2.24.14

Well this week has been crazy. Tuesday I spent the morning packing and getting ready to go. Then in the afternoon we went to go to a few people for me to say goodbye. It is seriously hard leaving an area and saying goodbye to the people that you have grown to love! Then Wednesday and Thursday we literally sat and waited. We thought that we were being transferred in the morning on Wednesday. So we waited. Then

they didn't come so we waited until the afternoon. Then they didn't come. SO we called the person coming to get us and he said he wasn't coming until Thursday.  It was not fun just sitting and doing nothing. Then Thursday we also waited all day again. Originally the guy said he was coming in the morning, but he didn't show up until around 5:00 pm. Then we were taken to the missionary compound in Ntinda to spend the night. I didn't leave to Gulu until around noon on Friday and then 6 hours of sitting in a truck on Friday. Now I am here in Gulu! My area/branch is called Bardege. Its just a little section of Gulu. My companion is called Elder Phiri. He is from northern Zambia. Elder Phiri came on his mission way back in october. He has been on the other side of Gulu with the Zone Leaders. Now he has moved to this side. Yay for whitewashing again!

Gulu is an interesting place. I'm still getting used to it. Gulu is soo much different than areas in Kampala. By the end of this week I will be good to go. There are 7 missionaries and a senior couple here. All of us stay in the same compound. Sometime I will send a picture. The couple is Elder and Sister Moore. They are the ones that drove me up on Friday. My district stays in one apartment, the ZL's and their companions stay in the apt next to us, and the Moores stay in the next apt. It is super hot here. I think it might be more hot than Lira. Hopefully after a few good sunburns I will get used to it. :)

On Saturday we spent the day just going around getting to know some people. There are a lot of great members in our area. We have like 20 recent converts. But half of them are less active. The whole branch has a ton of less active actives. I will just say that we have A LOT of work to do. Something I almost forgot is that on Saturday I also did my first baptism interview. The zone leaders called me at 7:00 and said they were coming in 30 minutes for me to do an interview. I had no clue about it but I still went. It was a little girl 9 years old. Her mom is the RS President in the Gulu Branch. She was super shy but knew everything perfectly! It was a cool experience. I had completely forgotten that as a District Leader I have to do interviews. But it was a success. There's plenty more for me to do in the future. Yay.....

Sunday we had two baptisms. It was pretty cool having two people ready to be baptized. They are awesome guys. One is called Ivan and the other is called Patrick. Since we were both completely new to the Branch everything about the baptism was super unorganized. We were scrambling everywhere to get the baptism suits and the font ready to go, etc.  The branch president and a lot of the members are awesome people and are always willing to help with the missionary work. I am excited to work in this area! Gulu seems like a great place.

Good job Joey on getting your Eagle Scout stuff finished. You cut it closer than I did! Hopefully it all works out. Also happy birthday! I remember when I was 18. Such a long time ago.

So this is a really really short email. Today I got 3 emails!!!!!!!!!!! Not a whole lot to work with. But its ok because the internet is extremely slow here. I waited for like 45 minutes for everything to load. 

I hope everyone has a great week. I'm just gonna be here suffering from to much sun. I will have more to talk about next week. Thanks for everything!

Love Elder LeCheminant

2.17.14

We finished the last week of the transfer great! I will tell you the transfer news later in the email :)

On Tuesday in the morning we went digging again. We had an enjoyable time. For some reason I had tons of energy and was just non stop digging for like an hour straight. I got a lot done. It felt so good to do some hard physical labor. After lunch we had four lessons. One of them was a guy called Walter. He is an interesting person. We have been pushing along with him for like 5 weeks now and he hasn't been showing any real commitment. So we put the ball into his court and let him take the initiative. If he wants to learn more then he will call us. We actually did that to a lot of people this week. There was several investigators that weren't being committed to anything so we gave them the responsibility. Our last lesson was with our recent converts Emmanuel and Flavia. They are the ones that we have been digging with in the mornings. On Tuesday we helped them do FHE. It was pretty fun. We had an opening hymn and spiritual thought and games. I think they really enjoyed it. 

On Wednesday we after lunch one of our lessons was with Tony. We taught him about Eternal Marriage. We talked about the temple last week. He was so excited about the concept of an eternal family. He understood everything about how to have a happy family. If you want to know what the Lord has said about how to have a happy eternal family then go to Lesson 5 in the PMG (Preach My Gospel) and read the section about Eternal Families. There is some good stuff in there. 

Thursday we went digging again in the morning. We almost finished the garden. There is just a small little section at the end that will take another hour to do. In the afternoon we went tracting in a place that we haven't been to for about 4 weeks. It was soo nice tracting in a newish area! It was actually a lot of fun. We found a couple of awesome families of people who have a lot of potential. 

Sunday, yesterday was fun. At church we had 3 investigators. Sacrament attendance was 87. Last week was 88. It was good to see the increase. In the past many weeks it has been hovering around 70. So now we are seeing some progress. There was two visitors at church too! One of them is from Canada. I dont know what he is doing here. Some kind of government work i think. The other guy is a Stake President from Florida. He is working with US Embassy. Its so different to have them at church. They speak normal english that is easy to understand. Its seriously gonna be soo weird coming home and having everyone speak normal English! In the evening after church we went to the Balyejusa family for FHE and dinner. We played an insane game of spoons. There was like 10 people crowded around a tiny table. Every time a round ended, whoever didnt have a spoon had to drink a big glass of water. There was no eliminating, just drinking water. One person lost like 5 times and had to drink 5 huge cups of water. It was super intense and hilarious. He almost peed his pants from so much water. It was a fun way to play spoons. 

Today we cleaned the house in the morning. Then we went to the other elders house. Elder Wanlass made an amazing chocolate cake! It was so good. Then we played some cards. Then we went to a pizza place in Entebbe Town. It was soo good. The pizza was only 26000 shillings and it tasted amazing. I love pizza. Then we came to the internet cafe to start emailing. Basically all day we have been waiting for the ZL's to call and tell us the news for this transfer. Finally it came about 30 minutes ago. Ready? I am going back north to Gulu and I am going to be the District Leader and I am white washing (two new missionaries at the same time). My companion is coming to Uganda from Rwanda. So yea its pretty crazy! I am soo excited to go back north to the village. I kinda like being just a normal missionary but the leadership will be a good change. Hopefully white washing there wont be as hard as it was here in Entebbe. Elder Wulfenstein is staying here and getting a new companion. He is going to be great missionary.  So next Monday I will be emailing from Gulu!! Back to the extreme heat and village. But it isn't very humid there so its a bit more bearable. Entebbe is extremely humid. 

Mom my shoes are still doing pretty good. The insides are wearing out faster than the outside. I think they still have many good months of use. I will let you know when they start to get bad. For now they are doing great. I love them. 

I cant imagine Jacob driving the 6 wheeler all by himself. That is seriously a scary thought! Holy cow!!!!

Happy Birthday to Joey and Sister LeChem!!!! We are getting so old

The first pic is the garden that we have been digging in. Yea its pretty big! 

The other one is a little boy from church. Yesterday at church he came wearing that awesome suit. So I put my name-tag on him. He loved it. He was walking around showing off his name-tag and even put it in his pocket to take home. It was pretty funny. I'm gonna miss that little guy. He always calls me "Muchuminant"!! haha there's another way to say our name. 

Have a fantastic week.

Love me

2.10.14

Howdy do!
This week was a bit rough. After last week I was hoping for an amazing week but of course it didn't happen. Nothing ever goes how we want them to go.

First of all last week after emailing, us 4 elders went out to this big fancy "white person" restaurant. Its called Faze 3 if you ever want to look it up. Holy cow it was way to much like home. I had an amazing steak with some mashed potatoes and vegetables. My mouth was freaking out with all of the amazing flavor! My mouth is used to the bland no spices or flavor Ugandan food. That was an amazing experience.

Tuesday we went to Kabowa for ZDM (Zone Development Meeting). It was a great meeting. We talked a lot about small issues that need to be solved in the mission. We had a great time. Then afterwards we went to hang out at this MASSIVE shopping mall. It is called Freedom City. It is seriously huge. It has like 5 or 6 levels and on the top is a huge kids play place and a swimming pool. What the heck, a swimming pool in Uganda? haha it was super funny to see people in the pool because Ugandans seriously have no idea what to do in a swimming pool! That was pretty entertaining. So that was fun.

Wednesday in the morning we had DDM (District Development Meeting). That was awesome as well. We all just talked about ourselves and got to know each other more. The rest of the day almost everyone we had planned to visit were not around. So we ended up just walking and walking and walking and walking. Sometimes I just hate walking!

Thursday in the morning we did some service. We went digging again like last week. It was pretty fun.

Then  Friday was supposed to be a great day with like 10 lessons but that didn't happen, we only taught 3 lessons. It was another day of just walking and walking because everyone decided to not be available. We did find one guy called Jibbs Ojok. Yea super weird name, even for Uganda. We taught him and his son under some massive mango trees. It was a great lesson.

Saturday in the morning we did service again. This time we made bricks. It is seriously sooo much fun!! There is a pile of wet clay. We would take a chunk and stick it in a mold and pack it in. I was soo covered in mud afterwards. It was so much fun to basically play in mud for a couple hours. I will try to send a pic. After showering we went to teach Tony. We taught him about the Temple. It was an amazing lesson. He had never known anything about temples for his whole life so he was amazed and super excited about it all. I seriously miss the temple! The closest temple to us is all the way down in South Africa. I wish I could just go to the temple all the time. That is something I am going to definitely appreciate more at home. All of you are so blessed to have temples close by. It is a huge blessing and you need to take advantage of it. Only in the temple can we really feel close to Heavenly Father and it is a great way to have the spirit more in your life. :)

Sunday was pretty awesome. Church made up for everything we went through during the week. We had 5 investigators come to church! None of them were people we had planned on coming but it was still awesome. Two of our recent converts brought their two young boys with them. It was so awesome. I was playing with them all the time. i should have taken a pic with them at church because they are the cutest little guys ever!

Today for Pday we went to the other Elders house. We bought a ton of potatoes and made homemade chips (french fries). It was super cheap to. 2000 shillings for enough potatoes to fill a big sized pot. The other Elders bought a chicken and we killed it and cooked it! It was actually pretty fun to pull all the feathers off and then cut it up. I actually used some things I learned from cutting up moose. After getting the legs and wings off we opened up the inside and went through all of the innards. Yea pretty gross. We also cut off the feet and fried them and then ate them!!!! Actually we didn't eat them but I pretended to eat one and took a good picture "eating" it. There was no way I was going to eat a chicken foot, but people here do it all the time! They also eat the liver and the gizzard and the flappy things on the head. yea its disgusting.

So that was the week!

The pics of the  'green room' look pretty good! Why didn't anyone think of doing that before? Good job everyone.

It sounds like everyone had a good week.

Only mom and dad emailed me this week so there isn't really anything else to comment on about other peoples lives cause I have no idea!! Thanks everyone :) haha

Oh yea, whats the deal with Obama? We keep seeing stuff in newspapers about Obama and Michelle splitting up or something like that. We don't know any details because all the newspapers are in Luganda and Ugandans don't do a great job translating what it says. I know its really extremely unimportant but I was just curious.

Happy Valentines Day!!
Love Elder LeCheminant

2.3.14

Hello again.
This week was pretty fantastic! We taught like 24 lessons. The most we have had here in Entebbe. For Uganda that is actually extremely low, but for Entebbe its way good. I remember back in Mukono we would have like 50 ish lessons a week. Anyways,

On Tuesday in the morning we went and did some service. We went digging in a member's garden. That was fun. I was sweating so much that when I tasted it there was no salt. Tooo much sweating!! It actually wiped me out because I haven't done anything physical work like that for several months. I am soo out of shape its ridiculous. When we go digging we get a hoe and go and dig up the ground so it can be ready for planting. Its a popular thing in Uganda because most of the people grow their own food. After lunch we had a great day and taught 7 lessons.  They are all awesome people and have huge potential.

Wednesday morning we had DDM. That is our district meeting. We did a fun activity. In the Preach My Gospel at the end of the chapter on Christlike Attributes there is an Attribute Activity. We did the whole thing. It was a great chance to look into myself and see how I am with all of the Christlike attributes. I highly recommend doing that activity. It helps you really see what you need to improve on.

Thursday we had another 7 lesson day. On the way to one appointment there was a young boy carrying two jerry cans of water. I asked where his home was and he just pointed up the hill. So I took the jerry cans and started walking. After 5 minutes of hiking uphill I asked him again and he just pointed up. 5 minutes later the same thing. We finally got to his house at the top of the hill like 20 minutes later!! Holy cow it was way to far for a kid to carry water. Even though he was like 10 years old it felt good to do that small act of service. His mother was very happy that we did that for him. We even taught her a lesson. It was a great seed planting lesson. There was basically no way we could set a time to go back because she is always busy with stuff at her church. But when missionaries find her again she will be ready.  Our last lesson was with a less active called Samuelson. He has the Conference DVDs for Oct 2004 and April 2005. They are super old but he loves them and really wanted us to watch a talk. So we picked a talk from Oct 2004 by Pres Hinckley about the women in our lives. It was an amazing talk about the importance on women and how men need to treat the women. I recommend going back to that conference because there was even a bunch of other powerful talks by other General authorities.

Friday was pretty good. We taught Tony about the Priesthood. He was preparing to receive the Aaronic Priesthood on Sunday. So we talked about the priesthood and how it all works and even got into some deep history with the priesthood. He was just so amazed the entire time. Then I showed him my Line of Authority. That just blew him away! He was glued to it for like 10 minutes just completely amazed. The Line of Authority is an awesome thing. There is no other church in the world where you can trace authority all the way back to Christ himself. It was fun to see Tony get all excited about receiving the priesthood.

Saturday in the morning we did some service again. We helped another member called Afiman make some papyrus shades. They are really difficult to describe, but its like strands of papyrus strung together and people use them to cover their little shops or fruit stands. That was fun. Then when we finished we went and helped him herd some goats. He gets paid to take care of some peoples goats. So we took the goats and tied them in a grassy area where they could eat. Later in the afternoon we went to church for PEC. Unfortunately it didnt happen so we just spent some time with the members there.

Sunday was awesome! Church went great. Tony bore his testimony during sacrament/testimony meeting. It was awesome to hear him give his testimony of the truth he has found. Then in priesthood meeting he was ordained a Priest. After church he came and told me that it was his birthday and he invited us over to celebrate. So at like 4:00 we went to his house to celebrate. His wife Teddy made a pretty good chocolate/lemon cake. She works at some German tourist place so she knows how to bake and make a ton of good food. The cake was delicious and even they gave us the best rice and beans I have ever had. Teddy put some black pepper and other things in it. It was some good old rice and beans.

Today, before we came here to email, Elder Wanlass and Mkutswana came over to our apartment. We made some delicious chips! Basically french fries but here we call them chips. At a market I found a big bag of potatoes for only 3000 shillings! That is soo cheap and I had to buy them. Our chips we made were amazing. Then we played cards. Elder Wulfenstein has some Book of Mormon cards. We played Memory and then Old Maid. It got pretty intense and was lots of fun! Those classic card games are the best.

Congrats for finishing the green room! I want some pictures. Thanks :)

Holy Cow I am now kinda sad and depressed from hearing the bad news. I can't imagine how everyone in Palmer is doing. Its always terrible to hear of people passing away. Here in Uganda everyone has some family member or close friend who has died. It is mostly from the wars and rebels in Uganda's history. It is a time where you get to seriously think about the Plan of Salvation. These experiences can be used to strengthen our testimonies of the truths we know. I love the Gospel and I love the Plan of Salvation. I know it is true without any doubt. Let it give you hope and be a light in your lives. It can seriously change any bad situation into something where you can learn and grow and become a better person.

Mom, we get the Liahona every month. Other magazines we don't get to read. So if it is in the Liahona then just let me know which article. That would be good if you sent me some printed stuff. Thanks :)

Have a fantabulous week everyone!!

Love Elder LeCheminant