up this week. We are planning right now on
them getting married on November 14 and getting baptized on the 15th. We'll see
how those plans work out. We also have another nice family, Girao and Angela.
They have been investigators for a while, and are progressing well. The
situation with their documents for marriage is a little difficult, but not
impossible. It'll just take a while for them to get everything together. But
we're confident they'll get married and baptized this year, maybe by the end of
November or beginning of December. They are a good family and are progressing
really well. There are a couple other families that we're teaching that are
newer: Carlos/Hortencia, and Rudy/Edna and they are progressing well and came
to church yesterday. This week we'll be teaching them the importance of being
married. That is always the "make it or break it" lesson for many
families. If couples are willing to get married quickly and not worry about
having a big party or fulfilling their native traditions-which usually keep
them from marrying-, then they usually agree to getting baptized. We have been going to
places where we have not been before so are getting to know our area more and more every day and we are also getting familiar with the members that live in our area. We visited some of
them this week. We visited one member, named Ana. She lives with her husband,
who is not a member. They have a pretty big piece of land and have a lot of animals;
one of those beasts is Joao (John), a HUGE pig. Oh man I've never seen such a BIG pig like that before! I forgot to take my camera, but next time I will so I can take pictures
to show you. It was pretty funny though, they call his name and he comes over, as if he was a dog or some other house pet, haha.
I couldn't believe it.
Anyway, church
yesterday went well, we had over 100 people there again, which is normal. The
branch is still meeting in our house on Sundays, but we expect that in two weeks we will have a new place for our branch to meet on Sundays and for
other regular church activities. Things will be better when we have a dedicated structure for the branch to meet in,
because our house can barely handle it; if we want our branch to keep
growing, we need more space.
Anyway, that's all for now
I hope you have a great week
Love you!!
Josh
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