10.28.13

This week was interesting. Almost everyday our plans for the day were completely turned upside down. That was rough. We would end up just going forward not knowing what to do and where to go. It made us put a lot of trust in the lord that he would help us. The great thing is that each day actually turned out to be really great.

On Tuesday we did some service at a members house in the other Elder's area. We were digging in her garden. That means digging up the ground with a hoe so that seeds can be planted. Its sooooo fun! Not really. Africans think that white people cant work so they would always question and laugh at us as they walked by. It was kinda annoying but it was good because we showed them that we can work harder than them! The members really loved the service. I got some good blisters on my hands. My hands are really soft now from not doing any work with them for 5 months. On Saturday we went to a member in our area to help dig their garden. That was fun. Afterwards they made us food. It was sooo good!

We got rained on pretty good on Friday. Actually, I don't think 'rained on' is a good enough description. It poured for like two hours and we got caught in it. We were on our way to the church after some lessons. About 5 minutes away the rain came. We ran the rest of the way but it was already to late. EVERYTHING was completely soaked all the way through. My shoes, my clothes, and my scripture bag. Now my scriptures are slightly water damaged, but its ok. They look more used and rugged now :). My shoes just finished drying out this morning. That was a fun experience. I was sooo wet!!! The rain then cut our day really short, so we only had like 3 lessons on Friday. On Saturday and Sunday we watched General Conference, they finally sent us the DVDs so we could watch it. It basically took most of the day on Saturday. And on Sunday we had someone translating so it took an extra 45 min for each session. After each talk we would stop and he would summarize everything in Luo. Luo is the local language here. But conference was amazing. The talks were really awesome. I noticed that they talked a lot about families and morality. Its insane that 40% of children are born to unmarried parents and that only 20% of 19-20 yr olds are married now. The world is a crazy place. Something else that was said "If the laws of men are contrary to the laws of god, it does not change the laws of god. A sin is still a sin no matter how legal it is". Anyways, conference was amazing.
After church we went to the orphanage again to play soccer. Its soo much fun! Kids are awesome.

We have one investigator named Bosco. I dont remember if I already talked about him. We have been teaching him and his wife, Cecilia. Bosco is in the Uganda military. They are amazing investigators. A couple weeks ago after teaching them the Book of Mormon, Bosco asked if the church accepts people who drink alcohol. We gave him a Word of Wisdom pamphlet and said we would talk about it next time. We saw him this week and taught the Word of Wisdom, he said that he has already completely stopped drinking since we met with him last time. That was amazing. He stopped drinking before we even taught the word of wisdom! He is awesome and is really excited to be baptized in a couple weeks. That was just one cool experience. The gospel has really changed that whole family in such a short time!

Its good that the funeral went well. That would have been awesome to go to be able to see everyone. That's so awesome that you got to see the Heges in the airport. I actually really miss that family. I have some wonderful childhood memories with them. Its awesome that they are planning to move to the valley soon. Maybe I will get to see them when I come home! How are all the other Fairbanks peeps? Haha

Yea the package had customs tape over it. I dont think anything was taken but it looked like it had been inspected. People say that if you put pictures of Jesus all over packages then they dont inspect them. Haha maybe you could try that on the next one! It might work!! And the sick stomach was worth it! Its nice to have something other than rice and beans :)

I got some letters last week that I forgot about. From Kathy Casagranda and Calvin Simmons. Thanks for the great letters!!

Andy, you are crazy!! Who would want to go running for fun? Such a waste of energies. Haha but i guess its good for you :)

Thats all I can think of for now. Have a good week!

Love Elder LeCheminant

10.21.13

This week went pretty good. My transfer prediction was correct. Me and Elder Buyers are still together. Elder Mgijima is now a Zone Leader here in the Lira Zone. Its pretty awesome to have him around again. He is a really fun guy and a great missionary. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. On Saturday we had a baptism. It was a young girl called Fiona. She is the daughter to Bruno who we baptized like 3 or 4 weeks ago. Now we are working with the wife to Bruno. She was going to be baptized with Fiona but hasnt been coming to church. The baptism went very well and Bruno even baptized her. He was very nervous and hesitant about doing it because he didn't want to mess up and ruin his daughters baptism. But we kept encouraging him and built his confidence. And then he did it perfect the first time! So the baptism went great. 

We had another family that we found. The parents are Bosco and Cecilia. They are a really awesome family. After coming to church both of them expressed the desire to officially be a part of this church and be baptized. They both said they felt that other churches they have been to talk about Christ but this church seems like it is actually led by Christ. I was soo surprised when they said that. It was awesome and made me sooo happy. They are going to be baptized closer to the end of November. I love it when people accept the gospel so easily!! 

Yesterday after church we went again to the orphanage to play soccer. And of course I forgot my camera again! One of these times I will remember to bring it. Soccer was fun. I am starting to get better and can almost get the ball past the little kids. They are just way to good! Afterwards when we got home I cooked dinner. I made rice and beans, but it was super delicious! I can make some dang good beans. Elder Buyers and I also discovered an amazing drink. Africans love tea so they have all sorts of different kinds of "tea." One is hot milk with sugar. You just boil milk for like 20 or 30 minutes and then add sugar and drink it. Its sooooooo goooood!!!! So I made that as well last night.

That reminds me. I finally got my box! It was seriously better than Christmas. And it reminded me of home waaayy to much, but I loved it. Btw.... HOLY COW ON THE DEODERANT!!! I have never seen that much in my life. It will last me like 5 years. Haha maybe not that long. But thanks anyways. And the food was amazing, even though all of the preservatives have really messed up my digestive system. Nothing here is preserved or manufactured like food in the states. So I am totally not used to it, but it was worth it. Keep sending me delicious junk food :)

To answer Dad's question. We do have a water filter. Every missionary apartment has a water filter system. If the water goes out then we just have to buy water. If there's no water to buy then we have water storage for emergencies. Every apartment also food storage for emergencies. I hope we never have to use any of it, even though it would make some great stories!! Haha. And I do have plenty of sunscreen, I just forget to use it and then halfway through the day its to late. But I am going to use it more because the dry season is coming and the sun is getting more intense every day. We are allowed to wear hats that have the brim all around. Like those fishing or safari hats. The only problem is that I don't have one. 

Its really sad to hear about Jon Tanner. This past week I had been thinking a lot about Fairbanks for some reason. I had no idea why or where it came from, but random memories of Fairbanks kept coming at really random times. Now I guess I know why. Usually hearing about someone passing away doesn't affect me that much, but I feel so sad for everyone there(in Fairbanks). I cant imagine what you are all going through. One of my favorite memories is my first moose hunting trip with Jon Tanner, Jerry Bastian, Dad, and me. We went to Galena and then went in boats up the Koyukuk River. That was a really fun trip. I cant remember how old I was, I think maybe like 4th or 5th grade. Its weird because I remember a lot about that trip. We didn't have the big tents so we wrapped some trees with a roll of plastic and made a shelter. Then I remember all of the great adventures we had wandering around and having crazy things happen. It was a lot of fun and is one of my favorite childhood memories. I love the plan of salvation. It brings so much purpose into our lives. This kinda made me realize that we don't know when our time will end here on the earth. Heavenly Father can call us back at any moment. One thing I like to teach people about is being ready to meet the Savior tomorrow. If you are not ready then some things in your life need to change. The plan of salvation is very real. I know that if we really apply it to our lives then it will bring so much peace and happiness. My prayers go out to all of you.

Well there's not much else. I am going to be sending some pics in another email later today. Have a good week! I love you all. Thanks for everything.  

Love Elder LeCheminant

p.s. Everyone should send me a package cus I like delicious junk food :) hahahahahahahaha

10.14.13

So today is officially start of transfer #4. I'm pretty sure Elder Buyers and I are going to stay together this transfer so there will probably be no changes. But we don't find out until tomorrow. 
This past week went very well. We worked hard everyday. Wednesday was Uganda's Independence Day. Uganda has now been independent for 51 years. Last year was the 50th. The holiday pretty much ruined missionary work for the day. We were only able to see a couple of recent converts. The rest of the day we just spent at the church playing volleyball and watching some movies (they were church movies, don't worry). It was fun. I hadn't played volleyball for like three months. It was nice to play again. We also didn't have running water for three days. There was something wrong with the pipes at the central pumping station that pumps water for the whole town. So all of Lira had no running water for a few days. That was fun. Not really. 

Today for p-day was amazing! We went to a place called Chobe. It is a lodge that is inside a wildlife reserve. On the way here we saw tons of giraffes, water buffalo, warthogs, and a few monkeys, and some kind of deer. Then we got to the lodge. Holy cow it is nice. This place is a 5 star lodge that overlooks the Nile river. It is so beautiful and gorgeous. There are tons of hippos just chilling in the water and giraffes outside. The lodge is super fancy and has amazing food. We have  been out here all day. They have computers here so I am emailing at this lodge. It is an incredible place that would be really great for like a family vacation or something like that (wink wink). I cant send pictures today because I don't have an adapter so I will send them next week. But you can go to the website to see. It is chobelodgeuganda.com. I have tons of amazing pictures and videos of all the animals. There is an airstrip for the lodge and you can fly here directly from the Entebbe International Airport in Kampala. Everything here is so gorgeous and peacefull. I want everyone to be able to come and see it!!! 

So that was today. I don't really have much else to talk about this week. On Saturday I had some of the young men from the branch come and wash my clothes. We dont have a washing machine here in Adyel. So I was washing clothes by hand every week. That pretty much sucks. It takes sooo long! I would do most of it on Mondays then the rest at night during the week. Its not very fun. So I decided to pay some of the guys from the Branch. I gave them 5000 shillings to wash everything for me. Thats basically 2 US dollars. It was worth it. 

So that was the week. We are going to leave Chobe in about an hour. We have to change a flat tire on our truck and watch the sunset first. I am excited. It is going to make great pics that I will send next week!

Yay for Galena and her family. Its always exciting to see someone follow the example of Jesus Christ and get baptized. That is the first step towards eternal life. I love when people get baptized. 

Congrats to Palmer football and volleyball. And good luck to those in the Play at the school. I remember those days. It was sooo long ago! Back when I was in high school! Hahahahaha. Just make sure no one forgets how good I was in all of my plays and shtuff. Kidding. I was pretty bad. I don't know why Mr Harris kept letting me in. :)


Love Elder Chem

10.9.13

Another week down, A LOT more to go. We had a good week. Nothing really crazy happened this week. We just did normal missionary work. The usual walking ALL DAY long. I havent been inside a vehicle for about three weeks now. Its really great to walk everywhere. My legs hurt more if I sit around doing nothing than when I am out walking. I dont know how that works, its kinda weird. Hahaha

Two members of the branch got their mission calls this week. Both are going to Ghana but different missions. There are now almost 10 missionaries from this branch and there is like 3 more that are working on the papers right now! Its amazing. Even a small branch of under 200 members has that many missionaries! The gospel is true.

We spent a lot of time this week trying to build our teaching pool. At the end of last we basically had to drop almost everyone. So now we are just preparing for next transfer. We found a few really great families. I love finding families because when they accept the gospel they will most likely be very strong in the church and also have the temple to work towards.

Elder Buyers and I have been doing really good together. I dont remember if I already talked about this. But our lessons have been getting very good. Almost every lesson we had this week had the spirit present and we were able to teach powerful lessons. Its amazing what the spirit does. I have been getting better at recognizing the spirit. That is something that I have never been good at, and I have been really working on it recently. The spirit is an amazing resource that we have.

We were not able to watch general conference yet. If we were to watch it live then it would be in the middle of the night here. So in like two weeks we will recieve the DVDs and the branch will be able to watch it. So our conference weekend is in a couple of weeks. But Elder Buyers and I are downloading the audio for each session from lds.org and we are going to listen to it during the week. One thing that is really amazing is that we now have 80,000 missionaries! And the church membership is now over 15 million. That is truly an amazing thing. In just 183 years the church has grown a lot. I cant wait to listen to all of it!

As for music. We have a portable DVD player that we can watch church movies with and listen to music on. We either put CDs or flash drives that have music on them. And we are not allowed to use headphones, only speakers. But any music that is uplifting and doesnt take away from the spirit we can have. So you can either send the CD or somehow send the files in an email. Whichever you think is easier :)

Haha to Andy! :) Thats two years in a row now that BYU has beaten Utah State. hehehe. I remember last years game. it was awesome.

One of the pics is me sleeping while Elder Buyers is emailing. We are using the computer at the church.

The other is a super legit picture of all of us walking to church yesterday. I think its a pretty awesome picture.


Love Elder LeCheminant