February 24, 2014 - Beira

   To answer your question: we did stop by Lucias house this week but we found out she actually passed away up in Niassa while visiting family. We gave her a blessing and she got well enough to stand up and walk around and travel and after she visited family she passed away. I guess the reason we gave her a blessing is so she could visit her family before she passed away.

   This week was a good week. We were supposed to baptize Zaria on Saturday but it didn’t happen because the water coming out of the tap here in Beira is super gross right now - you couldn't even see the bottom of the font and nobody from our branch was really able to come so we rescheduled for next week and made better plans. We were thinking of just baptizing her on the beach because it is super close.

    I went on divisions with Elder Sip in Beira 1 this week and we had some pretty good lessons. It is super important when teaching a family to make sure they both really understand the great apostasy or nothing goes right down the road. We retaught a family the restoration who the wife was having trouble coming to church and she hadn't really understood the apostasy. It was an awesome lesson and she understood it, promised to pray, but Sunday still went to her church. Do what? Everybody has agency.

    We asked the other elders in our district to reactivate and help our branch mission leader and it worked! We had correlation meeting and the branch missionaries are really excited. Our branch is already changing a lot. Everybody is starting to do visits and be more proactive and we are seeing that the missionaries in our zone who are working with the leaders are having families to teach and families at church. On the 8th of March, the last week of the transfer, there are going to be at least 3 couples married and baptized in our zone.

    Sergio lost his job but he is a boss. I wish you guys could meet our investigators right now - they are all super awesome. Like I would totally be super good friends with them before the mission. This week we should start more documents with families.

   Well hope everything works out back at home for you guys. Just remember the blessings you are getting. I will have to look at that ASU thing today but I change my mind everyday about what I want to do when I get back. It is something that is going to take a lot of prayer to figure out. I figure I could go into the air force for 4 years and have college paid for after and then go into humanitarian aid, or we got a ride from a guy from South Africa who works fighting against kid trafficking and saves kids lives all the time. I think a job like that would be super fulfilling. I have no idea - too many choices. All I know is I am at least going to have to have a plan for my life before I think about getting married. Everybody going home is getting married super fast!

   Working with all these families though, I am definitely learning what is needed to have a happy family. There are tons of stuff that just destroy families and Satan is behind everyone of them. For real the only safe way to raise a family is the gospel!

   Well, love ya guys ,                         Elder Bigelow