The best week so far, two weddings, ten baptisms.

Week 13  8/12/2013

"We'll have to work hard this transfer to keep up the growth that has been seen here in Quelimane. We feel the Lord is helping us find people to teach, but there is another force behind our success here in Quelimane and that is the members here. They are very supportive and interested in our work and are willing to help out in any way they can." 

Hello everyone!! 

I'm glad all is well again this week. It's good that you guys are spending a lot of time with family and friends so it doesn't get too lonely around there.  I forgot to mention this last week, but one day we went to visit a member couple, Walter and Darmin. Darmin had me try some goat intestine and goat ear. The intestine was ok, but I wouldn't eat it again. The ear though wasn't very good at all--I spit it out immediately!!!. Elder Seoane and everyone else were laughing pretty hard!  Seriously, though, I've been careful with the food I eat. I haven't gotten sick so far from any food and I want to keep it that way--I do eat a lot of chicken, fish, rice, and beans. 

But anyway this week was pretty interesting. Elder Seoane left on Thursday, so the first part of the week we spent visiting members to say goodbye and take pictures. A lot of them fed us too. Then on Wednesday we had the wedding of Gomes and Joaquina, that was awesome! Everything went really well. Here are some pictures of their wedding

Like many families in our areas, Gomes and Joaquina had to wait for some time

to be able to legalize their union and be baptized. They got married in our church building 

on Wednesday and on Saturday their whole family, a total of six, got baptized.

The cake was pretty good, it was made by one of the members

  

I got my new companion early. He came on Thursday, just before Elder Seoane left. My new comp is Elder Heaton, from American Fork. He's been on the mission for a little over a year. I can tell we'll get along pretty well. Since he got here, we've been contacting and I've been showing him the area.

Baptisms and confirmations

On Saturday, we had the baptism of Gomes and Joaquina's family, a total of six people. It went pretty well. I performed all their baptisms. Church yesterday was interesting. The branch president was gone and so was the first counselor. Elder Heaton is the new second counselor, so he conducted and taught one of the classes of Sunday school. I played the piano, as always. We also did the confirmations of the two new families. It was a total of 10 confirmations. I did about half of them, so that was a new experience too. But yeah, overall, it was a really good week.

It was great to have Gomes and Joaquina and the whole family join the church today. They have strong testimonies and will be great members. What a privilege to play a small part in their lives.

You can tell by her reaction that the water was a little cold, but she was fine!

Today is the first day of the new transfer. The mission has received 22 new elders, so it's definitely growing. We'll have to work hard this transfer to keep up the growth that has been seen here in Quelimane. We feel the Lord is helping us find people to teach, but there is another force behind our success here in Quelimane and that is the members here. They are very supportive and interested in our work and are willing to help out in any way they can.

Here you can see  most of the members in the branch of Quelimane. Within the last ten days, ten people have joined our church.
What a miracle!

Now to answer some of your questions.

Yes, each companionship has a cell phone. It has the numbers of the mission president and his wife and all the other missionaries as well. We use it to communicate with them and to call contacts and set up lessons with them. Everyone here has a cell phones. And most people have TV's too, even in the houses made out of mud they usually have TVs.

There are a lot of schools here. There are a lot of colleges here too. Many people here are students. A lot of the members have college degrees too. Quelimane is interesting in that you have really poor people who live on the outskirts and in the city and surrounding areas you have richer educated people.

As far as things to do here, there isn't many. The city sits along the Zambezi river, but there is no beach here. Usually on P days we play board games at home or as a family night in the homes of members. If more elders were here, we would probably play soccer or something, but there's only us two here. But we still have fun on P days.

It's crazy that Jacob will be starting school again so soon. Time is going by so fast! It sounds like you all have had a good summer. That's good that there are more missionaries going out from our ward. 

I hope everyone has another good week! I love you all soooo much and am grateful for your thoughts and prayers!

Elder Rebollo