Monday, August 4, 2014

Relief Society Garden, Missionary Treasure Hunt, and Transfers

So again I forgot my planner today so I am doing this completely on my brain's very limited ability to remember important things. Haha I should work on that. 

Anyways, On Tuesday we went and did some digging in the Relief Society garden. We were weeding a big section of it. Yea not very exciting, and no mom I don't know anything about gardens so don't get too excited! Haha It was fun though.

Wednesday we had our District meeting. We were asked by President Chatfield to focus the meeting on Elder Ballards talk about 'Follow Up' from general conference. We watched the talk and then discussed the important principle of follow up. That is a great talk. In the evening we went to a member that prints shirts and gave him a design we had for a zone t-shirts.

Thursday we went to the Relief Society garden again. We were weeding in the same area and then got to a place that had some veggies growing so we stopped because we didn't want to ruin whatever was planted there.  There was a member in the next garden over who was harvesting maize so went and helped him finish harvesting the maize. Then we loaded it into giant sacks and helped him transport it home. It was fun. I have never harvested maize before.  In the evening we went back to the member that makes shirts so we could approve the design he made and to give him the money. 

Friday after the morning schedule we went to the church to meet with the Branch leaders to plan out an activity we were going to do on Saturday. Of course the meeting took way longer than it should have. But it was probably the best planning meeting I have ever been in because each of the Branch leaders were actively participating and contributing. Usually meetings have someone talk the whole time and everyone sits there as if they could care less what was going on. So that was great. After the meeting we went out to buy the refreshments that we needed for the activity. We ordered 65 samosas and 65 mandazis. Samosas are delicious triangle shaped things filled with stuff and fried, and mandazis are similar to scones. They are basically just some fried bread. We didn't go home for lunch until 2:00. But we were able to get everything ready for the activity so it was almost worth the time we spent. A member gave us a duck! So for lunch we had a duck. The meat was actually pretty good. 

Saturday we had the activity. We called it the Missionary Treasure Hunt. The name was made to get people interested in coming. Each of us Elders were paired with an Returned Missionary in the Branch. Then we made 4 stations each led by an Elder/RM pair. Each station was given one of the lessons in Preach My Gospel to do a short teaching about that lesson. During the activity we split everyone that came into 4 groups, one for each station. Then every 10-15ish minutes the groups would rotate.  I was teaching about the commandments. We focused it on the Word Of Wisdom, Law Of Consecration, Tithing, and Sabbath Day. It was sooo hard to talk about all of those commandments in just 10 minutes. But we managed to get through it all. Then we took each of the groups out into the field to get some hands on experience doing missionary work. Each group had 30 minutes to go out and get at least 10 contacts. My group split up in the area. I was working with 3 others. I told them that if they see a person or a door they feel like going to, then go there, and I just followed behind and let them do the work. It was awesome! They did a great job. I had to help a few times when they would be at a loss for words but we managed to get many good contacts. One of them even took us to her sisters house and led us down a road that had many people she knew. Then we all met back at the church and had some closing remarks and had the refreshments. We had planned to take an hour and play some minute to win it games but the other two parts went way over time so we couldn't do the games. Then we used all of the people there to clean the church. The activity turned out to be a huge success.  We didn't get home until about 4:00 and were all super exhausted. After some rest at home we went goat shopping!!! Haha, yes we went shopping for a goat because we were planning to use it early Monday and we weren't shopping on Sunday. That was fun. I have never bought a goat before.  We went to see a Sister who had a birthday and gave her a cake that Elder Latola made. She even made it into a little birthday party with soda and popcorn. Then we went and picked up the zone t-shirts we had printed. 

Sunday was pretty good. Church was awesome. After church a member that we work with a lot came over to teach me how to make pilau. Pilau is a popular dish here. It is basically brown rice with spices and meat and it is sooo good!!! I have always wanted to know how to make it. Now I know and I will probably be making it a lot when I come home. Then we went out to the village! We drove to a town called Bugiri and then out to the village. We went there about a month ago. We had a nice discussion with Joshua and were able to answer many questions he had. We even gave him a Bible to use with his Book Of Mormon. Joshua is awesome. He is an older man and is super smart but he is humble and listens to us and accepts the answers and teachings we give him. The only problem is that he is kinda far from Iganga so it will be difficult to come to church. But he is awesome and the seed is planted for the church to reach his area some day in the future. When we came back we stopped at a members home for a quick dinner appointment and had some delicious food. Then we went home and packed, got the goat and went to spent the night in Bugembe. 



Today for Pday we had a zone activity. We slept in Bugembe because we had to get things ready early in the morning. We went to the church in Bugembe at around 9:00 and  cooked some of the goat meat on a charcoal grill and rest we made with some soup. I also made pilau with the goats meat. Elder Lassig and I were the chefs in the kitchen. We were in there for about 3 hours. The pilau took a long time to cook. And then Elder Lassig made an apple pie and I made a chocolate cake. While we were cooking the rest of the zone was outside playing soccer. The chocolate cake was sooooo good! I made it completely from scratch. There's no nonsensical cake in a box type things here so I used a chocolate cake recipe we have. I even made chocolate frosting to go on top!!! Ahh it was so good. When everything was finally finished we feasted. It was fun having the zone together enjoying some good food. It was an awesome zone activity. 

So that was the week. It was pretty hectic and we had way to many things to do because we were preparing for the activityon Saturday and also the Zone activity, but the week turned out pretty good in the end. 

Today we received transfer news. The whole Iganga District is staying the same this transfer. Elder Allred is coming to be the new district leader in Bugembe. So now I am his zone leader! Haha. We heard about what's going on in West Africa. There were 12 or 15 missionaries that were there from Uganda who have been reassigned here. So the mission got a bunch more missionaries! Some of them were sisters. In the Jinja Branch they added a set of Sisters; that Branch now has 4 sister companionships. They also have the Jinja Zone Leaders in that Branch as well. So the Jinja branch has 10 missionaries! Huge. Ebola is pretty crazy. There was an outbreak in Uganda about 2 years ago. Last year I heard stories from some of the old missionaries who were here during it. For now everything is safe here in Uganda! 

Recently it has been pretty difficult for people to get visas to Uganda. For me it was no problem but after my group they have been having a lot of problems.

Have a great week! I love you all. 
Elder LeCheminant

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