Maputo - Week 93

Weekly letter.... From Beira

This past week was quite the experience. There was about one million things going on. And there is a lot to tell! 

I left for Maputo last Monday afternoon. Elder Greenman came to come pick me up and then we left for the house. Leaving Matola was a hard thing for sure. I felt like it was my home! It was definitely the "special area" of my mission that I will never forget. Everytime I talk to someone from Matola, I get excited!

After getting settled in on Monday, we were able to get out into the area and do some contacting. We work in the neighborhoods called Aeroporto and Ximpamine. It is a super good area, and there are tons of people! It isn't too far away from the Maputo chapel either, so our investigators won't have that hard of a time getting to church. The past few transfers, Elder Greenman had been very busy working in the mission office for end of the year stuff, the mission audit which happened this past week, and the arrival of Elder Hamilton of the quorum of the seventy. So he hadn't been able to be in the area very much. Right now we have 3 investigators that are progressing... so we will be focusing on finding new families with the time we will have in the area.
But even with all the work we got to do in the mission office, the Lord blessed us with 5 new families! It was amazing to see new families wanting to sit with us this week. President said that our area needs to be the example area for the mission, so we are going to need a lot of blessings from the Lord. And he has already blessed us so much! We will pray so that some of these families will be able to progress and be baptized in the short future. The AP area hasn't baptized a family since March of 2013. So we hope to change that, soon. We will need to be extra diligent in the office so we can find time in our area. We are excited to see it grow!
We were super busy in the office this past week preparing for zone conference. We got to put together 2 trainings for President Kretly. One for the members, which was about the importance of holding a temple recommend; and the other was the zone conference training that he will be giving this week to all the missionaries. It was a good experience to play a role in that, and I am learning a lot about computers! Elder Greenman has helped me a lot with computers and has been super patient with me, so I'm grateful for that. It's probably not the easiest thing for him to have me always aasking him how to do this, and how to do that. But I have seen a lot of improvement this week. As the weeks go on, I will learn so much more!

Church was also good! I was able to talk to the branch president to get to know him and tell his that I'm excited to work with him. It is very important that we have a good relationship with him. He seems like a super nice guy!
One very interesting experience this week was driving. I drove for the first time since I've left on my mission. We drive a brand new Ford Ranger. It's super nice, so I was super nervous to get behind the wheel. But I am already used to the steering wheel being on the other side of the car and driving on the left side of the road, so I didn't have too many problems. Although it is a little weird shifting with your left hand. But I picked it up pretty fast!

This week, we are especially excited to have Elder Hamilton of the seventy visit our mission. I loved his talk from last general conference on 'holding on to the iron rod.' I am very excited to meet him, we will be hving a few meeting with him this week, and me and Elder Greenman will get the chance to do some proselyting with him as well on Friday or so. Zone conference will happen in Beira tomorrow, and in Maputo on Thursday. Since it is a very special zone conference with Elder Hamilton, Elder Greenman and I flew up to Beira to help prepare everything and make sure that everything runs well. So right now, I'm in Beira! I am sitting in the internet cafe where I always wemt when I served here. Tonight we will be sleeping at the Beira 2 house where I used to live. It is so good to be back. We flew up early this morning, and we will be flying back tomorrow night after the conference. Right when I got off the plane, I ran into a member from Manga 2 that I haven't seen for almost a year! He didn't forget me, and he is the one that came up to me. I'm glad the memebrs haven't forgotten me. I worked so hard in that branch! Since today is P-day, me and Elder Greenman will try to find some time to visit families that we taught here, and in Manga. But we'll see if we have time. 

Well, we are going to leave! We need to go prepare some things still for the conference. But I hope everyone has a good week! I know that this is the Lords work, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. Thanks for all your examples. Love you all.

Elder Williams