8.26.13

This week was really great! I had a lot of different experiences that I will always remember. Elder Jimu and I have been working really great together. We are doing our best at handling all of Mukono. It is soo big! Basically combine the people in Wasilla and Palmer and thats how big Mukono is, all in the size of Palmer. It is a lot of work but we are really enjoying everything. 

Yesterday we had a baptism. His name is Robson Isingoma. He is basically the most golden investigator ever. The past three sundays he came at least 30 min early to church. And he has just been soaking up all of the lessons. He had problems with coffee and tea but basically gave them up with no questions when we taught the Word of Wisdom. I have really enjoyed teaching and getting to know him these past few weeks. I will attach a picture. Also I will put a picture of our baptism last week of Jackie Mahoro. 

Church yesterday was also great. We had a whopping 110 people attend sacrament meeting. That is the most since I have been here which was really great. The only thing is that there is more than that many less/in-active people in the ward. We are doing our best at finding less active people and bringing them back to church. It was such a great feeling yesterday when we saw a lot of members we have been visiting coming to church. It made all of the efforts of finding where they live and teaching them worth it. 

Every day of the week were just normal days of missionary work. There was one experience we had yesterday. After church we went out to proselyte. We went to a guy named Chris. While teaching him we found out that he is a missionary for a Born Again church. Then the lesson kinda started to turn into a one sided bible bash. He was just asking us tons of questions about random things in the bible, and then would ask if we were 100% sure of what we were doing. When we would try to explain and answer his questions he would just interrupt and ask another question and not give us any time. So we just sat there and listened to his ramblings. Every once in a while he gave us a few seconds to speak and we just gave him our simple testimonies. It went like that for about 30 min. I was amazed at how mislead he is with the teachings and interpretations of the Bible. It really made me grateful for the truths that we have been given with the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. After some time we just left because it was kinda a waste of time. It really helped strengthen my testimony of the Restoration and of how plain and simple the gospel is. 

We are now in week 6 of the transfer! This week I am going to turn 3 months. Woo hoo!! Its crazy that August is almost over. The year is going to be done before we realize it. I have really enjoyed the time I have spent here. Uganda is an amazing place. Most of the people here are very nice and even though the standard of living is pretty low, most of the people are happy and all around good people. I love being a missionary!

On friday I got my first Sugar Cane! It is soo good. It looks like a big stick and you just peel the outside and suck the juice on the inside. The juice is super sweet (like sugar). I will attach a pick of me eating it. 

Thats pretty awesome that you got to go to the Foreigner concert. I remember having the most boring job of sitting at the Cokestand in the Borealis Theater. It was super boring and I didnt get paid much, but I got to see some awesome concerts!! Sounds like normal Alaska fall weather of nothing but rain. It is getting to be the rainy season here so the weather is nice and cool and it rains almost everyday. 

That's perty awesome that Valdez is now a Ward! I wasn't really expecting that to happen but it is great. The church is growing all over the world! Also super congrats to Tyler and Packer for almost being missionaries. It is such a great time and you learn soo many things! What are their missionary emails?  

As for projects you could do.. I dont really know. Scripture bags would be great because most people dont have them, they just carry their scriptures and they get super dirty and messed up.

Also with whatever you are sending, I was really wanting some of those elastic workout bands. Andy knows what they are cuz we bought some for p90x. If you could get some of those along with the hook thingy to attach it to a door that would be great! Im kinda tired of just push ups and sit ups. Last week I started laying on the floor and "bench pressing" some big jugs of water cus I wanted something different to do in the morning :)

I got another letter from Sister Casagranda! She is the only person that I have got anything from other than email :) I really appreciate it. Thanks for the great quote from Bruce R Mckonkie. 

To Sarah, there's no such thing as having hard classes unless it has to with physics! Haha :)

So one of the pics is of me, Elder Jimu and a member called Mathias that we have been working with almost every day. The others I already explained.

Love, 

Elder LeCheminant

8.19.13

Another week gone! We had a really great week. We finished the week with 48 lessons and half of them with a member present. We were blessed to have a member work with us every day of the week. He is called Mathias and is an awesome person. He is super funny and we had a great time working with him everyday. Even this week we are planning to work with him almost everyday. Anyways, Elder Jimu and I have been handling the area really well. Even though Mukono is huge we have really been blessed with some great success.

Church yesterday was really good. It was the best sacrament meeting that I have been to here. We had a nice surprise, President and Sister Chatfield and the AP's came to church. We weren't expecting them at all. It was really good to have them here because they really helped add to the spirit. After church we had a baptism! Her name is Jackie Mahoro. She lives with the second counselor in the Bishopric called Bro Maraka. He is the one that baptized her. Also there was an eight year old in the Ward that was baptized by his father. Elder Jimu and I were the witnesses. It was my first time being a witness for a baptism. It was a different experience watching a baptism and being the one responsible for it being done correctly. Both of them had to be redone because they didnt go all the way under and the prayer wasn't said completely right. I really came to understand the importance of doing things correctly. When the Lord reveals something and says it needs to be done in a specific way, then we are responsible for always doing it correctly. Even the sacrament prayers need to be done 100% right or they have to say it over again. The Lords house is a house of order and certain things must be done right. Anyways, I love baptisms! The service was really great and the spirit was truly there.

The rest of the week was awesome. One exciting thing is that our water filter got fixed. It hasn't been working for like a month now. It would take maybe 2 hours to fill a water bottle, but a guy from the mission office finally came and fixed it so it only takes about 2 minutes to fill. Having clean water readily available is truly a blessing that I never realized until being here. The day before he came to fix the filter we had to boil water because it had completely stopped working. It was my first time having to boil water for it to be safe. Another thing that happened was that on Saturday night we ran out of gas for the stove. So we basically couldn't cook anything. And the next day was Sunday so we couldn't go buy food that didn't need to be cooked. Basically we have been eating bread for the last two days. They are coming to replace the gas tomorrow so we wont suffer for to long :). Even Christ taught that man cannot live on bread alone. I can testify to the literal meaning of that scripture! You cant live on bread for 2 days and hope to survive. Haha :)

Today for our P-day, Elder Jimu and I went to Jinja. It was pretty awesome! The taxi ride was like 2 hours which kinda sucked but I really enjoyed Jinja. It is a really nice little town/city. On the way there we went over the Nile River!!!! It was pretty awesome. I was going to take a picture but I was to late getting my camera out. So today I saw the Nile and also was able to see Lake Victoria from Jinja town. Hopefully someday I will serve in Jinja and go spend a Pday at the river. It is a HUGE river and the water is really clear. Both sides were extremely green and it was so beautiful. That was my cool experience for the week.

Yay for starting school and continuing with the craziness. Don't get to busy so that you don't have time to take care of important things. That is one thing I have learned here. A lot of people work all day long. Literally from 6:00 am to 11:00 pm. They are always always busy and never have time for anything. That is something we need to try to stay away from. There always needs to be time to spend with the family, and most importantly have time for the Lord.

Thanks for everything you do for me! I really appreciate all of the support. 

Until next week,
Elder LeCheminant

8.12.13

This week was the most eventful and awesome week that I have had. Elder Jimu and I have been doing great and we work really well together. Everything we did this week seemed to just fall into place. We didn't focus very much on finding new people because we already had 12 new investigators from last week. So we tried our best at focusing on all of them and getting them to come to church and progress. The crazy thing is that this week we ended up with 16 new investigators!!! So now our teaching pool is massive and we are going to be very very busy for the next 3 weeks (transfer ends in 3 weeks). The only problem is that yesterday only 3 came to church. We had about 10 promise to come and were telling us they were on their way but they never showed up. But that is just how missionary work in the Uganda Kampala Mission is. One of the people that came to church is an incredible guy. He is soooo willing to change his life and join the church that he came AN HOUR EARLY. I was amazed. At church he was even telling people that he was going to be baptized soon. I was sitting there wondering what church would be like at home if people were so dedicated to the gospel that they would even come to church an hour early. Hmmm.... Just something to think about :)

Anyways, on Thursday we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders. The ZLs stay in a place called Mutungo. It is in Kampala. One of the ZLs is my father, Elder Mgijima. The other one is a white South African called Elder Melton. For the exchanges, Elder Mgijima came to Mukono and I went to Mutungo. It was really nice to get out of Mukono for a day and see something new. I really enjoyed the day with Elder Melton. He is an awesome missionary. We talked a lot about BYU and things like that because he wants to go there when he is done with mission. Anyways, in Mutungo we didnt start working until around 3:00. The awesome part is that we had 11 lessons by 8:00. I learned a lot about how to keep lessons shorter and even new ways to teach. So that was thursday. 

On friday morning, the other Elders in our district were taken out. They were having some serious issues with some things and when the AP's found out, they were gone in like an hour. It was pretty crazy and sad! I learned a lot about how important it is to always obey the rules because it can be very easy to get in serious trouble. So now it is just Elder Jimu and I in Mukono for the rest of the transfer. We have a big job ahead of us because we now have their side to take care of as well as ours. The hard part is that Mukono is HUGE!! I dont know how we are going to manage, but I know that the Lord will help us with everything. I have already seen His hand in the work from this past week. Elder Jimu and I are going to work our socks off and I know that we will have success. Missionary work is amazing! And the Uganda Kampala Mission is truly the Mission of Missions. Im sorry to anyone else, but this is the best mission :)

Congrats that to Adam and Sarah McCleary!! Sorry to Lick and Rindsey. Thats just how life goes :) 

I was really wondering when Eric Wolford was coming home. It seems like he has been gone forever. But tell him that I say hello from Uganda and congrats for completing mission. Same to Sierra Branham, for going on mission, not for coming home. Its crazy how many missionaries there are from Palmer.

Thats really great that Uncle Brent is well and recovering. The Lord really knows us and wants the best for us. When we trust in him then he will always make sure we are taken care of. We can see the results with Brent. We just need to have faith and trust in the Lord. 

Time is seriously going way to fast. School is already starting there in AK and things like that. I cant believe that it is already almost halfway through August. Pretty soon it will be the end of the year and I will be an almost old missionary. Soo exciting! 

Thats pretty dang awesome that you get to see Elder Bednar next Sunday. I'm kinda jealous. But I'm also in the best mission in the world so im not to worried about it :)

Have a good week starting school and everything! 

Love Elder LeCheminant

8.5.13

So I literally feel like I just emailed last week. This week flew faster than I ever thought possible. Elder Jimu and I have been working very well together. He knows how to cook so we have been eating really well. I am definitely going to cook more throughout the rest of my mission. It is nice because Elder Mgijima didn't know how to cook anything, but he was a great companion! Its kinda hard for me to remember things that happened this week because it went by soo fast. Anyways, we spent a lot of time this week finding people and building our teaching pool, because our teaching pool was really suffering. Everyday we were blessed to find lots of people that were willing to listen. At the end of the week we had 13 new investigators. Which is a lot!! Unfortunately only 1 came to church yesterday so we only have like 3 people progressing. Hopefully we will get people to come next week. We only say someone is a progressing investigator if they come to church. So we usually only have a few "progressing" and the rest are just other investigators. Anyways we have a full week planned out already which is really nice because I hate trying to think of who we can see when we are doing nightly planning.

On Thursday we found this super old couple, probably in their late 60's. They have been catholic their entire lives but let us come in to share our message. The lesson kinda turned into a bible bash and it was pretty hard but by the end they asked for a Book Of Mormon to read for themselves and even wanted us to come again. I was really surprised, but we managed to pull through. It was awesome to see that we had the ability to confound someone so grounded in the bible and let him know that we have something else that is really true. One of the biggest problems he had was that the church that Christ established was taken from the earth after the Apostles were all gone. I later realized that he was just misunderstanding what we were saying! I was so glad that we were able to make it through. It is truly amazing what you can do with something that is true even though you don't know everything. The church really is true and I love helping people learn about the restored gospel even though sometimes they are stubborn.

This past week the weather has been super nice. It has been very cloudy every day which makes it not very hot at all. And it has rained many times. It is so much easier to work when the weather is cool and I'm not sweating all the time. I have even been getting cold the last several nights. I never thought that would happen. And yesterday at church I wore a long sleeve shirt with my suit for the first time! My alaskan blood is gone :(

So in our district there is Elder Thusi, Mkwananzi, Jimu and Me. This is the last transfer for Elder Thusi. He is from South Africa. Yesterday he made vanilla pancakes with sliced banana inside. They were sooooo good!! I can still smell them. And he even gave me the recipe so I'm basically going to make pancakes a lot. I love food!!

That reminded me of some things that I want to make. I want to make french toast but cant remember how to exactly do it. So mom could you tell me how to make some french toast. And another thing is I would like you to send me the recipe for those banana cookies that I would always make. Our oven here doesn't work but I just want the recipe so that I can hopefully make them sometime.

Happy Birfday to Andy. I'm super jealous of all of that delicious food. There should be a way for you to make me some of that stuff and then send it so that I can eat it.

I got a letter from Sister Casagranda through dearelder.com. Thank you!! Thank you for the motivating quotes. I love getting letters from people :)

Some other things that I wrote down to ask. This is kinda a dumb question, but do you think it would be ok to wash my microfiber towel in the washer? I dont know if it would get ruined or anything. And whenever you are sending me a box of stuffs (wink wink) I would like the Vocal Point album that came out last fall. I miss listening to the songs on it because they are some incredibly spiritual songs. Also if there is extra room in the box that you are sending sometime :) you should see if you can fit some deoderant. I really like the kind that I use and i will most likely run out soon. As many as you can fit. Thanks!!! :)

Love Elder LeCheminant