March 17, 2014 - Beira

March 17, 2014

Guess what I saw this week? A guy wearing a Pie town New Mexico shirt!! I wish I would have had my camera.

    This week was awesome! So we are getting Joao and Rosa baptized this weekend and already had the process opened but then Rosa’s uncles who raised her said she couldn't get married until Joao payed labolo! Ridiculous right? They are both over 21 they can make their own decisions. So Joao just wanted to tell her uncles ‘too bad what are you going to do to me?’ but it would have caused tons of problems in Rosas family. So whenever there are problems with like anything here in Mozambique they have like big family meetings and everyone has to come to put there 2 cents in. And we got invited to one of these meetings with her uncle. He was just being super selfish and wants money, beer and food and anyways at the end of our meeting they still didn't decide anything. We told them they could just sign the papers get legally married, baptized and then wait and have a huge party with the family later whenever they wanted. Well they scheduled another huge meeting and invited way more people - just this time we were not invited. Luckily their padrinhos are super awesome members and were invited so they could help Joao and Rosa plead their case. We prayed tons that everything would work out but I was kinda expecting the worse, either way the process was opened so they had to get married but we really wanted Rosa’s family to accept it and they did! They called us after their big meeting and they were super pumped so Saturday after their baptism they are going to have a huge party at their house and everybody is cool with it! It only took the 6 weeks from contact to baptism and it would have been on the 8th if Rosa’s uncles would have accepted it.

     Now to the serious part of my letter. So Thursday night we went to sit with an old investigator we wanted to pick back up but he wasn't home, so we contacted a his neighbor who invited us in to his tiny cinderblock house and I am sitting right next to the door and Elder Peckham is sitting next to the window made out of mosquito netting instead of glass. So we are getting to know him a little bit just talking and this huge blast goes off and it shook the house so there is dust everywhere. I had to check myself to make sure I didn’t get shot or anything and we look at the guy and he just says " Oh the dang police in this area." So I started freakin out in my head and we shut the door all the way.  I was trying to think how we could kick down the back wall of his house and run. But then nothing happened and like 10 super long minutes go by and people start walking outside the window and stuff so we asked them what happened, was it a grenade or like what? But nobody knew what we were talking about. So we go outside to leave and look down on the ground and saw……… a coconut! It had fallen out of this super tall tree and hit the metal chapa roof right above our heads. I was kind of disappointed - I thought it was going to be a crazy cool story.

    This week we are also opening up a marriage process of Sergio and Ana who are getting baptized on the 29th and we finally are making progress on documents for a couple who are from Tete. We are really trying to help them get baptized in the middle of April. President Kretly is coming up this week for a zone conference and I am like 90 percent sure the branches up here are going to split!! I am way pumped! Also we got some super awesome new elders in our zone. Elder Hales and Elder Shumway came up from Maputo. We all lived in the same house in Motala and they are super awesome. We are all good friends and Elder Hales is serving with a missionary who I knew in Matola before he left on his mission! I really feel like we are going to see a lot of success here in Beira this transfer.

        As far as where I want to eat when I get back I would be super happy with a barbeque at Saul’s house! But the biggest thing I want to do is go to the temple - Mesa or Gilbert!