December 28 letter

So I don't really have much to talk about seeing as we just talked 2 days ago but I will say that I figured out that I will be getting transferred on the 11th of January going to Swaziland. It is going to be a whole new adventure and I'm pretty excited actually. I hope to return to Mozambique before the end though. 

December 21 letter

Since we'll be talking face to face this week I will just write a small letter. 

Yes, Elder Brown's birthday was on the tenth and we celebrated it by going and getting some good pizza at a pretty nice restaurant. It was really nice and a good day. We obviously did nothing crazy because it was a normal missionary workday.  Also, let me say that I expected you guys to choose option 2 I just wanted to give you the choice. I also really was not looking forward to fighting for computers there in the mission office. This is just a far better option. Doing the skype at the church. 

December 14 letters

To Mom:

So they changed the plans with Christmas. They are flying us to Maputo on the 24th to return on the 26th. So I called and they gave us the option of either doing Skype there on Christmas day and doing it normally (30 minutes with lots of interruptions from impatient missionaries) or doing it when we get back here to Chimoio on the 26th. At which point Elder Brown and I would split the time up for each of us to get 2 and a half hours. He would take 4 to 6:30 our time and I would take 6:30 to 9 our time. So I'll let you guys choose which one you want.

We live about a 10 to 15 minute walk from the church. It wasn't really a formal request from the branch presidency haha they just asked the mission president for me in the branch presidency meeting that we had.  Yes we have several progressing families right now. Many of them have been having some frustrating document situations but we should finish the documents and have a marriage and baptism on my last week in Chimoio.

We've found a few new really nice families in the past two weeks. They are really interested and have real questions. That is a great sign here because a majority of families don't really bother to learn or be interested in the doctrine. Often times they are just looking for a church that will visit them and is fun to go to. It's really frustrating because there are a lot of members like that. It's really pretty easy to baptize people like that but I always try to look for people that will become converted to the lord not the church. A few of these new families are looking like that could happen if we teach them properly.

To Dad:

In the form of spiritual experiences I can talk a little bit about a lesson we had last week. It was really great with a lady that we are really concentrating on to train to be a leader. Elder McAllister and I actually set her up to hopefully start dating our guard haha. But anyways, I think she has real potential to be a leader and we talked about it in some presidency meetings and decided to call her as 1st counselor in the relief society. We've been visiting her a lot to help train her and increase her testimony and stuff. We had a lesson the other week where I just shared a spiritual thought using my current favorite scripture in mosiah 14:12. She has historically had problems with accepting callings but this lesson was really powerful and I explained that God will bless her life if she becomes a dependable servant of him and it really struck her. She even started tearing up in her prayer. It was really powerful.

I'm doing a lot other things to help this lady and others. Elder Brown and I sat down and made a list of priority members to focus on and she was one of them. I have also been making a scripture study book for her. There are 40 chapters  of the book of Mormon represented in the book (my favorite 40 chapters). Every page has a chapter and then my favorite verse of the chapter. Her job is to fill out the book. She will read the chapter and then write her favorite verse on the other page. Also I wrote my thoughts on the chapter at the bottom and there is a spot for her to write her thoughts as well. I also put my testimony and stuff in the front so I think it will really help her dig into scriptural study.

We are focusing on other members as well and in the future weeks I'll try to send stories of them as well as our investigators. 

December 7 letters

To Mom:

In respect to all the questions you asked I'll try to answer them the best I can.

President Koch trained the branch but he also had a private 45 minute or so lesson with Elder Brown and me about the growth of Chimoio and our view on the branch and the work here as well as our area. He told us a few cool things about the area that he will send another companionship here after we start regularly hitting 200 people in sacrament meeting. At this point he will also file a request to make Chimoio the next district in Mozambique. To get to that point, however, we really have to work pretty hard seeing as we are at 130 to 140 ish on average.

We had a presidency meeting with the branch president, his counselors and Elder Brown and me along with President Koch and his 1st counselor. We talked about some branch business and our questions and stuff. It was a really good meeting. The audit is something that happens in every unit in the church semiannually usually. It is just a review of the expenditures of the branch to make sure all the finances are in order and that nobody is robbing money and stuff.

President told me that I was staying the day before transfers but I really don't know why. It was good though. He just told us during our meeting. Also, the branch presidency and I were planning on making an official request from all of us for me to stay so they asked afterwards and he told them that I was already staying so that was good.

Elder Brown is really awesome and definitely one of my favorite companions. I really have had 6 straight transfers of companions that I've just loved. A great experience here in Chimoio. Never a bad vibe just good companions and good missionary work success. It's been the best period of my mission for sure. Elder Brown is probably the companion most similar to me of all of my companions that I've ever had. He even loved and played a ton of Clash of Clans. We get along great and are always laughing. We actually play some seriously intense uno games. With our own little twists to make it all based on skill. It's a pretty good time. Yesterday I won a game and it was way intense. When I won he just threw his cards on the ground as I was just celebrating. Yes, he works hard.

This week was actually fairly uneventful. We found a few new promising families and worked really hard but we'll have to see how it all turns out. 

To Dad:

I know exactly where you are coming from with the things to write. I've been doing the same thing over and over again for a long time. It is always pretty hard to think of noteworthy events to write to you guys about that I haven't already written about 10 times. I wouldn't be surprised if my emails weren't just really boring to read.