“They had a surprise for me. Near the end of the night, right before they finished up their activity some of them called me over to sit down in the middle of the room, then they all walked in with a cake singing happy birthday. It was really nice”
Dear Family!!
Thanks for your emails. I know you must have missed me a little more this week since it was my birthday, but at least this was the last
birthday that I will have to be away from home. My birthday here wasn't as good
as at home, but it was still good.
This week was really good. Our investigators are still
progressing well. The one family/couple
that we have been working with have finished all their marriage documents and
we opened their marriage process at the civil register on Friday! They will be
getting married and baptized on the 14th of this month! If everything goes as
planned, It would be the first baptism in Quelimane this year and the first
baptism of a family in quite a long time. So we are very, very grateful for
this. This family was actually found a long time ago, by Elder
Heaton just a little after I had left Quelimane the first time. Elder Khumalo and I started to visit them
again and they told us how much they wanted to get baptized before but they had
to do all the marriage stuff first and were not able to for several reasons. Over the past
couple weeks we've been helping them with their documents and stuff and now
they are 2 weeks away from getting baptized, it is a miracle! Aside from them,
we have another family that hopefully can still be baptized this month. On the 14th we will also baptize a few
other people.
Church yesterday went really well. The attendance was up,
it was almost 70, and we had 12 investigators there. I taught the lesson in the
first hour for the priesthood group. It was about duties of the priesthood and how
we should fulfill our responsibilities-It was a good lesson.
This week our branch had an audit. A brother from Beira
came up to perform the audit. It was on Friday. I spent a lot of time this week
helping Cornelio, the financial secretary organize all the tithing information
from the past 6 months, before the audit. It went pretty well, the brother
doing the audit told us our branch is doing a good job in taking care of the
church's finances.
On Saturday there was a youth activity here at the church
and an an institute class as well. At the activity they were planning to do a big thing and
make a bunch of food, but because it was the last Saturday coming into the
first Sunday, fast Sunday, they moved the activity to Sunday evening after church.
So, yesterday at about 3pm a bunch of the youth showed up
for the activity. They played some games, conversed, and made a lot of food.
They used our kitchen, but they cleaned up well afterwards-thankfully. It
was fun to hang out with all of them.
They had a surprise for me. Near the end of the night,
right before they finished up their activity some of them called me
over to sit down in the middle of the room, by myself, then they all walked in with a cake singing happy birthday. It was really nice. I totally didn't expect this and really took me by surprise. The cake was made by one of the young women. It was
a pretty good cake. I love this branch of Quelimane. It was nice to have these young men and women express their love or appreciation for me in this way. So I'm glad to say that I had a good
birthday here.
To answer you questions, Mom. Yes, I’ll probably continue to keep my hair short
when I get back. Have I fallen? Not by slipping on ice (like at the U- Remember?)No, not really. I've had a couple incidents, but nothing too
serious, for the most part. I'll tell you more about all that when I get home haha.
I'm jealous of you guys always going to good new
restaurants there. The restaurants here aren't bad, but they
all have the same stuff. There are
no special restaurants for Chinese, or Italian, or Mexican, or pizza. All
the restaurants have the same food (chicken, rice, beans, fries,
hamburgers, etc.) You'll introduce me to some of those new good restaurants when I
get home.
Anyway, I hope you have a good week at home and work.
I love you sooo much and hope this week goes
by quickly and happily.
Love
Josh
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