Bye bye June! It was just yesterday that I was being transferred to Magoanine and all of a sudden its already July! The next transfer will be on the 14th of July, cailee's birthday i believe. This week went really well... It was kinda crazy but went well. On tuesday, Elder Barroso and I spent a lot of time preparing a training and then on wednesday we did a zone training where we just get a focus for what we think will help our zone the most and then do a training for all the missionaries in our zone. Then after that, we spent time preparing for the wedding and baptism. On Saturday, the wedding and baptism went super well. There was our couple and then two other missionaries had a couple too so there were two couples that got married. Also, I found out that one of the families that I left in Inhamizua got married and baptized on Saturday so I called them and told them congrats and talked with them a little bit and I also talked with felicidade because she was part of the wedding and got all her questions answered. They said also that on the 12th of July another family that we had prepared up in Inhamizua will be married and baptized so that makes me super happy to know that more families up there are still doing well! It is only cool in the mornings and night time but not cool enough that I wear a long sleeve shirt. I would still die if I used a long sleeve shirt haha. This week we had two full families at church, but we had other families that the husband came or things like that. We also had a branch activity and President Kretly came and gave a really awesome training to our branch but we also got to take part in it! Tomorrow we will also be having zone conference so that should be pretty fun. The elders and sisters from swaziland are coming here for zone conference so we have to translate for them. I will be one of the elders that translates... Its good but it makes it hard to take notes and stuff like that haha. I will try and send pics, I made that chocolate cake to celebrate our year mark... It is pretty crazy that it is already more than a year now! I have been thinking about that a lot and how fast time is going... Because being on the mission, we know we will see our families again and so its not too hard to be away from our families, not that we don't miss you, but we know we will see you all again. But when we leave areas, or worse, when we have to leave mozambique, we don't know when we will get to see these people again, or IF we will ever see them again and see it gets a lot harder knowing that one day that day will come, and its not that far away in all reality. Elder Barroso will leave at the end of march. I think he will leave actually on March 23, so not too much more time than me. I will leave two transfers after him. There were lots of good stories for the week... hmmm... Well we hitch hike here a lot and most of the time people stop for us, and so we were in a car the other day and I was in the back seat and then all of a sudden something smoked me in the head and I was like what in the world??? and I looked around and a little bird had flown in the window and hit me in the head hahaha. First time for me! As far as tithing, they just pay in money like everyone else. I don't really know how hard it is for them because, well we can't really ask if people are paying a full tithe or not, but for the most part, everyone already knows that tithing is a commandment and that they have to do it! We got an email today from the first presidency saying that the order of the missionaries lessons has changed a little bit and that now, we have to teach the temple ordinances and all that before baptism, but something interesting is that President Kretly had already pretty much changed that here anyways... President Kretly literally is a genious haha. For example, Elder Barroso and I almost always teach in the first lesson about the temples and eternal families... It is a great message that no one has ever heard and the people love it. Often I think missionaries are apprehensive to teach about temples and all that, but we NEED to teach it before baptism. Why should we baptize people when they won't be working towards baptism so that one day they can go to the temple. If the families know from the first lesson, that they need to go to the temple, and they need to be baptized to go to the temple, the whole process becomes much much easier. They already have the end in mind, in the beginning. We also had a really good sunday school class on sunday given by the black version of van diesel, seriously he sounds and looks just like him. hahaha. It was about sacrifice and it was so awesome. Also president kretly said some things super interesting. he said, "If we as young people don't take the time to do some of the things we don't like to do now, we will end up doing them for our whole life. But if we sacrifice a little bit now, we will have more time in the future to enjoy the good things of life." He also said, that a person who says, "I don't have time," is a person who is unorganized. We should, (we speaking as not just missionaries but as people in general), we should plan every single day. If we want to be sucessful in life, we need to plan, make priorities, and then follow through on what we have promised to do. We shouldn't ever have an excuse of, "oh it didn't go well because of the time. we need to control the things we can control and our schedule is one of them." Super interesting! That would be why he is one of the most famous people in brazil! Well I love you all and hope you are all doing very well!!
Love,
Elder Lynn
He finally got the cake mix and frosting wesent for
his birthday so he used it to celebrate his year mark.
The chapel in Maputo
First baptism in Magoanine for Justin
A look at the baptismal font
One of the families that they are teaching
Another wedding
Their zone (not sure why all the elders are in stocking feet.)
