The Beginning of the End

March 14, 2023

The Beginning of the End

Well, it happened. Last week I mentioned how there would be a end of mission milestone coming up, well, two days later it arrived... MyPlan. To explain, MyPlan is a program the church made to help missionaries go home better prepared. It talks about setting goals and plans for your spiritual studies, education and yes even dating. Anyway, it's a blast and is a true sign of how little time I have left. But there's still plenty of work to be done.

And now, the weather... Hurricane Fred came back, the first time wasn't enough, so he decided to do a tropical storm 180 and come back to hit Beira again. But guess what, he didn't hit again! The double fakeout! This time around we got a lot more wind and a lot less rain. But of course we still had to stay inside, but what can you do?

Saturday was my birthday, it was chill. It rained a little so we were a little hesitant to leave but eventually we left and it was a solid day. We got to visit everyone we wanted to. Elder Falcão made Stroganoff for lunch and I baked some cookies later, it was nice. Nothing too crazy.

Alright tiny story, we have a recent convert that is pretty cool but for no particular reason hasn't been showing up to church (he said it is laziness). So we decided to take him with us to teach people. He really enjoyed it and he will definitely be helping us teach more. And it will help him show up to church more.

Alright another story, unfortunately this one isn't mine but it is funny. So the Elders were informed of a active member that wasn't paying tithing, but rather than teaching him the importance of tithing they decide to take this member with them to teach an investigator of the church. What do they teach? Tithing. Then at the end of the lesson they invite the member to testify about tithing and how it has helped him. The member, having no testimony on tithing, flounders for a bit then admits that he doesn't pay tithing. And then guess what? He starts paying tithing. Just a funny little story some missionaries told me but the principle is important.
You can't have a testimony of something you don't do.

Sunday it was raining and the mission ordered us to stay inside. It was pretty unfortunate because we weren't able to go to church and support the branch but orders are orders. Plus it did rain almost all day and it was windy, but still it was not quite a hurricane.

Well, I told myself that I would talk about being trunky when I got MyPlan. First off, I would not consider myself trunky, and the Elders I live with confirm that. To be honest, I do think about home and a lot of stuff there. And sometimes, I do get tired of some missionary things. But I'm doing good. My go home date, while fast approaching isn't changing. All things at home aren't going anywhere, they'll be there when I get there. But my time here is running out. If I don't work hard I'll always regret it because I won't ever be able to make up for it. So I want to keep on working. I might be tired sometimes, but I want to be diligent and not have any regrets.

That's basically the summary of my thoughts on the matter. I'm doing good, trying to work hard and I'm also having fun, so things are going great.

That's all for this week,
Elder Andrew McDonald

I'm starting to notice how I'm getting more and more pictures of random plants and animals than of myself. I'll try and fix that as in 20 years I probably won't care about 3 cats lying next to each other.