Week 17 – 9/9/2013
Hello
Familia!!!!
We had a very
unusual, crazy but overall a great week! Our mission president came to visit! Here
is how it went: Started Monday after we
got home from using the internet and shopping, we made brownies to take over to
Walter and Darmin's house, because they were making us lunch. And they had
never had brownies before. So we made them and took them over to Walter's,
along with the game Risk.
 |
| Lunch |
They made us some crab, which were really, really
good! They really liked the brownies too! Then we played Risk, it was really
fun spending time with them, it was fun hearing them express how much they like
those brownie, we were having a great time with them playing the game, when all
of a sudden we got a call from the APs.
They said they we needed to book a hotel
for President Kretly up here in Quelimane and asked us which one would be good.
Then we asked when he planned on coming up here. They said that he would be
here that night! He was visiting Marromeu and driving up to Nampula, but
decided at the last minute to stop by Quelimane. So we had to cut our
visit short with Walter and Darmin and headed back home. As we were cleaning the bathroom we got a
call from Maputo again. The APs said that President was an hour away. At that
very moment, the buoy in our toilet broke! So water started coming out, so we
had to just put a temporary stop on it because we had to leave the house
immediately to go meet President Kretly at the church.
Meeting President and Sister Kretly
When he got
there, President said that he wanted to meet one of the families that had been
recently baptized. We hadn't planned on meeting with any family that night! And
hadn't set anything up with anyone, so we called Candido and Marcia to see if
they were at home. Luckily they were. So we took President to visit them. The
visit went well. President Kretly got to know them and shared a short message
with them. After that, we went to dinner at a restaurant. We had pizza, which
was pretty good (but still not as good as pizza back home). President told us
we were doing good work up here. And among other things he also said that we needed
to continue our efforts to find more families like Candido and Marcia. After
lunch he dropped us off at our house. The next day, however, was even crazier! We got up and met the
president at the church again to help him set up a meeting through the internet
there. This was a weekly meeting that he has with his assistants and the senior
missionary couples. It was cool to sit in on the meeting. They talk about the
weekly stats from throughout the mission and what needs to be implemented to
help bring more success. We learned that
there were 92 people joining the Church in the month of August, and almost 400
since April this year! After the meeting President drove us to his hotel to
pick up Sister Kretly and we went to lunch together. It was nice to get to talk
to them. President and Sister Kretly mentioned that they saw my cello
videos on Youtube, and that they were impressed. President said if possible I should
try to find a cello here and put on a little program for the members. So this
coming week we will try to find a cello somewhere in Quelimane, I'll let you
know how that goes.
New bikes, a car
and Marromeu
Also, he told us
to start using bicycles, so this past week we bought bikes and have started
using them to go to teaching appointments. Using bikes has been nice; we are
able to get to places so much faster now! I'm glad President made that
decision. 
Also, another
thing; A couple years ago there was a senior missionary couple, the Osborns assigned to work in this city, they used a car or pickup
to get around and to drive to other towns; they left earlier this year and since then the
car has been sitting at the church, President told us that the car belongs to the mission.
He
told us that we will start using it and we will be making a trip to Marromeu
once a month. Marromeu is a town south from here, and is about 6 hours away. He
also told us that we should take the car around the city a couple times a week
to get used to driving it, and to make sure the its running well and
to take care of whatever maintenance it might need.
So now we have new bikes, a car and Marromeu city added to our assigned area, these are definitely BIG changes!
After lunch with
President and his wife, we went back home. At that time we discovered that we
had locked our keys inside the house, so we had to kick in the door!
As if that
was not bad enough…As soon as we got in though, we heard water flowing. We
rushed to the bathroom…and sure enough, we found that the temporary stop we put
had failed and water was everywhere! The water reached our bedroom, which got
flooded with a couple centimeters of water! So we spent the next few hours scooping
and mopping up. 
Later that night, we met the president again. He wanted to test out the car. So we went driving around the city a little. Then he had Elder Heaton get behind the wheel. President wanted to give him some tips and instructions on driving here. It was like we were back in driver's ed. Ha-ha. Some time after that, President and Sister Kretly said goodbye and left.
It was nice to spend a couple days with them even through all the chaos at our house. Before leaving, President gave us helmets and told us to make sure to wear them. Since then, we've been enjoying going around on bikes.
The rest of the
week was more normal. We got a guy to come over and fix the toilet, so there's
no problem with that anymore. He also fixed our water heater. I don't think I
mentioned that we had a problem with that, but we hadn't had hot water for the
past week. We were heating up water on the stove to take showers. But we have
hot water again, thankfully.
We continued doing contacts and teaching lessons.
We've had more success with it lately. We are teaching more lessons and finding
more families. We'll just have to see how they progress. We were so happy to
have five of our investigators come to church yesterday, which was great!
Hopefully this next week doesn't bring any more surprises and we can focus on
the work here.
But anyway, that
was my week! Oh, I almost forgot. President brought up some letters that the
mission office received. One was from the Adams; they sent me the ward
newsletter from July. The others were from children in the primary. Tell them all that I received their mail and
I really appreciated it!
Well, I hope you
all have a good week! Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for me! I'm doing
well, I'm staying healthy.
I love you all so
much!!
Elder Rebollo
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