Hello, 2015!

Hello everyone! 

This was a great week with lots of interesting things.
Tuesday was just a good day. We met with Elizabeth who was preparing for baptism on Sunday. She is a daughter to Fred who was baptized a few weeks ago. Then after lunch we set baptism dates with 3 other people. they will be baptized in January. Wednesday was also a good day. We continued preparing Elizabeth and met a few other people. In the evening we had Family Home Evening with a family that was referred to us by the Branch President. It was a great FHE. For the lesson part I told the story of the Book of Mormon using a piece of paper. Its a cool story that I learned from another missionary. Then we played games and just had a good time.

Thursday was Christmas of course! We had put our mattresses on the floor in the sitting room so the 4 of us in the house slept there like a sleep over kinda thing. Then in the morning we opened the stockings that mom sent. I gave one stocking to the other companionship and one stocking to me and my companion. I had hung them over an A/C unit that is in our sitting room. I thought it was funny because at home you hang the stockings over the fireplace. Here I put them over the Air Conditioning. :) We are lucky to have A/C though. Most of the other houses in the mission don't have it. In the morning we went and taught Elizabeth again to finish up her preparation for baptism. Then we had 3 food appointments! All of them were right after each other. I tried my best to pack in the food but I was defeated. We ended up taking home a lot of food. It was a great way to spend Christmas.

Then Friday came. I was planning to call at 7:00 am, I put my SIM card in my cell phone and got ready, then tried calling. It kept saying the network was busy. I kept trying for an hour. At 8:30 we had to leave to go to Kampala. So while driving my comp was still trying. at around 10:30 we gave up. I was super annoyed and kinda mad at the phone a little bit:). I didn't know what to do. It was a blessing that the traffic going to Kampala was not bad at all. If the traffic was bad like usual it would have fueled my stress. I just decided to wait to get to Kampala to decide what to do. We reached the mission office around 11:30. I told Sister Wallace that my phone wasn't working; so without hesitating she just gave me her phone to use. I was kinda surprised and didn't know what to do. She let me call and that's when I finally was able to get through. Then Sister Wallace was kind enough to let me use her computer for the video talk thingy. That was cool. I had no idea what I was doing though. Technology has officially surpassed my comprehension! After talking we went to the mission home for MLC. It was a great meeting. i was inspired in many ways. It was a very spiritual meeting. Afterwards we went to eat at the Protea Hotel again. That place is way to nice and fancy but the food is amazing!!!!!

Saturday morning I got my toe operated on at Elder Chabras house. He is our mission Medical Advisor. He is from California but a native of India. He was saying that he is a retired Urologist and originally did General Surgery but after completing residency he decided tIt was done on his couch. I just layed there and he numbed the toe and did some surgery to remove the ingrown nail. Elder Mkutswana took a video of the operation and some nice pics. So right now I have big bandage covering my toe. I havent' been able to wear shoes since then, just my sandals. Yesterday after church I had to sit at home with my foot elevated; that was really boring. I hated sitting at home all day. It was my first sick day since I came on mission!!!!
That was the week.

Now it is almost 2015. I am done with a full calender year as a missionary. Now the countdown begins to May :)

Thanks mom and Andy for the packages!!!! I shared as much as a could with the other Elders in the house. They really appreciated it and said thank you. The football is super nice as well. We are going to enjoy! :)

Say hello to Dillon Hillis for me before he leaves next week. Thats awesome he is going on mission :)

The pics are of Christmas morning and then the family of Fred. Elizabeth is one of the daughters and was baptized on Sunday.









Happy New Year!!! No Mwaka Omwiaka Gube Gwa Mirembe!!!!!!!!!!!! (Lusoga).


Elder LeCheminant senior

Ndini Fisela Ukisimusi Omuhle

So if you are confused about the subject line, it means we wish you a Merry Christmas in Zulu.

This week was a great one.
Tuesday. Elder Mayeya, our DL in Iganga had an injury in his leg from a soccer game we played two weeks ago. Tuesday the pain was so much that he couldnt' sleep. So Sister Squire recommended that we take him to a hospital to get it checked out. So after studies I got to drive him to Mpumudde to a little medical center. It was actually a nice place with good doctors. They recommended doing an ultrasound. So after the typical wait forever thing in hospitals we finally got in to the ultrasound room. It was my first time ever seeing an ultrasound in real life. The radiologist went up and down his leg to see if there was any muscle damage. He kept trying to explain all the different layers of muscle and tendons and stuff on the screen of the ultrasound. All I say was grey with random lines on it, so I'm not sure what he was looking at. :) Haha, it reminded me of the sonar/fish finder on the boat!!! Anyways, the diagnosis was just a muscle laceration that just needed time to heal. So that was a fun experience.

During the week we started having FHE (Family Home Evening) with different families. on Thursday night we had FHE with the Branch President and his family. It was fun! We are planning to do it with a different family in the Branch every other night to be able to show them how to do FHE and build a relationship of trust. Also so they can start doing FHE regularly in their families, then invite friends to join them, then give those friends to us to teach!!! Haha its a new finding way to get referrals that we came up with. Also during the day we were teaching the family of Joy, a mama that just joined us, said a powerful quote. She said "Knowledge Is Better Than Money." Just think about that :)

Saturday was also our Branch Christmas Party. It was kinda unorganized so really stressful at first. They announced it would start at 10 am. No one showed up until around 12 then it didn't officially start until 2 pm. So from 12 to 2 there was nothing planned for the people sitting there waiting, so we took on the responsibility of entertaining them. For two hours we were running trying to come up with games or things to keep the people busy. It was sooo exhausting!!! At around 2 things started getting organized finally! There was a nice little program that was put together by the Branch choir. Of course I was the pianist for the choir and then the other three Elders were the men voices in the choir because no other men from the Branch were willing to come. The program was nice. We would sing a Christmas hymn, then in between the next song someone would say something from the "He Is The Gift". They would talk about either Discovering, Embracing, or Sharing the Gift. Another cool part is that we sang a few of the Christmas hymns in Luganda! It was cool. Singing in other languages is fun. And the whole time I was at the keyboard; somehow I managed to play all the songs pretty well. The party ended with food. It turned out to be a good party even if the beginning was not the greatest.



Sunday church was good as well. We have been trying for about 2 months to get an English class started during Sunday school. The church has a beautiful literacy course designed to teach you English through the gospel. So Sunday the class was finally started. We have a lot of people coming to church that don't know English so its hard for them at church. They were happy with the class so that was good! After church we had 3 baptisms. It was 3 of the kids of Joy, the momma that we baptized a couple months ago. The baptism was awesome!!



Today we had a Christmas party in Jinja. It was combined with Mbale, Iganga, and Jinja Zones and it was organized by Elder and Sister Squire. The party was awesome!!!! We spent the day playing games and having a talent show. Each district presented some sort of talent. For us in Iganga district, we sang Angels We Have Heard On High, but in Luganda! It was pretty cool and everyone enjoyed the different language. It didn't finish until after 4:00 then we had to transport people and then come back to Iganga. That is why I am sending this email so late. I am super tired right now.

Mom - the Squires brought my packages from Kampala so I got them today. I felt kinda bad because most of the other missionaries didn't get any packages. But its ok! I don't hoard everything to myself like other people. So in Iganga we will have a nice Christmas.
I cant believe Emily is going home next week!!! What is happening?

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!!! Enjoy celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Remember what Christmas is all about and try not to focus on the industry side of it. Those things really don't matter at all. i LOVE YOU ALL.

Elder LeCheminant

Crazy Hectic Week!

This was just a hectic week! We were super disorganized. Transfers were crazy.

On Tuesday evening we went to Ciprian's place. We left Iganga kinda late so we were driving in the dark going there. Then we killed the chicken and then dinner came out late as a result. We didn't leave his house until 9:30 and got home at 10:00. I was soo tired!

Then Wednesday was transfer day. This time they had all of the zone leaders do the transfers. In the past the senior couples were the ones driving for transfers, but now it was all the zone leaders. So we got to drive to Kampala on Wednesday. We picked up Elder Allred in Bugembe, then Elders Hamlett and Halladay in Mpumudde and then went to Kampala. We arrived at the missionary compound in Ntinda where the Senior Couples in Kampala, the AP's and the Ntinda missionaries stay. Transfers were crazy. There was about 15 vehicles in the compound and tons of missionaries. The place only has room for about 6 or 7 vehicles. It was fun to see missionaries from all over the mission who were being transfered. I saw Elder Mgijima for the last time! He is now home. It was nice to see a few old companions and other missionaries that I have served with in the last year and a half. Then at around 4:00 we finally left with the Elders for our zone. On the way out we stopped at Shoprite and the Distribution Center. We left Kampala at about 6:00  and reached Jinja at 9:00. Traffic was ridiculous. It took us an hour longer than usual to reach Jinja. Then after dropping off the elders we didn't get back to Iganga until about 10:00. I was exhausted driving in heavy traffic the whole day, but we survived and now things are slowing down.

There was a stressful thing that happened. On Saturday it was announced that we were going to watch a Conference broadcast for the Africa Continent. We got to the church and found out that it was supposed to be shown on Sunday. A few families had already come to the church and we didn't want to just send them home, so we tried putting on a movie for them. The dvd player was having problems; we would put in a movie and explain what it was about then start it, then 2 minutes into the movie it would stop working. That happened about 6 times. It was really embarrassing! Finally we realized we had some movies on a USB. That worked so we watched the 'RM!' It was a pretty funny movie. The families were happy and went home afterwards.

Then Sunday comes. We had Sacrament and then went to show the Conference. They had brought another dvd player to use and as we put it on we found that the dvd player didn't work. Everyone was there watching us struggle to get the thing to work. Then we went to the computer at the church and tried copying the recording onto a USB. It worked but took about 10 minutes. They had the congregation just sing hymns while they waited. We put in the USB to the TV and it worked, but as the speakers started talking, the language was not English. I think it was Portuguese. We had copied the wrong language on the computer!!!!!!!!! That was just embarrassing. Then someone offered a dvd player from their house, so we drove to their house like it was need for speed. It usually takes about 5 minutes to drive there. Well, we drove there, got the dvd player, and drove back to the church in 5 minutes. :) Hahaha anyways, the dvd player worked!!!!!!! Only 45 minutes after we tried the first time were we finally able to get it going. That was just a stressful hour. The Conference was amazing. It was Elder Gay of the seventy, Sister Stevens, Elder Bednar, and Pres Uchtdorf speaking to the continent of Africa. The messages were awesome and addressed a lot of problems here. Elder Gay said something cool. He talked about the problem of being too BUSY! Then went on to explain that being busy simply means Being Under Satan's Yoke. Think about that!!! :)

We survived the week through all the chaos. This week will be our first week in about the last 6 weeks where we will be in our area every day! I am excited.
Thanks for the Christmas songs Andy.

Congrats on the new baby Kathryn!!
Also that's awesome that you were able to finally get a moose dad. Hopefully there will still be some left in 5 months :)
Happy Anniversary mom and dad last week!
Happy birthday Jacob. 13 years old.

Have a great week all. Enjoy preparing for Christmas.

Elder LeCheminafrica

New Transfer, Same Place

Today was the beginning of another transfer. The AP's called us in the morning to give us the news. Elder Mkutswana and I will be staying here in Iganga again. This will be my 5th transfer here and my 3rd with Mkutswana. I guess Heavenly Father wants me here. I was used to not staying in areas for long periods of time.

The week was a super busy week. We almost didn't have time to work in our area but somehow managed to see most of the people. On Wednesday we had our Zone Meeting to report about the things we talked about at MLC. It was a really good meeting and everyone learned a lot. After the meeting Elder Mkutswana and I went to visit with Elder and Sister Squire in Jinja for a few minutes. It was nice to be in their house! It felt like home being there. Elder Squire is the person in charge of all of the vehicles in the mission. I wanted to know how far I have driven since I came here in July. So we looked at the mileage records. So far I have driven about 1500 kilometers in the last 5 months. I know that probably means nothing to any of you but it can be one of your fun facts or be a part of your "gee whiz" collection. Haha

After that we went and did exchanges in Mpumudde. It was a great day. I worked with Elder Oliphant and Halladay. We then stayed the night there. In the morning before we left to come back to Iganga, Elder Halladay cut my hair. He has a whole hair cutting set that I am hopefully inheriting from him. He goes home this week!

The rest of the week is kinda a blur. It happened so fast that I don't really know anything important to say about those days, but Sunday was awesome! Church was a great experience as usual. During fast/testimony meeting they had each of the full time missionaries bear their testimonies in case they would be transferred; so the four of us got to bear our testimonies. It was a good experience for me. I haven't done it for a long time in Sacrament Meeting because I usually leave the time for the members to share their testimonies. But it was a good experience and I felt the spirit as I was standing there speaking to the Branch. It helped to give a bit more strength to my testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. We again had a ton of investigators;  we had 15 investigators at church and the four that were baptized last week were confirmed. Another great achievement is that attendance reached 100!! When I got here back in June/July the average attendance was high 70's. Yesterday we broke 100 and we are expecting it to grow even more in the coming weeks. Another thing I enjoyed is that we started singing the Christmas hymns at church. It was an enjoyable experience for me to even play those hymns on the keyboard. I love the Christmas hymns!!!!

That reminds me, I am desperately in need of good Christmas music. If you have any I would love it if you could send it to me. I think a good way is through the email. Just upload the songs on the email and I will download them here. I want them asap. thanks :)

Today for Pday we had an activity with the Branch. We had a soccer match between the Iganga Branch and the missionaries. We had the whole Zone come to make a full team. We went to a school near the church that has a nice football pitch(soccer field). We played a full game of 90 minutes and the final score was 7-7. I thought it was good to end in a draw because then no one can give fire to the other team for them losing or winning. So it turned out good. I have a nice sunburn coming. In the morning I will feel it!

As it draws nearer to Christmas don't forget to 'SHARE THE GIFT.' This is a perfect time of year to share about Jesus Christ with EVERYONE you come in contact with. He truly did come to the earth. God loved us soo much that he gave his son to be sacrificed and to suffer for the rest of us. If Heavenly Father loved us enough to share his son with us, then we should have no problem sharing Him with everyone else. HE IS THE GIFT, DISCOVER THE GIFT, EMBRACE THE GIFT, SHARE THE GIFT.

Elder LeCheminant - UKM, "The Mission of Missions"

Lots of Service Makes for a Great Week!

Well this was a pretty awesome week! We only had 6 lessons the whole week because we were doing soo many different things.

Tuesday and Wednesday we spent finishing up the lessons for Fred and his two daughters Linette and Christine and also Aminsi who is the youngest son to Florence.
Tuesday morning we did service for the mother to Fred. She is an old women who has a huge garden and needed help becuase she has been having a lot of back pain. So we helped in the garden on Tuesday morning. We had a good time there. Then the amazing thing is that the grandma gave us a huge chicken afterwards to take home and eat! We were really happy about that. So Wednesday morning we killed the chicken and cooked it in the crock pot for several hours with some soup mix. It was sooooo delicious!!!

Wednesday we spent a lot of time as well teaching those preparing for baptism.
Thursday morning we did service in the garden for Florence. Afterwards she fed us sweet potatoes with some kind of really good sauce. I spent the afternoon with Elder Mayeya, our District Leader, because he was interviewing our 4 investigators to be baptized on Sunday. During the interview of Aminsi, Florence was making something called "insenene." That is basically grasshoppers, with the wings and legs pulled off, and then cooked in a frying pan. I took a sweet pic of them that I will send next week. The insenene (grasshoppers) taste soo good. They taste kinda like bacon. I encourage everyone to try it. They are delicious! :)

We left for Kampala on Thursday night around 7:00 pm. We drove together in a line with the ZL's from Mbale and from Jinja. For some reason I ended up being the lead out of the three vehicles. It was dark and driving on the roads in Uganda at night is nice because there is less traffic but it is dark so pretty scary at times. There was one time were there was a big truck just sitting in the road and there was no lights or anything to warn that it was there. Because it was dark, I didn't see it until about 2 seconds away. Luckily I saw it and swerved out of the way just in time to miss the truck. If i didn't swerve I would have run right into the back and probably wouldn't be here typing this email right now. Then another time we were behind a slow truck and as I was overtaking him the road ahead was completely dark so I assumed it was safe to pass. As I started overtaking, the road unexpectedly curved and a car was coming!!! Since I was halfway I decided to just finish the pass and barely barely barely squeezed in just in time. It was a little too close for comfort. We arrived in Kampala safely around 10:00 pm. Friday morning we went to the mission office to do some shtuff then to the distribution center. At 1:00 we were at the mission home for MLC to start at 1:30. MLC was awesome!! We had all of the zone leaders in the mission there this time. So the far away ones didn't have to Skype again. There was a few changes made in the mission. One thing we talked about is that as the second coming of Jesus Christ draws nearer, the world is becoming increasingly more wicked and evil. So in response, the requirements for becoming a member of the Church of Jesus Christ are becoming a bit more difficult. There are new rules regarding polygamy and Muslims which are both common here in Uganda. After MLC we went to eat at the Protea again. The food was way to fancy and delicious.

On Saturday we spent the morning going to Shoprite and then getting the truck serviced. While the truck was being serviced we ate at a restaurant called Cafe Javas. It was really good. I had a huge hamburger that was too big to fit my mouth over, and it was way to expensive as well, but I was willing to make the sacrifice. :) We made it back to Iganga at around 4:30. I was way too exhausted. The long driving for two days just wiped me out, but I survived and did my best to stay awake.
Sunday was pretty awesome as well. During church one of the recent converts, and prospective missionary, gave a talk in sacrament meeting. He was baptized this year in February but gave a talk like a General Authority. It was powerful! Then during the next two block meetings my companion and I spent the time filling the baptism font with buckets. I think It took over 250 buckets. I tried counting but then lost track because it was soo many. One cool thing about Sacrament meeting is that we had 18 investigators at church. That was really exciting. I have never had that many before. After church we had the baptism of those four that I mentioned before. It was a great baptism service.

Overall this week has been a great week. Even November was an amazing month. This past month I have learned a ton of things a grew in more ways than I can even count. I feel that I am a completely different missionary now than what I was in October and the months before. I am now starting my last 6 months of mission. This is the time for me to be able to do as much good as I possibly can while I am still here. I feel that November has prepared me for the next 6 months and even the next several years of my life. This December we are participating in the event the church is doing about spreading the Gift of Jesus Christ. We will be carrying around laminated papers that basically show the "Share the Gift" message. It is a way that we will be using to find new investigators throughout this Christmas season. I am excited for Christmas this year. It will be a memorable one for all of us as we remember the coming of our Savior to the World. He really did come to the world. It is the greatest gift that God has given to the entire human family. He is the gift. Share the gift.

Elder LeCheminant  

Personal Improvement and General Conference

Well this was just another week of good, solid work. We spent a lot of time teaching many new investigators. We have tons of investigators preparing for baptism in the coming weeks. Next week we should have 3 or 4 baptisms and in December we will have many as well.

There were two really memorable moments this week. On Friday we were working with one of the AP's, Elder Wright, from Nephi, UT. He is in my group that came so we are like mission brothers. Anyways, we had a great day with him. We both learned a lot from him and his example throughout the day. There was one thing that he helped us with; he gave us advice that when we are doing our planning for the next day after we come home, to plan what we will be studying in personal and companion study the next morning. I know it seems like common sense but no one has ever suggested it to me. Well, we tried it out and it works really well! I feel kinda dumb because I have never done it before but its ok, life is about growing and improving :). So if anyone is struggling with studies. Try planning out exactly what you will be studying the day before so you can be organized and so the spirit can assist you.

The second wonderful experience is that we finally got to watch General Conference!! All of the Branches in the Jinja District watched conference this past weekend. On my side it was a powerful spiritual experience. I learned soo many things about myself and things that I can improve on in my life. Sister Chatfield gave us some advice to help make conference a good experience. She recommended that we come up with 3 or 4 personal questions that we are looking for answers to, then throughout the conference sessions look for the answers to your questions. For me it was amazing! I found at least one answer in every talk that was given and there were several talks that completely focused on my questions. It was pretty cool! My companion also had some personal questions that were very different from mine and he had the same experience. It's amazing what the spirit can teach you sometimes. So I recommend that this coming April when we have conference again that everyone does the same thing. There were too many talks that were really good so I won't point out any.

There was one main thing that I learned. It is that we need to take responsibility for the situation we are in, we can't blame others and point fingers, but we can ask ourselves what we can personally do to help the situation. Just pointing fingers at others doesn't help anything, it just causes feelings of anger. Whatever situation we are in, we can personally do something to help out! Elder Mkutswana and I have been applying that in everything we have been doing to help our zone with certain issues. It really does work and life becomes much more enjoyable.

That's all for this week.

¡Espero que tengas una semana buena!

Elder LeCheminant

Lots of Growing Experiences!

So this week was just a good week with a lot of learning and growing experiences.

On wednesday we had our Zone Meeting. It was an awesome meeting and we had some good discussions. One major topic that we discussed was building unity in the zone. Everyone in the zone participated and was actively involved in the discussion. That was nice because then it wasn't just me and Elder Mkutswana standing and talking the whole time. We also made a cool program for the meeting. I will attach the program so you can see our creativity skills!

We spent each day teaching a lot of the people we found last week. We have soo many awesome people that are now progressing towards baptism. Currently we are planning 5 baptisms on the 30th of Nov which is super exciting.

We have been teaching the family of Kenneth and Betty. They are school teachers and are the ones who walked into the church last week. They are soo eager to learn the gospel that sometimes they want to learn everything all at once, which is impossible. It is kinda a problem but it is a good problem. They are a fun family to teach.

On Saturday we did exchanges in Bugembe. I worked with Elders Allred and Erau. Elder Erau is a Ugandan and he is among the group of missionaries who came from Sierra Leone when that mission was closed from the Ebola stuff. When the Sierra Leone and Liberia missions were closed all of the missionaries went back to their own countries. Elder Erau is awesome! He was fun to work with and we had a good day working there in Bugembe.

Church yesterday was awesome!!!!! At the beginning we thought there would be no one there. Then during the course of Sacrament Meeting there ended up being 95 people, which is more than the number of chairs we had! So we were scrambling around trying to find more chairs. We ended up with 10 investigators and also there were a few new people that just showed up for the first time that we now have to teach. Yay!!!!

Today we did a combined zone activity with Jinja Zone. We went to a place called 'The Source Of The Nile'. It is a small park that is at the place were the River Nile begins from Lake Victoria. It starts from Lake Victoria in Jinja, then travels 4000 miles going through Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt where it reaches the Mediterranean Sea. So that was pretty cool!!! It was a nice touristy place. There were also a ton of tour boats there and even some nice boats for playing. That made me miss home a ton!! Just being next to water and seeing boats everywhere. They also had a reptile park that had some snakes and turtles and crocodiles, so we went there to look around. As we were walking around we found two donkeys sitting there! We took advantage of the donkeys and would go and sit on them and take pictures. Then as me and Elder Halladay were sitting on them we started to race. Haha it was soo fun! Today I raced a donkey. That's something I will probably never do again.

Congrats Sarah for 3rd place in State Volleyball.

I am tired and hungry. So that is all my brain can handle for now. I love you all!!
Quote from President Chatfield, "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut." (said with his thick southern states/Utah/cowboy accent and while talking about finding new investigators. But you can apply to any situation)

Elder LeCheminafrica

Milking Cows and Riding Goats

This was a fantastic week full of many wonderful spiritual experiences. Because of time I will just tell you about two cool things that happened.

First of all last week Elder Ellis from the ASEA (Africa South East Area) Presidency came to do a mission tour. So we had a combined zone conference with Jinja Zone on Tuesday with Elder Ellis. It was really cool and we learned tons of things.



Another awesome experience happened Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday we had a full schedule of appointments for the day, after lunch all but one of those appointments fell through. We were suddenly left with nothing to do. We were at the church when this happened, so we sat down to go through our back up plans and redo the schedule for the rest of day. Then suddenly a guy walks into the church and it was obvious that he was really confused about the whole church and what was going on, so we went to talk to him. His name is Kenneth. As we were talking to him he said he was just in town doing some things and then saw the church. He said he had never seen it before so decided to come and check it out. That was precisely the time that all our appointments fell through and we were at the church. So we continued talking to him and ended up doing a tour of the church. Then his wife and two kids walked in as well; they seemed really interested and promised to come to church on Sunday. Then Sunday came around and they actually showed up!!! They stayed for all three meetings and enjoyed the whole experience. In the evening we went to their house to visit them. After a small discussion and then answering a ton of questions about church they started telling us that they had been going around from church to church for a long time and had recognized apostasy in each of the churches they visited. So they were kinda starting to give up going to church; but now they say they really enjoyed the way we do things and they promised to come again. This family was awesome!!! They are sincere, honest, seekers of the truth. Its almost like the story of Joseph Smith!

This week we were blessed in many ways. On Sunday we had 10 investigators at church and most of them were from two families. We received 11 referrals this week as well. The work is moving forward here in Iganga. Its just fantastic.

Also there was a day we did service for the Elders Quorum President again. We milked his cows and then cleaned up the animal poop, then we played with one of his goats! It is a fun goat with a funny personality. We were just messing around with it and pushing it around and I got the idea to sit on top of it! I know it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. But I "rode" the goat for a few seconds. It was a lot of fun!





My mind is tired and I cant think of anything else. Have a fantasmic week! I love you all.

Elder LeCheminafrica

"The Worst Best Man Ever"

Another week of ups and downs. Literally driving up and down all over the place! :)

Tuesday we did some service for our Elders Quorum President. We went out to his house and helped clean up the area where he keeps his animals. Then we MILKED HIS COWS. It was soo much fun! I had never milked a cow before so I took advantage of this opportunity. After milking the cows we took them out to a place on his property where he lets them graze. It was soo beautiful. We were sitting in a big section of scattered pine trees and the cows were just wandering around eating the grass. It was sooo incredibly peaceful and beautiful. I think we are going to go there regularly now.

Then Wednesday we had to help with the transfers. This transfer all the zone leaders did the transfers. In the past it has been the senior couples doing the driving but this time it was us. So we were driving all morning and we didn't get back to Iganga until the afternoon sometime.
Thursday in the morning we finished the Home Teaching lists with the Elders Quorum Presidency. Then after lunch I took Elder Mayeya, our DL, to do our baptism interviews. He interviewed Joy, James, and Victoria. With traveling and other things we didn't end up getting back until around 8:00. So we spent the rest of the night visiting a family in the Branch and playing card tricks with them. Oh yea that reminds me, my comp and I have started doing card tricks when we visit people. Its a great way to break the ice or to finish off a visit. So if anyone has any good card tricks I would love it if you could tell me them! :)

Friday we left to Kampala for MLC. We left at around 7:15. Then, after stopping at everyone in the zone, we reached Kampala at around 11:00. We stopped at the Mission Office to get some supplies, then we went to the South African Embassy because my companion wanted to inquire about getting a replacement for his driving licence that he lost a few months ago. The part of Kampala that the embassy was in was waayyy to nice! We didnt feel like we were in Uganda anymore. It was a cool experience going to the SA Embassy. Then we went to a shopping mall to try to find an American football. We wanted to start playing flag football on Mondays when we are in Jinja, but the store we went to didn't have any. Then we went to the distribution center and then to the Mission Home for MLC. The meeting was fantastic!!!! I saw Elder Buyers for the first time in about a year. He is now a zone leader in Mukono. After MLC we went out to eat at a Chinese Restaurant. It was really good chinese food except that it was waaayyy to spicy. There was a point were I was almost crying for about 20 minutes because it was so spicy.

The drive back on Saturday morning was fantastic! It took us about an hour less to get to Jinja than it normally does. There was almost no traffic. We rushed back to Iganga to attend the traditional wedding of the couple who served in Kenya. If you remember we were with them several weeks ago when the guy came back from Utah. The ceremony was pretty cool. It was a great way to experience another aspect of Uganda's culture. We wore some traditional clothing as well. The traditional clothing for men is a Kanzu. It is like a white dress with some little designs in it and you wear it with a suit coat. It is so hard to walk around in a dress! I don't know how women do it. Anyways, the women wear a traditional dress called a gomesi. It has pointed shoulders and is made of very colorful fabric. It can be made out of almost any color. The picture is of me and my companion and Sister from the Branch.



 After the traditional part, the church took over to do the formal wedding. Shaun wore his Marines uniform which was pretty cool. Then literally 2 minutes before that part started they called me up to be the best man because the one who was supposed to be there didn't show up. Since I was the only other white person they assumed I was his brother so they made me be the best man. I seriously had no idea what to do! So I just stood there to look good in the pictures. I was probably the worst best man ever. It was kinda a cool experience though.





Sunday we had the baptism of Joy and her two kids. It was awesome! We had the primary participate in the whole service because the two kids are in the primary.



Thanks for the hunting pics dad! They make me happy.
Mom I just remembered. When we were in Kampala we met an Elder called Elder Ruell. He is from Manti UT and knows the Cooks and the Schiesses. Just something cool for you. You can let then know or something. :)



That's all that my brain can handle for now. Enjoy the pictures. This week a member of the ASEA Presidency called Elder Ellis is touring the mission. So I will tell you about that next week.

Elder LeCheminafrica

Transfer #13

We survived the last week of the transfer. Throughout the week we spent a ton of time with the families of Joy and Dorothy. We saw them every day in order to finish up all the preparation for their baptisms. So that was the big thing that happened for the week. On Friday we were filling out their baptism records so they could have the interviews on Saturday. Everything was perfect for Florence and her two sons Denis and Godfrey. Then when we went to Joy we ran into a problem. We realized that we had forgotten to get a marriage certificate for Joy. In order to baptize someone who is married we have to have a copy of their certificate for proof that they are married. So Joy didn't have her certificate with her and she needs to go to her parents house to get it, so we had to push her baptism to next Sunday. In the picture Joy is the mama who is not wearing white. We are also going to baptize her two eight year old twins called Victoria and James. 

On Wednesday we had a cool experience. We were teaching an investigator called Dorothy. She has been an investigator for about a year now. Well she started coming to church a couple weeks ago and on Wednesday she just asked us randomly what the requirements are for her to get baptized. Then she expressed the desire to get baptized. She said that the things my companion and I had taught her had helped her to finally make the decision. It was pretty cool! I was super happy afterwards. 

Church on Sunday was great. They didn't tell me what the Hymns were until like 2 minutes before Sacrament Meeting was supposed to start. So I only had about 1 minute to practice before the meeting started. The opening hymn was 318 which is really difficult to play on the spot!! It was a rough plunking of the keyboard throughout the whole hymn. I just had to endure my best plunking. Eventually the song ended and I could relax! Haha its a good thing that nobody here knows much about music so they didn't care if I was doing a terrible job playing :) 

During the other two hours of church we were filling the baptism font but the water pressure was low so it was taking too long to fill up; so we had to bucket water. We helped in Primary for about 30 minutes and then spent the rest of church filling a bucket and pouring it into the font. Finally at 1:00 it was full. The service was great and successful. After the baptism service we had Branch Council Meeting. Elder Mkutswana and I presented the goals and plans that each auxiliary set for themselves. So now the mission plan is almost done. We are just left with printing out the goals and putting them on the walls of each classroom so everyone can see them. 

Today, Monday, was pretty boring. We received transfer news in the morning. Elder Mkutswana and I are staying together again. This will be my 4th transfer in Iganga. Yay!! The Branch received the General Conference dvds yesterday but they aren't planning on watching them until the end of November. Well, we didn't want to wait that long so we borrowed the dvds so we could watch them at our house. After cleaning the house we watched the first session. It was pretty awesome. All of the talks were powerful talks. I also baked a chocolate cake while we were watching. It was delicious! 

Congrats to Diane for getting married!!! 

My mind is now having a stupor of thought so I guess that means my email is complete for today. :) Have a great week all. The gospel is kitufu (true).

Elder LeCheminafrica

Preparing Investigators and Teaching Primary

Soo I am sorry for not emailing yesterday. We only had a few minutes at the computer and then a huge storm came in that lasted until late at night. So naturally the power was out. Now we are here today!

The week was crazy and hectic as usual. We spent a lot of time throughout the week teaching the families of Florence and Joy. They are two moms that randomly showed up at church at the beginning of September. We have been teaching each of them and their families. We are preparing Joy and two 8 yr old twins called Victoria and James, and Florence and two sons called Denis and Godfrey for baptism next Sunday. Its crazy and hectic mostly because the only ones that know English out of all them are Denis and Godfrey. So its tough to teach lessons because we have to be translated and some of the members we work with aren't the best at translating. We are working with them though to help them learn better ways to translate for us.

Me and my comp eating some delicious pilau.

On Wednesday we did exchanges. First of all we went to the District Meetings for Bugembe and Mpumudde. I attended the DDM for Bugembe and Elder Mkutswana attended the DDM for Mpumudde. It was a great way to see how they are all doing. Then after the DDMs we did exchanges in Mpumudde. I worked with Elder Hamlett and Elder Sisa. Elder Sisa is one of my MTC brothers and he is the funniest guy. We had a good day working with them. Then we stayed the night in Mpumudde and drove back to Iganga in the morning.

A photo of our district

The rest of the week we spent a lot of time teaching Florence and Joy and then helping many of the leaders in the Branch. We met with a few of the auxiliaries to start putting together the Branch Mission Plan. The meetings were very productive and we got a good start. This week we will be meeting with a few other auxiliaries to finish up the Plan.

Church on Sunday was pretty great. Elder Mkutswana and I were asked to help in the Primary because they are very short on leaders/teachers. We were in there for the whole two hours of Primary. Elder Mkutswana did some singing with the kids. He did songs like "Do as I'm doing" and "Families can be Together Forever." Then I was with teaching the kids about how the Book Of Mormon teaches us about Jesus Christ. They gave me the lesson book during the time that my companion was doing the songs. So I had literally 2 minutes to prepare a lesson for the children, but I taught them! I'm not sure how many of them actually understood what was going on though..... :)

During the week we also made zone t-shirts. I wanted to do something unique so we came up with the idea of rather than just doing t-shirts, we made soccer uniforms. They are pretty sweet!!! I will attach a picture of us. We look like a legit soccer team. Yesterday for Pday we were in Jinja at Walukuba to play games with all the missionaries. We played touch Rugby for a while. That was fun. Rugby is a cool sport!

Our zone soccer team!  :)

Congrats Annelise for the new baby! Its cool to have a new cousin.

Enjoy the week. A quote for the week. This is from one of the missionaries here. He said "Life is like a straw. Only you can make it suck."

Elder LeChimant

A Busy Week is a Good One!

So this week was pretty dang awesome. We were just super busy all the time. We have been working very close with the Branch; especially the Branch President. We have been working with him a lot and giving him advice about better ways to do things. We council together about how to help the Branch continue to progress. Its pretty awesome!

Tuesday I had a funny. So for about a week my left ear became almost deaf. It got clogged and for several days I was half deaf. So I called the mission nurse and she told me to buy these ear drops so I have been using those and it has helped. Anyways, on Tuesday I was still halfway deaf. The funny is that there were a few times where I heard things differently than how the person actually said it. We were in a lesson and the family was introducing some kids that came and joined us. A little boy said his name was Dominic, but I heard Abednigo. Haha I have no Idea how my brain got Abednigo out of Dominic,but that was funny and we had a good laugh for a while. Then at night we were teaching a friend to Sister Loy. Her friend is called Regina. Regina doesn't really know English so Loy was translating for her. Regina had a question/concern and said that sometimes when she is sinning she has feelings that she needs to stop but then she doesn't know how to stop sinning and wanted some help with that. WELL, my brain heard "singing" instead of "sinning". Hahahaha so in my mind I was really confused about the question and how I was going to answer it. So I started answering by saying that there is nothing wrong with singing. Then my companion told me that they said sinning, not singing. Holy cow we laughed for like ten minutes!!! I still laugh at myself for that. Now my ear is doing better. I can mostly hear out of it. :)

Wednesday we had our ZDM. It was pretty awesome! Elder Mkutswana and I created a nice program for it on the computer and everyone in the zone participated.

Saturday night we went out to President Ciprians house for dinner! It was the first time for Elder Mkutswana. The food was great and the chicken was fantastic. We asked them to prepare the food before we got there so we could save time. But next time we will be preparing the chicken ourselves!!!!

Church was awesome yesterday. During Branch Council Meeting we presented our plans to start organizing a Branch Mission Plan. It is something that is talked a lot about in Ch 13 of Preach My Gospel and in the Handbook of Instructions. The leaders in the meeting were all ready and excited to start having a mission plan. SO that is something we will be working on a lot this coming week.

Its pretty exciting about all the missionaries going out from home and all the missionary work going on there. Keep it up everyone :) Congrats on the baptism last week

Just a quote from President Chatfield that is fantastic. He said, "Some will, some won't, so what, someone's waiting!" That can be applied in so many different aspects of life.

Have a fantabulous week and I hope everyone is productive in everything you do/ Until next week,

Elder Dulce de LeChe

Another Hectic Week

Hey guys

Another hectic week! We didn't really get much time to seriously work in our area due to a lot of different things.

Tuesday we stayed in Bugembe all day. The Elders were moving to a new house so since we have a vehicle we got to help them move. We started at around 8:00 in the morning and finished around 2:00 and we were all super exhausted. Their old house was a mess! Its amazing what missionaries can do to a house!!! But their new house is super nice; it was just finished being built two weeks ago. We stayed the night again in Bugembe.

On Wednesday we had a combined ZDM with Jinja Zone, it was also attended by President Chatfield and the AP's. It was all an open discussion led by the AP's. Each District from both zones presented a topic to discuss about. The topics were things that each District was struggling with. It was great to get help from all of the missionaries. We all learned a lot. President Chatfield gave some closing remarks about obedience, he talked about D&C 82:10 where it says that the Lord is bound when we obey but when we disobey He has every right to not give us blessings. Then President gave us a challenge to "Bind the Lord!" Haha it was pretty awesome. Through obedience we can bind the Lord and receive blessings. It's kinda an exciting thing to think about.

Tuesday morning we spent some time at the church helping the Branch President. My companion and I offered to help make some little cards that explain how to do all the Priesthood Ordinances. We spent a few hours using my great computer skills (not) to make the whole thing. Then we printed, cut, and laminated them. It was pretty fun. The Branch President was really happy with us for doing that for him. He is going to give one to each of the priesthood member in the Branch.

Saturday we spent a long time finishing up preparing David for his baptism interview. We realized on Friday that we didn't have any document or certificate that proves he was married to his wife, so Saturday morning we spent a long time with them going to his wife's village to meet her mother and get a written letter stating they were married. Since I failed to take care of it a long time ago we got to be stressed over it on Saturday, but we eventually got it all figured out and got him interviewed.



Sunday was awesome. We had two sister missionaries come to church with us. sister Ang'ila and sister Kunene. They work in Jinja but the Branch Pres requested they come to church so they can interact with the members and get the Young Women excited about missionary work. There has been a lot of discouragement and problems among the young women who are preparing for mission. It was soooo awesome to have the sisters there! They brought a special spirit with them and the members loved them; I realized that Elders are extremely boring compared to Sisters. After church we had the baptism of David. It was awesome and his wife was able to come as well. They were both super happy. We rushed home to get something to eat then we had to take the sisters back to Jinja. On the way back we played a trick on the Elders in bugembe. Since we helped them move on Tuesday we kinda kept one of the keys to their house. :) So on the way back to Iganga we stopped at their house and rearranged all the furniture. Then when they came home at 9:30 they called us freaked out saying that someone broke into their house and so on. My companion and I just kinda played along then eventually told them it was us. Haha then they laughed and were ok with it. It was pretty funny!!!!

 

 Mom, sorry I forgot to tell you last week. I got my package when we went to Kampala. I am addicted to goldfish! I accidentally finished the whole package in about 5 minutes. They are way too good!! The pork jerky and cookie butter is also amazing. I am trying to not eat them too fast. Its really hard to take it a little at a time. The CTR rings were there as well.

I can't believe Conference already happened! This is my third conference on mission. Next time we have general conference I will be packing my bags!!! hahahahahaha
The sad part is that we have wait for another month until they send the DVDs to the branches so we can watch it. I tried downloading a session but it would have taken about a day to download.

So I was just spending some time on Familysearch.org and I was trying to find some more info about Great Grandpa Lecheminant (Wilford Davis LeCheminant). There was one mention of him going to a South African reunion in SLC. I am dying to find out more about his mission to South Africa. I would love it if you can maybe dig up some cool stories from his mission and information about it so my mind can be at ease. If you can't then I guess I can wait until I come home, but its killing me right now :) thanks!!!

That's all for now. Have a great week everyone!

Elder LeCheminant -Senior

Potential Concussion

Howdy do

SO today I forgot my planner again and my head hurts really really bad. We were playing capture the flag in Jinja today with Jinja Zone and I was running backwards to get away from someone and I was going too fast and they tagged me and then I fell and hit the back of my head really hard on the ground. For a few minutes I couldn't focus out of my left eye, but its okay now so DON'T worry! Haha, my head just hurts really bad. I took some ibuprofen but it didn't really do much. Anyways, because of all that I kinda don't want to take much time today for emailing. Sorry Bambi! (Bambi is a word here that kinda is an expression of feeling sorry for someone.)

We spent the whole week kinda reorganizing the way we work each day. Elder Mkutswana and I want to do things a lot different than how they have been done in the past. So each day we struggled to get lessons, we were bounced a lot!

We spent a lot of time working with David. David is an awesome investigator who was super prepared for the gospel. He lives about a 15 minute drive into a village. He was originally taught by Elder Latola before I got here to Iganga. We taught him for a couple weeks then we dropped him. A couple weeks ago he came back; now he is even more prepared. For the two months we weren't teaching him he was reading the pamphlets and the Book Of Mormon. He knows everything perfectly now. He has to ride a bicycle for about 30 minutes to come to church. Surprisingly, yesterday at church he showed up with his wife! It was awesome! We are preparing him to be baptized next Sunday.

We had MLC on Friday, so we left for Kampala early. The meeting was fantastic! Afterwards they took us to a super nice hotel called the Protea for dinner. It was sooooo goood and way too fancy. Saturday morning we went to a guy in Kampala who makes plaques out of Ebony wood. I just wanted to see where the guy is so I will probably spend some money next month when we are there :)

Yesterday for church we had Branch Conference. Many District Auxiliary Leaders were there and Sacrament attendance was huge!!! We had 109 in attendance. Since I have been here it has been around 85 so that was awesome. We also said goodbye to the Caspersons; they are the senior couple that is over the Jinja District and they are going home this week. They will be replaced by Elder and Sister Squire who are from Layton, UT. They are awesome!!!!! Elder Squire completely reminds me of Mike Owens, same walk and everything. Its pretty cool :). They have been here in Uganda for about 6 months and Sister Squire was the mission nurse but we are getting a new doctor couple to replace them. The new couple is from somewhere around Provo or Orem and President Chatfield says he is the best OBGYN in Utah or something. We will see when they get here.

Dad I can't believe you actually bought a tractor!

The deal with the terrorists has kinda settled down. We go home at 9:00 now as normal so that is nice. It is really hard to always be coming home early.

That's all for now. I love you all.
Elder LeCheminant

New Companion!

Well this week was a MESS!!! It was a crazy transfer week. Tuesday we spent all day going around so Elder Latola could say goodbye to people. In the morning we went out to Ciprians house again. It was fun and we ate nice food :).

Wednesday around 12:00 Elder Latola was picked up by the AP's. They were driving to Busia and then to Mbale. In Mbale they dropped him and picked up Elder Mkutswana and dropped him here in Iganga on their way back to Kampala. Then we were in a three-some because Elder Thomo's new companion wasn't even in Uganda yet. Thursday we did our best to work in both areas to visit a few people but it was difficult.

Friday Elder Mkutswana and I did our weekly planning. We were still in a three-some and we went and visited a couple people then had to go to Bugembe to do a baptism interview. We didn't get back until after 7:00. We have to be home at 8:00 for security reasons so we weren't able to do much when we came back.

Saturday morning we spent some time at the church with some members there. Then we taught a lesson at 2:00. We were supposed to be in Jinja at 3:30 to pick up the new missionary. The AP's didn't arrive until about 4:30 so we were playing volleyball at the church with some members while waiting. The new guy is Elder Chinunda and  he is from Tanzania. He was serving in Zambia for the last transfer because of visa problems. Uganda has been getting crazy with visas. USA and South Africa are not letting Ugandans into their countries, so Uganda is in turn not letting people come in. So we have been adopting a lot of new missionaries from other missions because they couldn't come to Uganda when they were supposed to.

Elder Mkutswana is the best. We get along very well together and have too much fun. He is a great guy. I am excited to work with him.

I miss the winter! and mountains.

Oh yea I just remembered something that happened!!! So we have a new returned Sister Missionary, of like 2 months, in the Branch. Her name is Helen and she served in the Kenya Nairobi Mission. Well, on mission there was an Elder from Utah who she got to know and last Wednesday he showed up here in Uganda!! They are planning to get married sometime soon. Yesterday they went to Helen's village to meet her family. They invited us to come along, so we went with them and several members of the Branch to spend the evening at her village. There was a meeting where we sat there and someone was introducing all of her relatives to us. It was pretty fun and kind of a cool experience. His parents are coming at the end of October to meet her family as well and then they will do a traditional wedding here. They also requested that we are there for that as well. So its pretty exciting. .





So the picture with the chickens is from Ciprian's house on Tuesday.  Then the other two are from our gathering yesterday.



This is me and Elder Jimu. He finished his mission last week and is now home. He is the first of my companions to go home!!!!!!! It was too weird.



Also our baptism we had last week of peter. We did the picture together with the other elders to make it go faster.



Have a great week everyone. You are the best.
Elder LeCheminant senior

Transfer #12

So I will just dive right into it this week.

Tuesday was a great day. We met with Peter to finish teaching him the commandments from Lesson 4. He is doing great. Then we met another guy called Robert. He is an investigator that is still in the stage of promising but not yet progressing.  In the evening we taught Ibrahim about the Book Of Mormon. He is a funny guy but remembers everything about the Restoration and is excited about the Book Of Mormon. Then we finished the day by teaching Collins(recently baptized). We talked about the atonement with him and then left an assignment to study more about the atonement and be ready to teach us next time.

Wednesday we went with our RS president, Aida, to a family she wanted us to teach. The husband is a fellow teacher at a school that Aida works with. His name is Fred and his wife is Tabitha. They are awesome!!! They were so humble and willing to listen to us. They were good "students" as well and listened and learned from everything we taught. It was nice. They stay a bit far in the village though so it will be a challenge for them to come to church regularly, but they are awesome! We finished the day teaching Ibrahim again about the Plan Of Salvation. He loved it and was even starting to explain some things to himself.

Thursday morning we met with the Elder's Quorum President and helped him some more with reorganizing the home teaching. We met with Peter and reviewed the interview questions for his final preparation for baptism. Then at around 5:00 we went out to President Ciprian's house! When we got there we killed two chickens and they prepared dinner for us. While we were waiting for the food we participated in what has now become a tradition in Iganga. I planted a tree!! The missionaries before me started a tradition of planting a fruit tree at Ciprians house. So I planted a mango tree!! In 20 years when I come back (hahaha) I will tell everyone that that mango tree is mine!! So that was cool. After that we played UNO, Then we ate. :)

Friday we met some more families. Last week on Sunday there were these two mamas that came to church. So we planned to go and visit them on Friday and took the Branch president with us. It was in a small village about a 7 minute drive from town. We met the first mama called Florence and her family. They were awesome and are listened to us as we introduced the Restoration. Then after that we went to the other mama called Joy. It was interesting. We got to her house and met her husband, we were sitting there about to start introducing ourselves, then they started calling the family to come and join. It took like 5 minutes for everyone to come! There was a ton of children crammed in the doorway. The husband started talking and said that he has 17 children!!!!!!!!!! Elder Latola and I just looked at each other and just went right ahead introducing the Restoration. For them it will a bit difficult to progress towards baptism, we are suspecting that he has more than one wife because Joy could not have had 17 kids on her own. But both Florence and Joy came again to church this Sunday and they brought some kids with them as well. In the evening on Friday we saw Ibrahim again. When we sat down we noticed that the Koran was sitting on the floor under the table. Then we found out the he is Muslim. We taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he wants to be baptized but still considers himself to be Muslim. We were planning to set a baptism date for next week, but now we have to wait until he decides on Christianity or Islam. He wants to be both somehow!

On Saturday in Bugembe there was a crowning ceremony for the new king of the Busoga. The Busoga is the tribe in this part of Uganda. At the ceremony were tons of people and also President Museveni, the President of Uganda, and leaders from other tribes in Uganda. So security was super tight and people were going crazy. We were talking with the Elders there and with President Chatfield and he decided to close the District for the day. In the morning we drove to Bugembe, picked up all 4 elders, and brought them to Iganga for the day. I spent the day working with Elder Allred and my comp worked with his comp.

Sunday was also great. Church was nice and we had the baptism of Peter. After church we went to a village in Bugiri District to a guy called Joshua. We last saw him about a month ago.  During the lesson a huge storm came;  it was super windy and pouring cats and dogs. The roof of his house is just iron sheets so when the cats and dogs hit the iron sheets it gets really really loud! We were doing our best to speak over the noise but it was really difficult. Then There came a point when Elder Latola was teaching and a thought popped into my head that I should pray. So I said a prayer asking God to reduce the rain until we finished the lesson so we would be able to hear ourselves, then after waiting a minute the rain only increased and it got louder! So I said another prayer pleading with God to let us be able to finish the lesson and within a minute the main part of the storm passed over and the rain went to a drizzle. :) So it was just a cool experience for me to see Heavenly Father answer my prayer like that! Its something that I will always remember.

Yes there was attempted terrorist stuff in Kampala this week. Since Saturday we have had to come home by 8:00pm. The AP's said today that things are still going on so we still have to go home at 8:00 until further notice. So yay for that.

Oh yea!! Haha today we got our transfer news. Elder Latola is going to Mbale. My next comp is Elder Mkutswana. He is coming from Mbale. So he and Latola are just swapping. We are ZL's together. Elder Mkutswana was in Entebbe the same time that I was so I already know him. He is a cool guy. He comes from South Africa. Today I started transfer #12!!!!!!!!!

So there's what happened with me this week. I love you all. The church is true!
Elder LeCheminant senior

Sending Roaches to the Spirit World

So I spent a long time replying to others. So now I don't have much time left. Sorry!

Wednesday we had ZDM. I gave a training about the area book and using it effectively. It was great training and I even learned some new ways to use the area book while I was training the other Elders. Thursday we did exchanges with the other companionship in our district. I worked with Elder Mfolwe. We had a great day and taught some good lessons.

Friday evening we went to see Patience, Praise, and Tony - the three people we baptized last week. We said goodbye to them and they went back to school on Sunday. It was sad to say goodbye. Those kids were the best! I could stay at their house all day. We then went home, got our stuff, and drove to Bugembe. We arrived there at around 9:30. The drive was not fun. The road was full of big trucks driving slow. Driving at night here is so painful. We stayed the night there and then worked with them on Saturday. I worked with Elders Mayeya and Rindrafifaliana. Elder Mayeye is from Malawi and Rindrafifaliana is from Madagascar. They are awesome elders and we had a fun day together. We went to their coordination meeting with them in the morning and then worked. In the evening on Saturdays they have a Preach My Gospel class. They invite all members to come so they can teach the members the principles in PMG so the members can better be able to do missionary work. We were with them for the first part of the class, but we had to leave at around 7:30. We went to Mpumudde to give the elders some things then drove back to Iganga. Again the drive was painful and it took us 20 more minutes to reach Iganga than it should have. We had to come back early to do some baptism interviews for Elder Thomo and Mfolwe.

Church on Sunday was awesome. Testimony meeting in Iganga Branch is always a humorous time. Many of the members just make you laugh sometimes from things they do. I love Iganga Branch. We had a lot of investigators at church as well. 4 were investigators and there were 6 other people that just came to church to see what was there! It was awesome so we will be following up with those people this week.

Today Pday kinda sucked. We spent literally all day deep cleaning the house. We were cleaning for about 6 hours!!!! It was exhausting. Now the house is clean and roach free. The kitchen was infested with roaches. It was pretty disgusting. Today we took the time to clean out all of the cabinets and spray roach killer. I think we sent at least 200 roaches to the spirit world. But I am super tired from all the cleaning. So today was not very fun but now I can enjoy our house! :)

Thanks Alan for confirming my memory of Great Great Grandpa LeCheminant. I think it would be cool if someone could find some more info/stories about his mission to South Africa and send it to me. :)

Have a great week everyone!
Love Elder LeCheminant senior

"You will probably get many confirmations that your great grandfather LeCheminant did serve in SA. He was there during WWI and spent 4 years there because all the passenger ships were being used to transport troops and supplies to the war effort. He eventually circumnavigated the globe to get home."  Alan LeCheminant

September!

Howdy do!

This week was awesome!!! We were super busy every day preparing people to be baptized. Last Sunday one of our recent converts, Loy, brought her 3 kids to church. They were home for a break in the terms at school. They all go to boarding schools like most kids in Uganda. Anyway, after church last Sunday Loy asked if it would be possible for the kids to be baptized before they go back to school. They go back on the 7th Sept., so we spent the week preparing them. We taught them every day and managed to finish all of the lessons by Thursday. We had a special baptism service on Saturday for them so they could be confirmed on Sunday.  Every night we were there. Their names are Patience, Praise, and Tony. Patience is 17, Praise is 12 and Tony is 11. They are awesome kids! They all know English perfectly and are super smart. They would spend all day reading the pamphlets and they remembered everything we taught them. We finished the lessons on Thursday,  interviews on Friday, then baptism on Saturday, and confirmation on Sunday. The kids also requested that I baptize them, so I was the baptist on Saturday. They were so excited. I forgot my camera today so I will send pics next week.

We also baptized Collins on Sunday. Elder Latola baptized him. Collins is 24 years old and he is a teller at a bank in town. He is awesome and is really excited about the gospel. He loved everything we taught him especially the Plan of Salvation. We visited him every day during the week to finish up the lessons and make sure he was ready.

Friday we went to the big city. We left to Kampala in the morning and arrived around 1:00. We went to the mission office to get some supplies for the Zone then to the distribution center. MLC started at 3:00 at the mission home. This MLC was amazing!! Last month we had the ZL's from Rwanda and Ethiopia connected on Skype. This time they added the ZL's from Gulu, Lira, and Mbale onto the skype. So the only ZL's physically there were us, Jinja, and the ones in Kampala. It was pretty awesome. The meeting was great and we learned a lot from President Chatfield. We also had a great discussion where we were able to counsel together on certain issues in the mission; it was a great experience. President Chatfield is the funniest guy ever and always has the best stories.'I could listen to him all day long and never get bored. After the meeting we had dinner at the mission home. We had local Ugandan food this time.  We slept in Ntinda for the night. In the morning we went to Shoprite!!!! That is a big grocery store similar to Carrs or Fred Meyer. It is way to nice and I felt like I was at home. Then on our way back we stopped at a service station to get our truck serviced and then we drove back to Iganga. The drive was nice and traffic wasn't really as bad as usual. Sometimes it's hard driving in traffic especially with a clutch. I always feel like I am going to destroy the clutch always going in and out, but we survived and made it back safely.

Today for P-day we played soccer as a zone. It was pretty fun. I actually played today and I didn't do to bad. My foot-ball coordination sucks but I did a lot better today than in the past. It felt good to get some good exercise. Afterwards we went to an amazing restaurant in Jinja called 'The Keep.' It is an expensive "white person" kinda restaurant. It is set up like a medieval tavern, kinda Lord of the Rings style. I got a cheeseburger and a peanut butter banana milkshake. It was sooooo goood!!!! Just like at home. It is so nice to get a taste of quality food every once in a while. Local Ugandan food is good but American food always hits the spot perfectly.

So that was the week in short.

I have a vague memory of someone somewhere saying that we have an ancestor, like grandfather or great grandfather or something, who served his mission in South Africa. If that is true and not something I just made up then I would like to maybe get his story. That would be awesome! :)

Have a great week everyone. You're the best.

Love Elder LeChemy

Zone Leader Life

Well another week has come and gone. This week was super busy with us driving a ton. Yea, for zone leader life. 

On Tuesday we went to dig in the garden for a guy called Lazarus. We dug for a couple hours then went home. After lunch we taught Peter about Tithing. Then we taught Henry the Ten Commandments using Mosiah 13. After that we went to the church for the Mission Prep class. Elder Latola taught it and he focused on how to teach about the Great Apostasy. The class turned out to be really good. In the evening we taught a less-active called Kita. We talked about Family History and how we can take the names of our ancestors to the Temple for their ordinances and we also talked about the gospel being preached in the Spirit World. It was a great lesson. Usually we need a translator when we teach him but this time we did it all in English and he understood everything! Awesome. 

Wednesday was great. We had our ZDM (zone development meeting). So at around 9:30 am we left to go to the Bugembe chapel. At the same time as ZDM, President Chatfield was there doing interviews for the Bugembe and Mpumudde Elders. Sister Chatfield provided breakfast for all of us! She made dough for homemade tortillas. So we got to cook our own tortillas and we had breakfast burritos. It was amazing!! When President finished the interviews he came and joined us for our zone meeting. It was nice to have him there and we gave him some time to talk at the end. We didn't get back to Iganga until about 3:30. At 4:00 we met a guy called George; he had just showed up at church on Sunday so we made an appointment to meet him. We taught him the Restoration. It was a great lesson and the spirit was there. We also set a baptism date for the 14 of September for him. Our next several appointments we had fell through so we went to the church to be part Institute. After Institute we went to Collins and taught him about the Law of Chastity. 

Thursday we did surprise exchanges in Mpumudde. We left Iganga at 7:30 am so we could go and be a part of the their morning studies and planning. They had planned to do service in the morning so we went with them to do service. We went to a members garden to dig. If you haven't noticed, digging in the garden is usually what we do for service. We had a good time even though the ground was super hard and made digging a challenge. I counted 11 blisters on my left hand and 2 on my right hand. Then I worked with Elder Kasambala and Elder Oliphant. Kasambala is the District Leader and he is from Zimbabwe. Elder Oliphant comes from the same Ward as Elder Latola in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. We had a great day working together.

We stayed the night in Mpumudde and Friday morning we left at around 9:30 am. On our way to Iganga we stopped in Bugembe to do some baptism interviews for Elder Allred. Then went back to Iganga. When we came back we planned our day and then went as a district for lunch at a members house. Then we went on splits cus we had tons of appointments. We ended up teaching 9 lessons for the day. 

Saturday we did service in the Relief Society garden. Yes we were digging! The rest of the day that we had planned got super disorganized and the things we actually did were completely different from what we had planned. But we had several great lessons. 

Church on Sunday was powerful! It was one of the more spiritual set of church meetings that I have been in. In sacrament meeting we had the District President and Elder Casperson there. They reorganized the Branch Presidency! Our Branch President was called to be the second counselor in the District Presidency. The previous second counselor recently moved to the US. Now we have a new Branch president with two counselors. Our closing hymn was "If You Could Hie To Kolob." And, of course, I was playing the keyboard. With all of the testimonies from the leaders and that closing hymn, the spirit was very strong there. I felt so warm and happy inside; I even felt like crying.  Elder Casperson and the District President did the setting apart of the new presidency during Elders Quorum so that the members could see what happens when they set someone apart. It was awesome! After church there was a baptism service for an eight year old girl. The primary took over the whole baptism service; two little kids did the opening and closing prayers and one primary kid conducted the music, again with me at the keyboard! It was awesome! After church we taught Collins and the children to an recent convert called Loy. We had a dinner appointment with the RS President at 8:00. Well we finished the lesson with Loy's kids at around 7:45. When we walked out we found Loy cleaning a chicken that she had just killed. She said she was preparing it for us for dinner! Ahhh. Talk about late notice. We couldn't refuse because she had already killed the chicken so we promised to come back after our other appointment. So we ate with the RS President and then at 8:45 we went back to Loy and had her dinner. Two dinners in one night! I was soooo full. 

Have fun at the fair! Hearing about school starting and sports and the fair and all that good stuff makes me kinda miss it all! 

Mom I already said this to you, but. I have really grown fond of pictures recently. I think its a sign that I have been gone too long but I love pictures! My happiness increases like 79% when I open my email and find that someone sent me pictures. I even have started printing some and I have an album that I keep pics in. It would be nice to fill the album (wink wink)! 

So that's all for Elder LeCheminant this week. As it is said in Lusoga (the local language here in Iganga) - Siba Belungi! (that means have a good day)

Love Elder LeCheminant senior

Playin' in Poop.

Well this week started out slow but by the end things turned out awesome! 

Anyways on Tuesday morning we played with poop for about three hours. Ha ha. I'm sure all of you are wondering right now if I said that right. Yes, we played with poop for a few hours! We were doing service for a family. We were covering the outside walls of their house with a mixture of cow dung, dirt, and water. It made a dark green colored runny mud that smelled really nice! It didn't smell nice.. So we would use our hands and take some and smear it on the wall. We did it for 3 hours until all the walls outside were covered. It makes some kind of protective coating on top of the normal mud walls. Of course I managed to get the stuff everywhere! It was in my face and all over my arms and legs. When we got home I scrubbed everywhere I could but I still smelled like poop the rest of the day. Literally, I smelled like poop the rest of the day. Ha ha, but it was fun. I added a couple pics of it. 

Tuesday night it rained and got super cold! We actually used the heater in the truck as we were driving. According to Alaska standards it was actually pretty warm, but I was freezing! It also made Elder Latola get some flu. All day Wednesday he wasn't feeling good, then in the evening it got bad enough that he decided to go home and sleep. All morning on Thursday he slept and finally woke up at around 10:00 and the flu was gone! So we were able to then prepare to go out. 

We also had interviews with President Chatfield. President and the APs were in Mbale and Busia all morning doing interviews there and on their way back to Kampala they stopped here in Iganga to do our interviews. It was awesome. President asked me about what happened with Jim. So I told him the whole story. He gave me a lot of encouragement and support. President Chatfield is the best! 

Friday we did weekly planning. Then at 2:00 we taught Peter about the Law of Chastity. We are preparing him for baptismnext Sunday. So I hope that by Sunday we will have taught him everything. Its going to be a scramble but I think we will be able to do it. Peter is awesome. He struggles with English but he keeps his commitments and is progressing very well! After we drove to Bugembe to do some baptism interviews. We did one interview in Mpumudde and three in Bugembe. We ended up spending the whole rest of the day there because the interviews were really spread out. 

Saturday was a fantastic day! At 10:30 a sister from Bugembe came here and took us to a family she knows. Then at 11:30we went to a family that was referred to us by a less active we have been teaching. Those two families have a ton of potential. It was awesome to be able to be referred to them. Then after lunch we visited another family that we recently started teaching. So now we have 3 families that we are teaching!! Its so awesome. I have never taught this many families all at once. Its difficult to get families. Usually we teach single people or just one person in a family. In the evening we taught Collins about the Word of Wisdom. At first he had some concerns with Coffee and Tea (just like every Ugandan). But we explained that most importantly this is a commandment from God and he gave it to us for specific reasons. He understood and was willing to start living it. It was awesome. Collins is preparing for baptism on the 31 of August. After him we taught a less active called Kita. We went through the Plan of Salvation with him. When we got to the judgement something clicked in his brain. He then said "So when we are judged God will ask us if we went to church every Sunday, paid our tithing, kept the law of chastity, and followed all the commandments?" I answered and said yes. He then said "So that means I need to repent and do those things so I can go to the celestial kingdom!" Haha we all laughed. It was a surprise to me that he would say something like that. I guess us teaching him the Plan Of Salvation actually worked. Then we taught a family called the Kanyoros. We got there after 8:30 so we only had about 15 minutes to teach. We taught about family history and gave them a blank 4 generation pedigree chart to fill out. I hope it helps them on the path to reactivation. 

So basically that was the week! Things turned out pretty well. We ended up with 10 referrals and 11 new investigators for the week. 

Have a great week everyone! Good luck at school. Choose the right. 

Elder LeCheminant senior