The Elder Strain Miracle
Welcome back to another look at 'What's happening in Africa.' This week was good. We had a lot of good lessons and as always worked to help people come closer to Christ. There was a also just a lot of fun little stories this week.
On the 4th of July I made hamburgers. It was nice.
The first story is the "Elder Strain Miracle." It with us as usual working in our area. Some lessons had fallen through so we were knocking doors. We decided to knock a door we had knocked a few times, before it was always a lady telling us to come back later. Well, we knocked, no answer, we knocked again, no answer. We knocked about four times and we were getting ready to go. But I decided to knock once more, so I gave the gate a light rap. Elder Jeremias said "you need to knock like Elder Strain." To explain, Elder Strain is one of the AP's right now and when he knocks a door he practically tries to bash the door down with how hard he knocks. Then he yells "com licença!" (excuse me). It is literally impossible to not hear him. Well, I knocked again but really loud. Then to both of our surprise someone came and opened the gate. And to our double surprise it was someone we knew. It was a less-active we had met before just on the road. We had no idea where he actually lived and somehow had found it. Anyway, now we are working with him.
Another funny thing this week was probably the best conversation I have had in Mozambique. We were all sitting around at lunch just chatting and we started talking about one of Elder Higgins deep questions "do Mozambicans use toilet paper?" The following conversation was just incredible. We all shared our thoughts on hygiene and shared a few stories. I will refrain from sharing the details but lets just say I will never look at credit cards the same (best not think about it too hard).
Towards the end of the week we just had a lot of lessons fall through. I don't know what it was but every day about half of our lessons didn't happen. One morning we called to confirm a lesson and the person was busy. I thought no problem we have plenty of others. Well, we called about 10 people, almost all of them answered and were all also busy too. It was bizarre. Lessons falling through isn't surprising or anything but it was weird having two or three days of tons of lessons falling through.
Sunday was actually just cool, everyone had an indescribable positive energy that just made everything super cool. There were a few odd problems but we had a lot of people come to church, a few of them I was a little surprised by. Then our one scheduled lesson fell through. But of course it fell through when we got there. And of course it is also super far from anyone else we are teaching. So that was fun, but we made it work.
I think that is about it. It was good, even with all the unexpected lessons falling through. It reminded me of the importance of diligence. Even when everything doesn't work, it is important to just keep working. It is easy to give up, and hard to keep going. That is when it is the most important to do something.
Have a good week,
Elder Andrew McDonald
On the 4th of July I made hamburgers. It was nice.
The first story is the "Elder Strain Miracle." It with us as usual working in our area. Some lessons had fallen through so we were knocking doors. We decided to knock a door we had knocked a few times, before it was always a lady telling us to come back later. Well, we knocked, no answer, we knocked again, no answer. We knocked about four times and we were getting ready to go. But I decided to knock once more, so I gave the gate a light rap. Elder Jeremias said "you need to knock like Elder Strain." To explain, Elder Strain is one of the AP's right now and when he knocks a door he practically tries to bash the door down with how hard he knocks. Then he yells "com licença!" (excuse me). It is literally impossible to not hear him. Well, I knocked again but really loud. Then to both of our surprise someone came and opened the gate. And to our double surprise it was someone we knew. It was a less-active we had met before just on the road. We had no idea where he actually lived and somehow had found it. Anyway, now we are working with him.
Another funny thing this week was probably the best conversation I have had in Mozambique. We were all sitting around at lunch just chatting and we started talking about one of Elder Higgins deep questions "do Mozambicans use toilet paper?" The following conversation was just incredible. We all shared our thoughts on hygiene and shared a few stories. I will refrain from sharing the details but lets just say I will never look at credit cards the same (best not think about it too hard).
Towards the end of the week we just had a lot of lessons fall through. I don't know what it was but every day about half of our lessons didn't happen. One morning we called to confirm a lesson and the person was busy. I thought no problem we have plenty of others. Well, we called about 10 people, almost all of them answered and were all also busy too. It was bizarre. Lessons falling through isn't surprising or anything but it was weird having two or three days of tons of lessons falling through.
Sunday was actually just cool, everyone had an indescribable positive energy that just made everything super cool. There were a few odd problems but we had a lot of people come to church, a few of them I was a little surprised by. Then our one scheduled lesson fell through. But of course it fell through when we got there. And of course it is also super far from anyone else we are teaching. So that was fun, but we made it work.
I think that is about it. It was good, even with all the unexpected lessons falling through. It reminded me of the importance of diligence. Even when everything doesn't work, it is important to just keep working. It is easy to give up, and hard to keep going. That is when it is the most important to do something.
Have a good week,
Elder Andrew McDonald
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| Elder Higgins and me with our 4th of July hamburgers |
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| With Elder Jeremias |
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| Railroad tracks |
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| Bridge |
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| With Elder Jeremias |
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