October 28, 2013 - Matola

                                   A week in the Life

   God works in mysterious ways.

   This week was pretty crazy! So I will start off with my and Elder Reed’s division Tuesday. So we are walking in his area and we have been walking all day without a lesson when we contact a guy at his house whose wife recently died, so we are thinking ‘plan of salvation.’ But ends up he just wants to argue everything we say and just goes off on us for 30 minutes. So we just smile and invite him to church thinking there is no way we will ever see him again. Well come Sunday this guy actually shows up as we are waiting for Andre and Maria to show up early for church (to get interviewed for baptism because their baptism and wedding is scheduled for Saturday). So Andre sits right next to this guy and they start talking and as soon as we are ready to do the interviews Andre says they want to push the wedding back to the 30th of next month so his whole family could come so they don’t get offended. So we are trying to ask him to just sign, get baptized, and have the party later. And the guy from the divisions just keeps talking to Andre telling him that he has to have his whole family, it’s tradition, don’t let these white guys pressure you. And I have never wanted to just punch somebody so bad. But it’s Andre’s decision, so at the end of things he decides to push everything back. So anyways President Kretley happens to be visiting our branch for the primary program and hears about all this. So at the end I talk with him and he asks to meet with all of Andre’s family right after church. So we hear them talking and laughing and everything and at the end President Kretley comes up to talk to us and says ‘don't worry about this family, they will be baptized and married.  Don’t pressure them and when they get baptized call me because I want to watch.’ Super nice!

      Then we have a family that had a baby who was born like 2 weeks ago and they invited us to a party for when the first time the baby comes out of the house and can stay outside so we decide to go. They kept asking us if our church does a special blessing when that happens and if we bless the baby and we said no. So we show up like 2 hours late on purpose because I knew they were going to try to get us to do some kind of blessing or something but we happen to show up right before the baby comes out. And there are like 20 thirty people. So this guy stands up and announces that the missionaries (us) would be doing some kind of special blessing on the baby and everyone just stares at us and waits. We always get put in the most awkward situations!! So I stand up and just say we are not going to bless the baby but I can say a prayer. So everybody stood up and I just said a prayer. Anyways afterwards was the gift-giving ceremony so they start singing dialect music and passing the baby around like a football stacking gifts on top of it. Super funny.

    Then yesterday was seriously one of the craziest experiences of my mission. We get to our area at night and all the sudden it hits - I have to go to the bathroom super bad! But we have no toilet paper and of course nobody uses toilet paper here but us, so I am deciding if we are going to have to go home or if I can hold it or if I am just going to crap my pants. I was so desperate I was thinking of just asking somebody to use their bathroom and figure out the wiping part later! So my comp starts doing a contact and this guy blows him off and tells him to talk with this lady who is the owner of the house. And, just to put me in an awkward situation, asks her if I could use her bathroom! And she says ‘yes’ and walks us to the back of her house to an outhouse thing they all have, but most are just hole in the ground. Luckily she had a real toilet - bucket flush, of course, no seat. So I go in and still can’t decide if I want to use it. So after like 5 minutes I ask my comp for some papers from his planner. So her kids we always see on the street - they are the leaders of the china (pronounced shina) clan - that we always chase, it’s super funny - they just call us chinese until we chase them and then they just die laughing. The leader is like 4. So the whole time I can hear him just laughing his head off and he peeks in and he is like ‘the chinese is pooping!’ and just dies laughing and I am just super embarrassed. So I finish and just want to get the heck out and the lady is like ‘hey where are you going? You aren’t going to come in?’ So we figure out she lives alone with her 2 kids, so we sit outside with them and I ask her her name and her last name is Cossa which is the same as Ivan, our 2nd counselor, so I ask if they are related and they are. And she has no church but really wants one and was asking about baptism. It was a super good lesson. I really think she will be baptized, but we found her in the weirdest way ever!! There is no way we would have ever found her or talked to her if I hadn’t had to use her bathroom! I have mixed feelings about that situation! Something good came out of a terrible situation haha.

     Anyways tranfers are next week and I think I might leave - who knows - but things are going good!

      Love ya guys! Oh yeah and Brother Willis ran into Dean and Kevin fishing in Utah and sent me a picture! Super cool!

Elder Bigelow

October 21, 2013 - Matola

Another super crazy week!

     Seriously, this week was super full of stories so I will try to write about a few. First we went to funeral of one of our investigator’s sister-in-law because me and Elder Ensaldo had given her a blessing a few weeks ago because she was really sick. The hospital didn’t know what it was and she had been sick for a long time. When I gave her the blessing I asked that the hospital would be able to diagnose the problem and they did - it was tuberculosis. But then last Saturday she 

passed away so we were invited. The burial service at the cemetery was pretty crazy. They had about 500 people and it was all in Changana, the language here, and the pastor was Catholic. I love dialect songs though. But that’s not the weirdest part - we got invited to go to the house afterwards to a prayer ceremony and again there are like 500 people and we showed up late and everybody is sitting on the ground with the pastor and a few other guys up front with chairs by 

this table. So of course they walk us in front of everybody and give us chairs right up front and everybody is just staring at us the whole time the pastor is talking in Changana and singing and stuff.  So he gets to a part where he finally speaks Portuguese and invites anybody who wants to to get up and speak and right away like half of the ladies just stare straight at us. So the pastor starts saying it doesn’t matter what language it could be Changana, Sena, Macua, all these dialects and this lady just screams out “or English.” So by this point the whole crowd is looking straight at us but then finally some ladies got up and started speaking dialect again. Before they spoke they had to lead a crowd in a song and they stand up and speak. So anyways at the end we try to sneak out because they are giving everybody this fish stuff and we get caught and they get pretty offended if you don’t eat so we ate it but were super sure to drink a lot of coke afterwards.   

     Then at the funeral we get a call from Samuel telling us his mom had just passed away. So the next day I felt like I should call and see if he needed help with anything and he tells us just to come over so we went over to his sister’s house where they were with a ton of women. So we talked to Samuel and he never told us what he needed help with so I thought maybe he just wanted to talk so we talked and stuff while all these women were in a room all talking and then we get invited in and Samuel puts chairs right in the front of about 20 women who also are speaking Changana. So I’m thinking ok this is a family meeting where they are just going to plan the funeral and stuff. I have no idea why we are here and everybody is just staring at us again so Samuel introduces us and it just gets quiet. Then Samuel is like “well can we start with a prayer Elders?” Then it finally clicked he wanted us teach, so we have sticky note pictures of the Plan of Salvation and we taught the whole thing to all these Machamba mommas . So some didn’t understand Portuguese so the ones who did translated into Changana and the spirit was super strong. The oldest one who only spoke Changana kept telling us she knew what we taught was true and thanking us. It was a way cool experience.  

     This weekend we also watched conference finally. We had like no investigators but it went well. Andre and Maria also had a family member die last weekend so he was only able to come Sunday afternoon when they showed the second session for the second time and he was seriously the only person who came so we watched it with him and our branch president on a tv.

      Things are going good! We are just having a hard time sitting with people and finding people who will keep commitments, but it has definitely been a journal-worthy week!

   Love ya guys

   Elder Bigelow

October 14, 2013 - Matola

Hey guys,

   This week was pretty normal. With Samuel and Maria baptized and since we dropped a bunch of investigators that weren’t progressing, we just marked with tons of new people which means that like 1 in every 5 marked lessons actually go through. Andre and Maria haven’t even told their families they are getting married in 3 weeks and they are a little nervous to talk with them. When we first taught the law of chastity they were super certain their family wouldn’t approve until like next year so they wanted to wait, but then after a couple of lessons and reading ‘Family Proclamation to the World’ with them they have never looked back. And he opened his process for marriage the week after his brother is getting married and his family has been planning this wedding for like a year. They have a ton of faith and I can’t wait until they get baptized. I really hope their families don’t make a huge deal out of it. But I know the Lord blesses those who put his commandments first. 

      We are going to watch General Conference this week and I am super pumped. Things are going good and we are walking with more and more members. We have some super cool members in our branch. Also the branch mission leader gave us the reference of two families that were baptized before the legal marriage change here in Mozambique, so they are inactive and unmarried but they want us to try to help them marry. It reminds me of Inhamizua. By the way, the couple we helped hitch in Inhamizua, Amiise and Pasqua, are doing super good! I heard he is the elders quorum president now! 

   Well love ya guys! Thanks for all the emails and pics.

ate manzuku

       Elder Bigelow

October 7, 2013 - Matola

     This week was awesome! Zone conference was super nice but I was in and out because Elder Ebmeyer was throwing up all day. We had the area psychiatrist come talk to us and it was really cool.

    Samuel and Maria’s wedding was super simple. They only had a few family members and surprisingly no singing. I think it was the first time any of them had ever been to a Mozambican wedding. But afterwards we ate cake and pop at the church. The whole thing took maybe an hour and then they invited us to their house where Ricardo and Lina, the last couple we baptized, helped them throw a small party and we ate lunch and listened to Bryan Adams.   

   Ivan, the second counselor in our branch and who made everything work for the wedding, baptized Samuel and Maria, and Elder Ebmeyer baptized their two daughters. Everyone showed up like an hour late for the baptism but everything went super well. They have super strong testimonies and I am super excited to walk with them to other investigators houses. He has a truck and it’s usually full of people from his area coming to church every week. He is going to help the church a lot. 

    Tonight we are going with a member family, Stelho and Sandra, to Andre and Maria’s house to have a family home evening and I promised them I would make brownies. They always try to feed us. They are super awesome. I feel like she is my mom here in Matola. I am super pumped for them to get married and baptized here in a few weeks. We have one more couple fighting for documents right now. I really love Matola!

      Samuel used the tie Saul and Kristi gave me before I left and I think he wants to keep it. And I am going to give the CTR ring they gave me to Jr., Andre and Maria’s son, when they get baptized. 

   Well love ya all! Sorry my email is kinda short. I really want to start writing better emails but we have a ton to do today.

 Foto do casamento (Wedding photo)

Foto do batismo da familia Mambero (Mambero family baptism photo)

Zona de conferencia (Zone Conference)