Jun 1 letter to Dad

Colin asked some questions this week and Daniel responded.

What is your convert retention like?  Do all of the people you have baptized continue to remain active?  Do you spend a lot of time working with them as new members?  Are there enough strong, well established members to provide fellowship to all of the people you are baptizing?

The retention of converts is insanely high because of the family baptism focus. When a full family is baptized, it is an automatic support group around each and every member of the family which is a really good part of the vision of the mission. My personal philosophy is to visit each recent convert once a week and teach the lessons again. The first time through we just teach the basics but the second time through is really nice because we dive in a little deeper, using tons of scriptures and really just strengthen the testimonies of our recent converts. There are good established members but they still have there problems seeming that there really aren't any second generation members of the church. Also, we organize big family nights where everyone gets together and gets to know each other, making friends and whatnot so that everyone feels included and loved. The current ward that I am in also does a really good job of giving callings to recent converts very soon after baptism which is really nice. 

In your last baptism picture, there were 11 people dressed in white (not counting you and your comp).  In the Maningue News scoreboard, it lists you having 8 baptisms for the month of May.  Why the discrepancy?

 In the last picture that I sent, 1 man was actually baptizing his son that is eight, he is the first counselor in the bishopric. Another man in the picture is named ossumane and he baptized his brother (one of our investigators). Both of those men are insanely strong, really awesome members. 

May 25 letters

We had another big wedding and baptism. This one wasn't as big because none of the other missionaries had couples to join in with us which was kind of disappointing but we still got 3 families married and baptized which is such a wonderful blessing from the lord. One of the families actually didn't participate in the the wedding they just signed the wedding papers in the morning before the wedding and then stayed and participated in the big wedding because their parents aren't here in Beira and they didn't want to do it without them. The wedding was awesome and it ran about the exact same way that the other one did. Afterwards, however, we went to their houses and had a big march with African singing all the way to their houses and they had big feasts and big stuff happen. We weren't able to stay for the food because we had to clean the chapel up after the wedding but the music and footage was fabulous. I have tons of videos to show you here in a year when I get home that you guys are going to love. 

We actually did the cakes entirely by ourselves this time and they were actually quite beautiful if I do say so myself. Preparation of cakes, the chapel and all other things however did take up an entire 2 days of our time (Thursday and Friday) which was a fun and crazy experience. I'll send you a bunch of pictures of the wedding and much of the preparation involved for you to see. 

Lots of baptisms

One of the three wedding cakes

Singing and celebrating

Brides and grooms

May 18 letter

So this week was really awesome. We have just been prepping for the wedding so that next week we can have tons of people and a great experience for everyone. I will say however, that we have been able to find some really awesome new families among all of the work for this next wedding. We are really being blessed with so many spiritual promptings to contact houses and people that are all turning out to be great new families.

Elder Keck and I are also having a great time and a lot of fun. We are able to work insanely hard and, at the same time, joke around and have a ton of fun. We are having tons of success and really this transfer is flying by. It just feels like yesterday that Elder Wood left and Elder Keck came into this area. We figured out this week that President Amorim will be going to Portugal instead which is a really crazy change and that we'll be getting president Koch, also from Brazil. It should be a really interesting change and I'm super interested to see what happens with that. I love president Kretly but am excited to see what the new mission president does to change things. 

May 11 letter to Colin

Yeah, Elder Keck just became and Zone leader. I'm not a zone leader though. The zone leaders are sometimes split and sometimes combined. I would say that more often then not they are split though. President Kretly likes training other missionaries under the zone leaders. 

I don't know if I told you on Saturday but that same day we had another baptism which was really nice. It was super rushed though. So in that big wedding a few weeks ago, one of the husbands wasn't quite ready for baptism so we waited. This was the first saturday that he didn't have to work so with short notice we prepped a tiny baptism with us, his wife and the 2nd counselor in the bishopric. It was really nice. I baptized him and Elder Keck talked, was a witness and said a prayer. It was pretty funny but spiritual all the same. 

May 4 letters

I got the package and it was wonderful thank you. The ties are also super awesome. That black paisley is just beautiful. Also, the candy is still treating me wonderfully. 

So today was transfers and the whole mission just spun around. I got a new comp in my current area named Elder Keck, I've only heard good things about him so I'm excited. Also, all the elders in my house are leaving to go down south so I'm about the inherit a ton of food and other supplies so that should be super nice. Other than that, there is no real information with the transfers. This week was fairly uneventful though. 

One cool story that I heard this week but also really scary was about one of the strongest members in our area. His nephew died and only a few people from the church came to support him so he got kindof offended. We talked to him and tried to help him get over it and he seemed fine but apparently he told his wife that they weren't going to go to church anymore or at least that sunday. Saturday night, he had a dream, of which I'm not positive on the details, and woke up super really and told everyone that they needed to get ready to go to church immediately. It's pretty miraculous how the lords watches over his kingdom because he is a really necessary member in our branch. 

To Colin:

This past week my comp was sick one of the days so I was able to watch all of general conference in English which was really nice. My favorite talks were the same and I actually watched Elder Renlends talk 3 times because it was so good. I also enjoyed President Eyring's talk in the priesthood session and a few others. I also watched conference in portuguese but it's just not the same, especially because it is such a headache to understand. first of all, it's brazillian portuguese which is just a little bit harder to understand for me, big words that no mozambiquan wound ever use and they speak at lightning speed to keep up with the english. Some are harder to understand than others. My favorite talk was the one of the guy who actually spoke portuguese which I actually understood without having to really try. 

April 27 letters

Well, to answer your first question I am just an expert of the baixa (city). All of the internet cafes are in the downtown area and since I worked there I have several of my secret places that don't lose internet in a situation like that so I was able to do email anyways. 

For this house we don't have any food rotation because there are only 4 elders in our house.  Every Sunday however, I instituted a house meal plan so that we could have really good Sunday night dinners. The plan is that one companionship cooks the meal and the other does the dessert. Yesterday, I made a triple batch of lemon bars and the other Elders that are here from an outside area for zone conference ate it. They were super impressed with the meal though which was nice. 

I see Elder Ence actually quite a bit because all of us play Gatorball together every p-day (a game that is a mixture between football and soccer). I actually just saw him a few minutes ago. He does live in the furthest area in beira from me though and he isn't in the same zone.

I got my package a few weeks ago apparently but someone put it in some back room in the church (probably the senior couple) so I never actually ended up getting it. Today I'm going to the church though to finally pick it up. It should be super nice to have though, I'm really excited. 

So, this past week was really good, we had zone conference, which was super nice and really spiritual. One talk that you should read/watch if you can find it is about Grace by Brad Wilcox. I don't know the name of the talk exactly but it's really good. We learned a lot and I really gained a lot of ideas and paradigms that I will be able to apply in my life as a missionary and after as well. We also got to watch a new church film after called "Meet the Mormons" which was really good. Today, I visited a bunch of families from my old area in the baixa which was really rewarding and heartwarming. Several actually called me during the week asking me to come by and visit which really made me grateful for the chance that the lord gave me to touch the lives of these families. 

This next week, the mission will lose 12 missionaries and gain 0 so many areas will be closing which is pretty sad, hopefully, a bunch of missionaries are going into the MTC though so that we can have a growth next transfer. 

April 20 letter to Colin

Colin asked "What do you do for service hours?" Response: We usually don't end up having time for any service. We try and occasionally we have time to do a service project but I think I've done a total of 3 on my mission. We try to do unplanned acts of service a lot though. We cleaned a school once, painted a shop and cleaned up a street is all. We are going to try to get our ward going with service projects this week though with helping people finish their houses. Here people build their house and then add on to it as they get money available. In my current area, which is a little bit richer, there are a lot of houses were people live in one part and then have the skeleton of the rest. Hopefully we can muster a bunch of people in the ward and maybe missionaries to finish a bunch of houses kind of like a sod party type deal.

There are 5 types of houses here really:

1) straw hut - this is the poorest type and usually is a temporary rental called dependencias

2) stick/rock hut - second leg up and still is one of the poorer types. People with this type will eventually put cement smeared around the edges when they have the money to cover the holes.

3) cement brick house - this usually starts with the family building one part and then slowly completing the house, in time, it ends up painted.

4) apartments - the richest people live here and the quality is usually really low other than the occasional nice apartment such as ours.  

5) Normal houses - These can actually get pretty big because they are the mansions and the giant houses of usually white people from other countries and high up government people although I have seen very few that could be as large as our house.

The average Mozambican lives in either type 2 or 3. In Praia Nova there was only type 1 and 2 with the very occasional 3

My current area is just all type 3 so it's the upper middle class because it is big type 3s. The dream of an average Mozambican is to build up to a well established type three house and then maybe one day buy a car but the car rarely happens. Our investigators and members in my current area of chota are upper 2 and about half have motorcycles but maybe one day after they finish their houses, they'll get a car. But it can take 10 or 15 years of living in a incomplete house before it's done. My goal on my mission is to baptize someone with a car. 

With the ice thing, we have Ice trays that I always keep ready so that I can have ice with my coke (I now love coke because it's way better here and there isn't anything else). Plus I always have my two liter bottles of water in the freezer to be half frozen ready to drink. 

This week was really nice as far as statistics go. For sure it was the best statistical week of my mission (other than baptisms). We got a ton of work done and tons of our investigators came to church. We actually found a couple of new families that are really nice that both came to church this Sunday as well. Finally Elder Wood and I were able to get a normal week and the statistics exploded. Lots of success and hopefully this week we can have a couple more baptisms. Zone conference is also this week which is always a fun time.