Well, I was glad to hear from all of you this week! Sounds like the family is doing great, and that is exciting to hear. I hope Andrew had a great birthday as well! I can't believe he is already 11? He going to beat me in everything when I get home.
As for me, I had a good week! Very stressful and tiring, but obviously it was worth it. This week we were still in finding mode. We are doing our best to find the right families that have the best chance to progress. And we found a few!
Last week, we came into our new area, and didn't have many investigators. We had a total of 1 investigator at church. So this past week, we realized that we needed to change that. So we worked hard and yesterday we had 11 investigators at church. That number still needs to go up, but little by little we will be building this area.
Our training on Tuesday actually went very well! Me and Elder Lake presented a training of things we thought would help the zone. All the district leaders in our zone have the responsibility to transmit the information the Elders in their zone. We talked about a variety of different things. We want to help the DL's understand their roles as leaders and how they can best satisfy the needs of each individual missionary in their district. We focused a lot on divisions and district meeting and the importance of doing them the right way. The training lasted about and hour and a half or two hours, and it was a success! The district leaders left feeling excited about the work and the potential that we have here in Matola.
Ever since I've been here on the mission, Matola has kind of had a bad reputation. It has been known as the zone where the work is slow and where the Elders don't work very hard. But that reputation is going to end now. Matola, in my opinion, has the most potential than any other zone in the mission. The other zones being Maputo, Beira, and Manga. The difference is that Matola is FULL of people. We are working in the suburbs of a huge city. There is no reason why the work should not go on at a faster pace. I know we will see a difference over the next few months. Matola will have the reputation of the fastest growing zone! Like how Beira is right now. I'm grateful to be apart of the work here in Matola and I understand the growth that the Lord wants here. We just need to work hard and be obedient.
If there is one thing I've learned on my mission, it's that 19 and 20 year old men can't do miracles. But God does miracles through those who are obedient.
Let me tell you about a miracle that happened this week. Last week, we contacted a couple named Nelson and Alma. They didn't have a phone so we obviously didn't take down there number. They showed us where they lived and we said we would stop by when we had time. We stopped by, and they weren't home. We figured the chances of them progressing was not very good, so we forgot about them. Since that day, we've ran into Nelson once again, Alma once again, and them together another time! A total of 4 times since then! We never run into the same person even twice since there are like 60,000 people in our area. But last night, we were contacting, and we found them walking down the road together for the 5th time! Crazy. We talked to them, and they said they had time to hear our message right then. We walked over to their house together and we taught the Restoration. They accepted baptism, and we marked a return lesson! Just another example of Heavenly Father watching over his children. He knows which ones are prepared and which ones need the gospel now. I'm grateful that the Lord gave us multiple chances to recognize that.
Well, I hope you all have a great week! I'm happy but I'm definitely stressed. Something I heard in the MTC was, "if you aren't tired, you aren't working hard enough." And we are definitely tired.
Love you all, and have a good week!
-Elder Williams
