Week 78- Another great week in Manga

Dear family,

I'm glad everything back home is going well. I was able to get a good computer today here in the internet cafe. This place where we do internet isn't very close. We live in Manga, while the internet place is in downtown Beira. It's about a 10-15 minute car ride. We usually don't take chapa, we get a boleia (free ride). Hitchhiking is really easy here and people will stop for us because we're missionaries. 
I've been writing to my friends from high school these days. They are finishing up their missions! Braden will be coming home this week! Hunter and Bruce will be coming home next month. From my group of friends who are serving missions I'll be the last one to come home. It will be interesting to continue to write to them as they get home and hear how they adjust back to normal life is. I can't imagine yet what it will be like. It does not feel like I have six months left, it feels more like I need to be here another year… the time has gone very fast!

Anyway, this week it was a little hotter here and it also rained a few times. It will be getting hotter and it will rain a lot more as we move into December and January, so It's weird to think about the cold temperatures and the snow back home when it's the middle of the summer down here. I hope my first winter back home next year will be a very snowy and very cold. I know Mom don't like it, but I miss winter with all the snow back home! We'll be talking face to face on Skype in about six weeks; you can take the computer outside and show me some of the snow haha!   

I had a pretty good week. Monday was a good P-day. We took a chopela, the common way of transportation here, 

We played soccer with other missionaries, we had a good time.  Afterwards, we went shopping,  and then we went home to relax the rest of the day and prepare for our appointments that evening.
This week we spent a lot of time helping our investigator families, we helped Pereira and Sara finish up their marriage documents and open the marriage process.

So, on Tuesday we traveled to the baixa (downtown Beira) to go take care of some papers for their wedding. Normally, with the right paperwork we don't need to bring our investigators to get some of the documents, that is good because it's easier for all of us; mostly because our investigators work during the day and can’t afford taking time off work. Well, that day on Tuesday we spent a lot of time there, we had to go to various government buildings and we ran into a few difficulties with some of the papers. We had to get one document notarized for Sara and she had to be present for that. So we got on a chapa and ran over to their house and found Sara there and we told her the problem. Thankfully she wasn't too busy at the time so she came with us and we went back to the city so she could get the document notarized. It took a couple hours but in the end we were finally able to take care of all that stuff. All we had left to do was to open the marriage process at the register.

We had the wedding scheduled for the 14th. So for that to work out we would have had to submit all the docs by Friday. But the groom called us on Friday morning and told us that having the marriage on the 14th wouldn't work out because some family members wouldn't have been able to attend. So we moved the wedding to the 21st. It was a little disappointing, but the good thing is that they're still getting married and baptized this month. It is their special day and its OK if they would like to wait a week.  I'm just glad we were able to help them with the documents this week, we worked a lot and put a great effort for that.

Baptism last week

The rest of the time this week went really well, we had a lot of lessons and our other investigators are doing really well. We had two of our families show up to church, and the total attendance to our Sunday services was 120 people,  This was the highest attendance yet since this branch was organized a couple months ago.

On Wednesday I went on a division with Elder Richardson. He was in the MTC with me and we'll be going home together as well. It was a good division.  Next Monday we will have transfers, I'm expecting to continue working here, at least I hope I get to stay here.We'll see what happens.

Im finally able to send you some pictures, I hope you like them. Anyway, that’s all for now, I pray that you all have a good week.

I love you soooo much, and thank you for your thoughts and prayers every day!!

Love,
Josh