E- mail from President Kretly

Dear Elders Sisters, Parents and Leaders, from Mozambique Maputo Mission,

We are very excited to announce that we have receive from the First Presidency of the Church the have anounced that our Mission have been realingned.

Starting effective today, besides the Country of Mozambique, the beautiful country of SWAZILAND was added in our mission. Located on the south border of Mozambique, and about 1:40 min by car from Maputo (130km ).

This country have 1.2 million people, it's is a Monarchy  and a very safe and stable place. We have there one District with 4 branches and one group. About 1350 members. Two beautiful chapels, 14 wonderful  missionaries and one incredible Senior Couple Missionaries. We have been there this weekend and we were amazed with how kind and special are the members and the people in general. 

Our goal now is, work hard and help the Lord to do Miracles there like He is doing in Mozambique. We will work for a Stake there. Please, let's pray and work hard to make that happen. The Lords wants families to be baptize there and the leadership and the members are all very exited about this news.

Thanks for all your prayers and support, we love you all,

President and Sister Kretly

May 26, 2014

Well the big news for the week is that we all just got an email and our mission boundaries have been realigned effective today! We now have the country of Swaziland included in our mission. I don't know much about it but i know that it is small, doesn't have a lot but its an english speaking country. So I am not really sure what will happen. They already have missionaries there so I doubt any of us will be moved to Swaziland. I am guessing they will just call missionaries to serve there but they will be called part of our mission but I don't really know for sure what will happen! I guess we will find out next week when we have transfers what happens. Pretty interesting though! 

That's crazy that Tyler Gwynn is already home.. I feel like he just left but that just shows how fast time goes! Haha it would be good for brendan and his mom if he comes to africa. Honestly from what I hear, pretty much all of africa is pretty nice except for the congo and mozambique. Everyone says other than that Africa is really nice. I am so glad you guys will be able to come and see africa. Sometimes I forgot where I really am and then when I look at a map and remember I am really in africa its super weird thinking about that haha. I cant think of anything else I would want in the package though specifically. 

Hmmm ok well this week.... Last monday we had a family night at the house of a family named Chicote and Jinete. (by the way, Chicote means whip hahaha) but anyways, it was super fun! Chicote and Jinete is a family that Elder Lake and I found and began teaching. They are progressing well and I think they will be married and baptized at some time in June. They are both smart but Jinete is exceptionally smart. She is super strong we just gotta help Chicote come to church more regularly. Umm then last week we were informed that a news station wanted to do a program about our church and so we were asked to sing a song as a Manga zone. So we practiced tuesday morning and thursday morning and then on friday we presented our song. It turned out so well!!! We sang, "Povos da terra vinde escutai," which is "heark all ye nations" in english. Then they interviewed three missionaries, Elder Going, Elder Rameka (who are both leaving this week and are both from New Zealand) and elder Mavile who is from mozambique. I am not sure if you guys will be able to find it but it would be cool if you could somehow find our song cause it turned out super well! We were able to get everything ready for our weddings we will have this week. We will have the wedding on Friday of Fernando and Gilda. This is our miracle family. Elder Lake and I were walking on his last saturday here in Inhamizua and this guy just called us out to talk to us and we asked if we could sit down and teach his family. It all happened that fast. Then in the end, they accepted baptism and asked when they could be baptized. We told them it would depend a little on their will and how fast they could change their lives to obey the commandments. They asked what they needed to change and we proceeded to teach them the law of chastity and tell them they need to get married (note: we almost never teach it this soon cause they need to build their faith more) but they accepted and now 6 weeks later they are getting married and baptized... Really just a miracle family. They are both teachers and so really smart. They are in their low 30's so they are still young. They have an 8 year old girl and a 4 year old. The 8 year old is probably one of the smartest kids I have ever met and so sweet. The 4 year old is also extremely smart she just likes to put her smarts to being a terror. She loves us though. She reminds me a lot of Ashlee, face of an angel with power to destroy hahaha. Whenever we come she always starts yelling "Ti-tio! Ti-tio!" which just means "Uncle! Uncle!" hahaha. She loves talking our ears off. But they will get married on Friday of this week. We are going to have a family night at their house tonight. The other family of Alexandre and Rosa will be getting married on saturday morning. They are quite the family. They are like the red neck hick family of mozambique. He is of portuguese decent so that is super cool. He is completely mozambican but he looks portuguese and then his wife is 100 percent mozambican. he cuts wood for a living and is just always all over the place. They are doing something 24/7 but they have changed their lives 100 percent also. Following their wedding on saturday we will have the baptism of both families so we are very excited for that! In other news that makes me super happy... Felicidade, our recent convert from april, was called to be the Primary President yesterday! She will be awesome. I am so excited for her. I love when our recent converts receive callings. Also, Diana, our recent convert from april was made Primary Secretary. All of the husbands from the 5 families have recieved the melchezideck preisthood! And all of the families that I have seen be baptized in Manga and Inhamizua are still active! That is a huge blessing because its bound to happen that I will baptized a family that goes inactive, but that is my biggest fear and it hasn't happened yet so I am extremely grateful for that! We have talked a lot with Felicidade and Marcelino about the temple and they are so excited to go here in one year. I would love to come visit Inhamizua here in one year when you guys come and be able to see them already sealed in the temple! Luckily the energy outtage appears as though it will not happen! Luckily... 

But other than that I don't have any other news. I think that is pretty good for me! I am not super good at emailing so I think that was a good one right there! I love you all and hope you have a good week!!

Love,

Justin

May 19, 2014

Ya this week went by really fast for us here too! I canºt believe that it is already p day again! It sounds like you guys had a good week. The house and trees look so nice! A lawn! I havenºt seen one of those in a loooonnggg time haha. I am excited to go to this bowling alley when I get home! It sounds like a nice place. I am glad to hear someone took care of it and fixed it up!!

Did you baptize the other family this week? We had a really good week! We had the other family baptized on saturday and then all 8 people were confirmed this sunday! It was a really great success.

Any other families preparing for marriage or baptism? Yes we actually took some time this morning and went and helped two more families open up the marriage process and so next friday we will have one marriage, then on saturday the other marriage, and then they will both be baptized that saturday and the confirmation will be on the sunday after on the 1st of june. we have other families also getting ready for june and we are always searching for other families! Inhamizua is incredible!

Did you lose power last week before you could e-mail pictures of your apartment and Inhamizua? No i just forgot to send the pics last week haha.

Can you think of anything else you would want us to send? Any food you would like? Umm anything else... hmmm i cant think of anything off the top of my head but just some candy, all the good stuff ya know haha. mike and ikes.

How is the elder from Angola? How long has he been serving? elder ndala is good. He has the most time out of everyone in our house. He only has 4 months left. I sent a pic of him. He is super funny.

Any idea how long Elder and Sister Snelson will be serving? I think the snelsons go home in december but I am not sure.

I will send an email after this with pics of the house. I cant think of a ton to write today and we are running late so I donºt have a ton of time! I love you and will talk to you next week!!! He really was running late! The e-mails came in after 4:00 am.

Love,
Justin

 

 

More baptisms.  I love the cute little girl in pink trying to hide.  :-)

 

 

Elder Ndala from Angola.  He is one of the four elders in

 Justin's apartment. Justin says he is super funny.

 

 

Our room. I am on the bottom bunk now. I was on the

 top bunk when Elder Lake was my companion.

 

Our front room and kitchen. Its small but its easy to keep clean

and its honestly one of the nicest houses in the mission.

 



 

Outside of our house a little bit.

 

 

This all is the orphanage, Inhamizua is a little different than that haha

 

May 12, 2014

Talking on Mother's Day was super awesome! I loved talking even though it went super fast!!! It was nice though. It was super interesting speaking to blake. There was only one time when I didnºt understand at first what he said but then he said it again and I caught it that time. It is pretty nice to be able to understand spanish for the most part now. ya I try my best to keep a good journal. I had a few months where I was really bad.. Part of the problem is that we dont have time for dinner so when we get home we have to plan for the next day, eat, shower, and prepare for bed so we dont always have a lot of time for writing but I am trying my best. Ok I will try and send lots of pics now!

Love you!

 

We recorded our Mother's Day conversation with Justin and as soon as I get a little extra time I will add some of the things we learned.

 

 

May 5, 2014

May surely is upon us and I can hardly believe it!!! So first of all Happy Birthday mom!! I'll be able to tell you again on sunday anyways thoough :) By the way we will be calling Sunday! I will be calling at 5:00 p.m. here so that will be 9:00 a.m. for you guys. I don't know if we wanna just do the same thing where I try and call all the siblings quickly to say hi to them but then I will spend most of the time talking to you? We can do that if you want. I will just use Jamie's account to call. So be ready Sunday morning! 

So unfortunately Elder Biddulph got sick and had to go down to Maputo on saturday to go to the hospital. We don't know what is quite wrong right now. But I called him and he said he definitely knows them haha. He said he remembers when Joby left for his mission. 

I am super jealous that you all got to go to Christy's! I cant wait to see their new house finished when I come home! That will be super exciting! 

Umm so here is a quick review of our week over here. We went to open the marriage process with one of our families but unfortunately the mozambican law has changed, and so now you have to be 21 years old to get married without parents consent. She is only 20. So we went to the mom and asked her to come with us to sign the paper but she is refusing saying she wont do it with out the bride dawry of 6,000 metacais. Well this man isn't even working right now. He doesn't have this money, so we are really searching hard to figure out how we are gonna talk this mom out of it. Its really hard for us because she only speaks dialect, she doesn't speak portuguese and so we cant even have a conversation with her. Everything has to be translated for us and to her... So we are trying really hard.

But in good news, we successfully opened the marriage process for another family and they will be getting married on the 10th of may! Their marriage will be at 10 a.m. on Saturday, then at 2:00 p.m. we will have General conference until 6:00 p.m. Then on sunday we will have the baptism of the family that was married a couple weeks ago, this family that will be married, the husband of felicidade, and the son of a couple we baptized in April. All of this will be at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday. Then at 12:00 until 4:00 p.m. we will have Sunday session of General Conference and then at 5:00 p.m. we will be skyping! So we will have a busy weekend but those are always the best! We will also be waiting to hear what is going to happen with Elder Biddulph because as of right now, his companion is in a triple with us, and his comp just got done being trained so he has only been on the mission for 4 months... So now I have the most time on the mission of anyone in my house and my district.... Super weird. Is that even possible that I am coming up on a year on the mission!? I don't feel that old haha! 

Well Elder Van Leuven has never been to the beach so that is our plan for today is to go to the beach. Its a super nice overcast day today which is a huge blessing!

Also in other news, I have finished my first week of P90X and my second week of my get healthy diet. I have cut out all sugar out of my diet and I am trying to stay away from a lot of carbs. It was hard at first but its getting easier and I have so much more energy now and I have been feeling a lot better. So I am excited to continue on with the workout and diet. I still eat as much, just now I eat a lot more vegetables, fruits, meats, and beans. Its nice to be healthy!! haha :) 

Well be prepared for sunday! Write all the questions down that you have so we can make good use of our 40 minutes!! I am super excited and I love you lots!!!

Love,
Justin