December 1, 2014

December? DECEMBER?? Is that even really possible? Was it not December just a minute ago? The time is flying by now. I feel like there really is no stopping it now. I am glad to hear all is going well at home. It looks like you all have about 6 months to practice up on ping pong before I come home to take you all down. I also can see that the christmas decorations are starting to go up. Well they are also starting to go up in our house haha. We bought a bunch of paper and made like over a hundred snowflakes and then hung them up in our house. i will try and send more pics next week. We also put up a small christmas tree, a nativity scene, an elder got a gingerbread house, and we hung up some lights. So its not completely like home, but its a little piece of Christmas here :) We also attempted to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday. At lunch time, instead of us all eating separately, we made rice, beans, corn, meat, and some random foods together and we all ate together. It was nice to sit all together at the table and eat a little bit like a family. One thing that has been very nice about Maputo is that every single day isn't blistering hot like Manga. We get days that are hot still, like the other day it was up over 100 degrees, but there are also lots of days in the high 70's or low 80's which is a blessing! I definitely am loving that little bit of a temperature change. It hasn't rained super hard yet either. It doesn't flood too bad here so its not as big of a problem like it was in Manga. In Manga, it just always instantly flooded when it rained haha. Last P day we ended up just chillin at home. We have a few games at home so on Pdays we like to play "Risk" a lot. I now have the most wins in the house. I won last week, so next time we play i'm sure i will have the target on my back haha. This week, Elder Ence was sick for a couple of days so i had some time to listen to some different talks, make some cinnamon rolls, and call all my families that I know up in Beira. It was nice to talk to all of them. I love the Inhamizua branch president so much. I called him and when he answered he couldn't figure out who I was cause i was sick and so my voice was a little raspy, but once i said it was me he just started yelling "oooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ELDER LYNN meu grande amigo!!" hahahaha. I miss him a lot. I told him that even if I never get transferred back up there, that I will be coming with my family, and he got so excited. He is very excited to meet mom and dad. He really is an amazing man. But that was nice to have time to call all my recent converts and see how they're doing. So this week was a little weird with having those couple sick days, then elder stubbs and I had a meeting on saturday, so we did a division that day. We were close to the distribution center so I used a little bit of personal money and splurged a bit... I was just so ready to hear some new music cause I have had the same music my whole mission.... so i bought a motab cd... it has been wonderful to listen to them. when i say splurge, i mean it cost 10 dollars haha. so not that much but more than i normally spend. I can't believe that Tyson Thompson is already gonna be done with his mission.. that is insane. I just am amazed by that.. Well this week should be another good week. We have a couple more big meetings, we should be opening a marriage process to have a family married and baptized on the 20th and 25th of this month.. SO the miracles and blessings keep coming. I love you all so much!!!

Love,

Elder Lynn