Good morning!
The weeks continue to go by, at an unexplainable rate. It really is amazing how times flies by. We had another good week this week! Full of teaching our current families, and finding new ones! It's only 11 am here, but this morning has already been a crazy and long day. It's raining here in Beira right now. We left our house very early this morning to help our investigator get papers ready for the marriage that will be happening in a few weeks. We left the house this morning at 6 am in order to get to our investigators house at 7 am. From there, we went to the house of the secretary in the area of our investigator to get a paper that he needs to start the marriage process. From there, we went to another government building in our area to get a few last documents. And now we have all documents and papers necessary to start the marriage process this week! I'm so excited. Our investigators name is Sabado. And he and his wife Laura will be baptized on the 16th of February. Sabado lives in a mud hut in our area, and has been saving up money in order to get these documents ready so that he can be baptized. He loves studying the gospel! The Book of Mormon, principles of the gospel, and the liahonas. He really is ready for baptism! We just need to do this marriage process. If everyone was already legally married, there would be baptisms like crazy all throughout the country. But with the Lord's help, there will still be baptisms like crazy as we overcome this legal obstacle.
This past weekend we had district conference here in Beira. All the branches in Beira met together, and President and Sister Kretly came up for the conference as well. We were also pleased to have the presence of Elder Usi, an area seventy here in Africa. He is from Kenya, so it was good to have the people of Beira here the words of an African church leader. He talked about following God and not following old traditions of our parents and country. It was perfect! After the conference I was able to introduce our investigator, Diogo to him. Diogo as well had the chance to speak with President Kretly. President asked him what he learned at the conference and Diogo responded saying that he learned he needs to forget old traditons and finally get married. We've seen many miracles with Diogo and his wife Gida, and they should be getting baptized here in a few weeks. We're planning on starting the marriage process with them this week as well! We'll visit them tonight at 6, so we'll see what happens!
President Kretly brought up some mail for me as well the past weekend! I received letters from people in the ward for Christmas, as well as a little package from Bishop Stewart with lifesavers, scripture markers, and the world's best invention... pocket size preach my gospel. I was so grateful! (still haven't received the package from home). Tell Bishop Stewart thank you for me! Also if you give give an individual thank to each family that sent me a letter. So far I've received letters from the Criman's, Lowry's, Merrill's, Trewartha's. Swim's, Farrer's, and he Taylor's.Tell them thank you and that I loved receiving letters from them. I especially appreciate the message that Brother Merrill left, telling me how good his Olive Garden meal was. Hahah! I laughed pretty hard. Thanks so much!
The language is awesome! I really have grown a love for the language. In the MTC I hated it... I thought it wasn't going to be possible. But the Lord has blessed me and helped me a ton. This week, an Elder who lives with us Elder Monteiro from Cape Verde, told me that I speak better Portuguese than any other American that he's ever met. So that was quite the compliment! It helps that no one that I live with speaks English! I really am learning a lot, and learning to master the language.
Well that's pretty much it for me! We're continuing to help of branch grow, and these new families that we have found that are coming to church are really helping. I know that the Lord will help us and them, defeat the legal battle so that they can get married and get baptized in the Lord's church.
Glad to know that everything back home is going well! Even though it's so cold! It's either super hot here, or raining unbelievably hard. And I'm liking it. Although it is difficult to walk as much as we do with rain boots. Two weeks ago, we walked a whole week straight with rain boots!
Well I hope you all have a good week, I know this is the Lord's kingdom on the Earth, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. I love you all!
-Elder Williams
