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