August 27, 2012 - Nampula

Hey,

     Well I guess I will start out with the bad news first: My camera is broken. I had it in my backpack and it must have gotten wet or I must have dropped it or something because it turns on and everything but everything is super super blurry when I try to take pictures! I'm pretty sad about that.
     This week has been crazy. I have never been rejected and set up or talked to so many people before in my life. We worked so hard but this week our stats were terrible. It's crazy. I'm happy because I felt like I worked the hardest I ever had but seen the least amount of success. Last week we had 122 people at church and I thought it would go up - but it dropped down to 80 this week. You can't leave the tree of life to save others and bring them to the tree you can only invite others to join you.
     We have been really trying to focus on the areas close to the church finding new investigator families. We called so many of our contacts and honestly had 8 lessons a day set up. We don't know where most of them live so we set up to meet them places and then they could show us their house. Time after time we would get stood up. We only had 16 total lessons this week including reacts.
     Crazy story this week - so there was this super wasted guy outside our house Thursday night. I think just making everyone mad. But he finally got in these girls' face and this huge muslum guy went at him. And then the girls beat him up! I have never seen a fight like that. I felt bad but we couldn't really do anything.
     Friday we did divisions and I walked with Elder Paxman in our area it was a lot of fun. There was a huge line at the ATM and so we acted like we were in line and talked to like 5 guys and got numbers and then left.
     So excited to go to Beirra - it will be amazing!
     Mom, I wish I could get packages so you could send me some of the donuts you make, but I bet packages would never make it all the way up here to Nampula.
     David, seminary is awesome man! I wish I would have paid more attention. For real - and done all of my reading. The mission is crazy you are always super busy studying or visiting and there are always like 100 things you have to do but when you do it for others you feel good. That is one thing I really had to look at this week - I feel like I was doing a lot of stuff because I felt like I had to and so I really tried to not be selfish and to do things for others and it has helped so much. Always work your hardest and have faith in the Atonement of Christ and in the gospel.

Elder Bigelow