Week 84-- Christmas Week!

Dear family!

This week we had a lot of rain! And it's so humid, I've never felt humidity like this before. The air is so thick and hot! But this is just normal for this time of year here, I heard that Beira is more humid than other places in the country and I really believe it. 

The rain was getting annoying this week, it rained yesterday during church, so a lot of people were missing because of it. But all things considered, we still had a good turnout; 20 visitors came to church,  including two new families that we started teaching this past week.

We taught a lot of people this week.  We tried hard to help one of the families get their documents to get married and baptized by Christmas, but the document situation is being super slow and complicated, so we had to move the date to the first week of January. We also have a couple other families that should be baptized in January as well. We are currently teaching 13 families and some single adults as well. We are being very blessed these days by meeting new families that want to know more about the church. We found two new families this week, they are neighbors. We contacted the husbands one day as they were sitting down, relaxing at work. The next day we went to their house and taught the two of them along with their wives. And they all came to church. On Thursday I had a division with one of the zone leaders, Elder Hillman.  We worked in my area. We asked one of the young men who is preparing for a mission, Joao, to walk with us. We taught a lot of lessons that day. 

We are teaching a family, where the man is a member, but her partner is not, they both have come to church for a while, she isn't baptized because they have not been able to get married. So we visited them last week and invited them to make everything in their power to get married as soon as possible. They were hesitant to accept, because of the African tradition here, which demands that a marriage be a big party, which is almost impossible for a lot of people here unless they have a lot of money so most couples just end up living together. But we told them they can just prepare their documents and legalize their relationship by getting married, and then in the future when they have enough money to throw a big wedding party- they could do that. But they weren't sure about it. So we told them to think about it and pray about it. A few days later, at church, we found out that they had invited the branch president, President Mounga, over to sit with them and explain more about this quick and simple marriage ceremony that the church normally does for couples who want follow Christ without having the big party.  

It appears that they have decided to get married as quickly as possible. They are now getting their documents, and they should be getting married in the next three weeks.  I know they Lord will work miracles in the lives of those who make the decision to follow Christ. 

It's been a very special Christmas time. A lot of good things have been happening.  Elder Christiansen and I get along and we work well together. We are always praying and strive to be obedient and work hard, and it's definitely paying off. The Lord lead us to those people willing to listen our message of Christ.

Anyway, I hope you have a good week!! 

Love

Josh.