Hello BANJA LANGA. so yes... transfer news came... and really there was no news to tell. Our zone lost 3 elders yesterday and we are gaining one new greenie and that's about it! Sister Solomone and I are staying together in the beautiful area of Blantyre. HOLLA.
CONFERENCE WAS AMAZING. Some talks really changed my life and my perspective on life.
1. Holland's: goodness gracious I couldn't help but just sit there and cry. Seriously, mothers are incredible. MOMMA THUEY I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, you truly do have all the christ-like attributes and have that pure pure pure love of christ for everyone that you meet. and all the other amazing mothers in my life.
2. Elder Lawrence: changed my life. I never thought about how truly we can find tiny tiny things to improve on, and the Holy Ghost will let us know by just asking.
3. Elder Durrants: I'm totally jumping onto this "ponderizing" train. Think about it... whenever you're tempted.. just think of the scripture for the week. This week I decided to just randomly open my scriptures and see what happens and I opened to Alma 7:12 and so that is my scripture for the week... and it probably got quoted like 10 times in conference so it was definitely inspired.
4. Sister Reeves: (from women's conference) she said one line that truly put everything into focus. LIVE THE GOSPEL. LOVE THE LORD. AND BUILD HIS KINGDOM. nothing needs to be expounded there. It's simple.
personal study: okay sooooo the Book of Alma is crazy amazing. I love love love it.
Alma 13:27-29
Okay and then I was reading about Amulek and there is a time when the people totally misinterpret what he says and take it completley wrong. Then they take what he said and try to confound him... THIS HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME. So i found a lot of comfort in knowing that it happened to a prophet in the Book of Mormon as well. i'm not the only one... none of us are perfect teachers.
FUNNY STORIES: so this week we had a family of spiders in our flat. a baby, a mommy, and A HUGE HUGE DADDY. so we kill the mother and baby by throwing packets of pamphlets at them and we were successful... but we all know my aim isn't the greatest.. even when the target is huge and so i completely missed while trying to kill it and it MOVES FAST. and we just took off running and screaming oh boy... I thought i was over my fear of spiders but nope.. I'll send a video it's hilarious. but we finally killed it after many many trys.
okay so now miracle time:
Wednesday: Was wonderful. it started out roughhhhh.... we get calls in the morning and all of our appointments up to 3 o'clock were cancelled hahaha yikes. So we went to go check up on some less-actives. We then found one of our less-active's sisters is interested!!!! We will be seeing her on Wednesday!! Then we met Frasier's daughter and she was very nice, but didn't want to hear a lesson... maybe another time! so then we still didn't know what to do so we thought we would go check up on one of our families! The son who is the most interested wasn't home, so we met with the daugther and the father and wow. This was definitely an inspired lesson. We taught the plan of salvation and he asked one of my favorite questions... "how can we truly ever become clean and pure?" and yes I was just able to bear testimony of the Atonement. and it was a special moment because truly everyone down here accepts Jesus Christ as their savior so it's not this huge new thing that they can be forgiven for their sins... but the hard part is explaining to them that they can only fully access the Atonement through baptism.
Yamikani So friday, we found out that he has a word of wisdom problem so we're going to have to push back his date. But he is still incredible.... He told us how his family thinks of him as the trouble child because he didn't finish college and he lost his job, but he told us that when he starts to apply and live the standards we are teaching him that he will become a new man!! THE ATONEMENT IS REAL. he is so determined to change and i'm so excited to help him get over this addiction! He also invited his mom who lives in the village to come out to his baptism... so sweet.
Junior: So junior was a referral from our EQ president Mike. and BIG NEWS HE KNOWS THE BOOK OF MORMON IS TRUE. He isn't completely ready to make the decision to be baptized but his eyes seriously lit up when he was talking about the Book of Mormon... we are thinking November 22nd for him.
Kabutu Family: oh this wonderful family... We had a lesson with them this week and we sat around with all 6 kids and the parents and they all had their plan of salvation pamphlets. The lesson was really good and we were able to get all the kids involved (even though they don't speak english) and we put them on date for December 13th... and then Mavis (the mother) finally spoke up and said (in chichewa) that she loved the message we are teaching but she is frustrated because the service at church is only in English and it will be hard for her to go when she doesn't understand. Which is totally understandable... so we are talking with the Branch president to see if we can get everything translated at church because there are a couple people who are investigating or who are baptized who don't understand english and so everything needs to be translated to chichewa!
They didn't come to church this week because we had warned them that it would all be in English.... and so it kinda makes sense.. but next week i'm really praying that they will come and that we will be able to get it translated.
Frasier: oh frasier frasier frasier. my favorite 72 year old man. His interview will be this sunday! And he'll be getting baptized on the 8th! He came to ALL 8 HOURS OF CONFERENCE. and he was taking notes the whole entire time. He's the best.
Well that's a quick update on my life and on this area!! i'm very excited to stay in Blantyre another 6 weeks... at the end of this transfer it will be 6 months in this area with Sister Solomone.. how wonderful is that??
This week I learned the importance of finding joy in the small things. Sometimes we look for these huge miracles on mission, but we need to stop and take notice of the small ones that happen every single hour.
Love always,
Sister Mare Bear:)
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