November 25, 2013 - Matola

Well this week has been pretty nice,

  Tuesday I got to go on divisions with Elder Williams who is the Matola zone leader. We were in the MTC together and so it was way fun. We had 3 full families at church and as a district we got ten families and our frequency at church was 190!! I think that is a new record for Matola! Super pumped! Our water situation still isn’t the best and washing clothes by hand is quite the experience but this week I will try to pay somebody else to try to fix it. President shut down our idea of getting a new house because our location now is like perfect.

     Ok, so let me tell you guys a super cool story about a family we are teaching right now, Carla and Abreu! So we will start off this story way back in the 90's when Carla lived in Zimbabwe and went to our church with some people in her family but was never baptized. So she is from Mozambique and comes back and hooks up with Abreu but was never able to find the church here. Then she moves in with her family to Taxlom, right next to Samuel and Maria. So she talks to Maria and finds out our church is here but doesn’t think her husband will accept. And then she left to visit family in South Africa for like 3 weeks. So get this - while she is gone, without saying anything about the church to her husband, Elder Mendes (who left last transfer) invites him to church when they cross on the road and he came. So we talk to him at church and sit with him that week - 1st lesson - accepts baptism!! And we left him a Book of Mormon. The second time we go back he is halfway through 1st Nephi and has talked to his boss about not working Sundays and we finish the restoration. Third lesson Carla is finally back from South Africa and blown away that her husband has already found the church and he is in 2nd Nephi with an answer that Joseph Smith was a prophet and they both just want to get married and baptized!! With Samuel and Maria with neighbors and friends!! Pretty legit! The Lord really does prepare people to hear our message! 

   Andre and Maria are finally getting married and baptized with their son, Jr., this weekend and they are super excited. Their interviews went super nice! They have really strong testimonies and are going to help us teach some lessons this week. If you guys want you can write them emails this week and I can translate or google translate or something. They are seriously an amazing family. I will send pics next week.

   Thursday we are all going out to eat pizza for Thanksgiving - at least everyone in our house.

    Hey, I got your package!! I almost cried when I got Gramma’s eggnog mix - give her a big hug for me! The letters were super nice!! And trust me, I will put all that candy and sauce mixes to good use! Sorry I couldn’t wait until Christmas but I don’t know what I would do without the socks that were in there. Thanks everyone!

    Well, tell everyone ‘hi’ for me!

    Love ya guys!

Elder Bigelow

November 18, 2013 - Matola

Hey guys,

  Hey can you please forward me Holden’s emails? I still have not read any of them.  And also I heard the Houstons are moving. Can you get me their email? And also I am not sure if we ever gave them back the Rosetta Stone language computer program I used before the mission. If it is still at our house can you give it back to them? I think Ransom might have borrowed it after me. Thanks.

   Well, I got Dad’s email and wrote him back. Hope everything goes well on his surgery and that is awesome he is getting Saul’s old truck!

  This week went well. We finally found some new families. The neighbors of Samuel and Maria are awesome. She has been in South Africa and is coming back today, but he has come to church twice and is reading in the Book of Mormon. Apparently she lived in Zimbabwe and got to know the church and has been looking for it here so we are really excited about them. Andre and Maria are finally getting married and baptized on the 30^th, next week.

   Tell Colton Edwards ‘hi’ for me. That is crazy he is already home. It’s good to hear that all the missionaries in the Philippines are doing fine. Who did Reagan marry?

   Tell David ‘hi’ for me. Does he have his own email? I want to write him his own letter so, if not, I will just send it to yours next week.

  We might get a new house! One that is pretty close to ours right now actually. But I have kinda gotten used to bucket showers and am learning how to hand wash clothes. It takes forever haha but all the people here do it like everyday. It's pretty much a part of their culture. It is pretty funny how they dry them. They just beat them against a giant rock. Maybe one day I will try to film it.

      Did you get that letter from President Kretly I sent about the dresses? What is the situation with that? We need a lot of big dresses because we have quite a few small ones but some of the women, like Maria, are kinda big here and she was sad none of the dresses we had fit her. But they are going to rent one.

 Well I might try to send some pics today so have a great week!

Elder Bigelow

This is a building in Maputo that was designed by the same guy who did the Eiffel Tower.

November 11, 2013 - Matola

Hey guys,

   This week has probably been the longest week of my life. 1st off all the new missionaries in our district got here and it is a little weird adjusting. We were all super tight in our last house and could joke around and stuff but now it’s a little different - but things are going good.

  Also, what started out as trying to fix a leaky shower head turned into us having no water for 3 days and taking showers with our neighbors hose sticking through our bathroom window! Our pump has tons of problems, but hopefully this week we can get it all fixed. Some guy came and fixed it enough to where we have water, but the pressure was sky high, so the 1st time I turned on the shower head it exploded -haha! Add it to my list of things to fix in our house this transfer.

   Elections are going on and so this week we are supposed to buy three weeks of food and water! Nothing is really happening though. Don’t worry. I have been learning karate every morning in case things get ugly and I should be a black belt soon!

    We found 2 awesome families. One is Samuel and Maria’s neighbors who are supercool. She gets back from South Africa this week. Samuel got the priesthood last week and is seriously a super-member who is helping us a ton. He has given us a bunch of references and is always inviting people to have family home evening with them at their house! President already has a calling picked out for him and we don’t even teach them - they just teach us!

    Also we found a couple, Lorenso and Acusena, who are cool. He came to church yesterday. I wrote about them last week. Our first lesson was crazy. I asked what she was looking for in a church and she goes ‘the answer to three questions: where did we come from? why are we here? and where are we going after we die?’ I couldn’t believe it. I had to make sure she didn’t already have a plan of salvation pamphlet! But we taught it and the restoration this week to them.

   Hey that is super crazy about the Philippines! Have you heard anything about Chantz? And Ransom wrote me about the Utah thing. That would be awesome. I really think I want to go to UVU.

   Don’t worry about my health, Mom. It’s always supernice.

 Well, love ya guys!

  Elder Bigelow

p.s.  I asked President Kretly about the wedding dresses, and this was his answer:

About the wedding dresses they can send without put any costs, just need to send and put as a used dresses. Because if they put a amount the value, we pay a lot of taxes here!
Thank you for being a great missionary!
Paulo Kretly
President
Mozambique (Angola) Maputo Mission

[President Kretly is Brazilian and his native language is Portuguese. You can really tell J]

November 4, 2013 - Matola (still)

    I am sure our mission could use those dresses for sure. [A sister in our ward here in Eagar wanted to know if she could donate some wedding dresses and temple dresses to the ‘wedding planners’ in Ryan’s mission] I will write President Kretley about it in my email this week. 

  Well transfers were pretty crazy. Me and Elder Ebmeyer are staying together for a third transfer!! 3 out of the 6 people in our house are leaving and our house is getting a new elder. I am district leader again. It should be a fun transfer but not at all what I was expecting. 

    Elder Lake, my companion in the MTC is going to be branch president in Inhamizua and Inhamizua has 4 missionaries now. They need a lot of help with leadership. Amisse, the guy me and Elder Awbry helped get married is the elders quorum president and is doing super awesome, I hear. But I found out today that Pasqua’s wife passed away. Super super sad. They are only like 35, but what a blessing they were able to get married and live the law of chastity before she passed away. I am going to call him today.

    We finally got a new family to come to church, Ragina and Sadiki, who are pretty cool and we had an awesome lesson last night. We sat with a couple who he had sat with the missionaries like 3 years ago and when we called him decided to let us come by but didn’t tell his wife. They both are without a fixed church, so I felt like I should ask them ‘what are you looking for in church?’ And she thought for a minute and she asks in exactly these words: 'Where did I come from? Why am I here? and Where am I going?'  We were just like blown away! So we ask if she has ever found an answer to any of these questions and she says no. So we pull out the Plan of Salvation pamphlet and have her read the intro and she almost started crying and says ‘These are the exact questions I have!’ So we taught about the Plan of Salvation and we are going back this week. It was super nice to have a lesson like that because sometimes I feel like we have been sitting with tons of new people but not having very many great lessons. But it really helped my faith that God is preparing people to hear our message. Andre and Maria will be baptized this transfer but we want to baptize at least one other family as well. 

    And please don’t remind me about how much time I have left! I hate thinking about it! It makes me super sad sometimes. Missionary work is super hard or frustrating but I don’t know how I am going to leave this place! I don’t even have the slightest idea of what I want to do or where I want to go when I get home. Well I love ya all  - thanks for the photos.

     Elder Bigelow

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