January 18 letter

So Swaziland is definitely a new animal. You can look up the city of Manzini that's the city where I serve. The language is probably the hardest part about Swaziland. Their English here is honestly really bad. They only speak their dialect language of Swaziland. It actually has clicks in it and many names of people and places have clicks in them so that's interesting to get used to using clicks. It is really frustrating not being able to speak normally. You have to talk way slow and not use big words in order for them to understand. It really sucks because I feel like I can't get real relationships because I'm talking to them like a robot. Mozambiquans speak way better Portuguese than Swazis speak English.

Next week we might got to the capital which is about 30 minutes away and see the kings house. It's weird being in a country ruled by a king. They literally call it the Kingdom of Swaziland on the news and stuff it's really pretty funny. It's definitely more rich here though than in Mozambique. The infrastructure and general wealth is much higher, and I work in a poor area.

Zone conference was really good. Nothing of note to mention though. Also, let me say that the restaurants here are better too. We are going to play soccer today which will be pretty nice. Elder Donker and I are trying to see how many headers we can get back and forth so we've been doing that at nights and stuff which has been fun. It's really weird living with more than just my companion again. It's been pretty wild and I really like it. Although, Chimoio will never stop being my favorite area I am enjoying my time so far here in Swaziland. 

These are pictures from the safari on the way to Swaziland.

Letter from the mission office on his way to Swaziland

The Baptism on Saturday was really so spiritual. Honestly probably the most spiritual and reverent baptismal service that I have ever had. The family loved it so much and were just talking about how much they felt the spirit and how they have an assurance that the church is true because of what they felt and stuff. It really was awesome. We are currently in the office and getting ready to head over to Swaziland so that's why I am so early in writing.

That's the first and second counselors with the family.  They were baptizing. The first counselor (the one next to Elder Brown) was actually the Padrinho o witness kindof thing of the marriage. I was really happy with who they chose because I always like them to choose members first and Elder Brown had never baptized anyone so it worked out pretty well. 

January 4 letter - answering questions from Mom

The Swaziland zone was the biggest zone in the mission but they are now dividing it into two zones so they will be average sized zones now. I don't know many missionaries anymore seeing as that I've been in isolation for so long and honestly I don't really care who my companion is anymore. I feel like I can get along with anyone especially now that I'm on the final stretch with only 4 more transfers left.

I don't have a favorite baptism but my favorite wedding would either be the 5 couple one in Maraza or my wedding when I wore the crazy suit coat with Elder McAllister. My second favorite area after Chimoio is definitely Maraza and then Baixa with Magoanine way behind. Magoanine was way strong when I was there (the strongest in the mission) but has since split. The baixa is by far the weakest branch I was ever in and struggles to date. Maraza is really strong and Chimoio is pretty strong as well. The leaders are learning but solid at the same time. The best leadership was Magoanine for sure because a lot of them are returned missionaries but in my other places there weren't any returned missionaries in ward leadership. The biggest problem of new members of the church would have to be that they are more converted to the church as opposed to the lord. They are converted to the visits or missionaries or activities or any number of other things when their conversion should be founded upon Christ. The vision of the mission as far as families go is the same yes.

I have grown exponentially in the spiritual spectrum. My understanding of the gospel and the significance of it in the life of anyone, especially me has drastically changed. I feel like my humor and personality is the same though. Some missionaries get weird on their missions and shy away from media and whatever and I really just don't see that being me. Things that I wished I did before the mission would be to have read the book of Mormon and understood it before the mission. Honestly I think those people who just go crazy and wake up early every day and do all sorts of weird things for months before the mission are just wasting their time.  I promise you'll do fine without all this crazy nonsense.

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.