January 6, 2014

2013 was a full year! Its hard to believe that all of that happened in one year haha. (This was in respnse to the following from me:  You went to Costa Rica, graduated from High School, entered the MTC in Provo and then off to Mozambique! Amidst all that you also went to the cabin with your friends and played flipit or whatever that thing was that you were flipping into targets. And then you and Tchae also took your trip to Utah. What an amazing year you have had! 2015 will hold many good things for you as you serve our Heavenly Father and the people of Mozambique.)  I was thinking about how when I was a freshman, I was in washington d.c. for my birthday, when i was a sophomore, i was in utah visiting darcee.When I was a junior, I was in Hawaii with you guys, when I was a senior, I was in Costa Rica and this year and next year I will be in Moçambique! Pretty crazy! Another crazy thing is that when this transfer ends, it will only be 5 days away from February. The transfer after that will take me almost to my birthday and the one after that takes me to the end of April. Only two more transfers pretty much and we will be talking again! Time is really gonna fly! Iºm so glad that you guys got that done!!  (Our passport applications sent in)   An elder is leaving for home in three weeks and his parents are also coming to get him. Oh so I had an idea that you could think about. So here, one of the battles is having wedding dresses for all the brides. We get them donated and use them. But we are always needing more. Elder Tanner, was the AP when I got here and he has now gone home, but when he went home, his parents also came to get him and they brought dresses with them to donate. I was thinking that you guys could start like a dress drive in Powell, in preparation for coming. And when you come you could bring wedding dresses. I know its something that would take some planning to do but I know that the people here would be forever grateful to you. Just an idea. 

 

I also feel that for the first time in my life, I really got a response from my fast yesterday. As missionaries we definitely arenºt perfect and we still have a lot to learn. I learned how to use the scriptures on the mission. I learned really how to pray on the mission. I learned how to have faith and I learned how to work. All things I should have known before the mission but things that most missionaries learn while theyºre out. We are all still young just trying our best to serve the Lord and be who he wants us to be. We all mess up but it matters how we bounce back, not that we fell down.

 

Zone Conference was really fun. The main theme was really on the fact that the mission is only two years long and that the mission is preparing us for so much more than just being a missionary. It talked about living worthy to have our investigators trust even after the mission and always remembering them. It was a really uplifting training, just reminding us that we are missionaries right now, but more importantly one day we will be husbands and dads. I really really enjoyed it. Then we got back super late to our house to have the energy be out at our house and fireworks going all over the place so it was quite hard to sleep that night in the heat with out AC. So we all woke up the next morning just dead tired. Also, it rained every single day last week so that just added to the fact the it was hot and we were tired. But to make a long story short, we found some amazing new families. We took a family who really didnºt know who God was, and now they are some of the strongest investigators that we have. We also had the baptism of two teenagers. One is a deaf girl who really has touched the lives of so many. And she doesnºt even know it. The other is a young boy who has been in the church for forever and we thought he was a member so when we found out he wasnºt we got him taught and baptized. And then another missionary companionship in our branch had a marriage and baptism of a family of four so then on sunday we had that family, the two teenagers, and my couple to confirm so we had 8 confirmations! It was a good week! Last night though, we ran out of energy at like 11:30 p.m. at our house and so we had no AC last night. So I was dying and trying to figure out what to do to be able to sleep in the hot hot house. So I got up and sprayed myself down with mosquito spray, then I went out into our main room where we had an extra mattress and then I took those cool neck things from sister Barruss and filled them up and then just put them on my head and body and went to sleep like that haha. I like poured cold water on my self and slept like that. I probably got like 3 or 4 hours of sleep so I am pretty tired right now. We all are haha. But thats life! I think that is about all the baptisms weºll have for this transfer but if I stay in this area next transfer I have a feeling we will have a lot of success and a lot of marriages! I really wish I could send everything we do into an email but its literally impossible haha. The other picture was of a chameleon we found. We were at the church waiting for the wedding to start and they were late so Elder Cummings and I went on a chameleon hunt in the church garden haha. Then we were letting it crawl around on us and letting it scare the people haha. Its so so funny! Well I hope you have a great week!  I love you!!!

Love,

Justin