a year left on mission today!

mom,

the packages have not come yet. don't worry, the senior couple has been not here for the last week. when they come back i am sure all will be well. thank you for your love and support. i hope the weekend was good. those little ones are so cute!

 

the birthday was great! i celebrated it by waking up at 6:30, exercising for 30 minutes, eating, showering, studying at 8, then companionship studying at 9, then teaching lessons all day! we got home at 9, did some planning, then went to bed at 10:30. ! yep pretty awesome :) but really though, i had a great birthday. the elder's made me a cake (ps, that was a miracle, i guess they just like me the best. don't tell the other sisters, they will probably be jealous). i got a phone call from a recent convert who was visiting her family in south africa! and i got another phone call from the mission office.

 

we have a senior couple who is serving here and on wednesday they took sister chir chir (pronounced cheer cheer) and me to lunch (sister chir chir is another sister serving with us, it was her birthday on the 15 of may.) because we were on exchanges, they took the opportunity to take us to a really nice restaurant in the middle of the bush. turns out there is this awesome greenhouse and in the center of it there is a huge tree. there is a restaurant built around the tree. the amazing thing is that the tree itself has such a huge canopy that it gives shade to the entire restaurant. there is no roof, it is just the tree. the food was amazing as well. i love being a sister missionary, we get to go out to really nice restaraunts for our birthdays!

 

the muslim man/ recent convert taught the best lesson about the book of mormon ever on sunday. our ward mission leader has been giving all of our recent converts the opportunity to teach a lesson in gospel principles. so far it has been awesome. i love helping them prepare and listening to the outcome. ahh, i wish you could have been here to hear it, it was P-O-W-E-R-F-U-L-L! i can't believe how much joy i feel when i see these people that we have baptised become so awesome on their own. he is a converted soul. his wife is the one who called me on my birthday.

 

work continues, with a skip in our steps and smiles on our faces we are proclaiming the gospel all over this place.

 

i am happy to hear that the Lord placed the right chicken in the coop to keep all the little ones safe! amazing :) speaking of orphans, we are teaching a man who works in an orphanage. it is the only one i have ever heard of in this country. each person in botswana has a home village, basically like a town but they call it the village, they come to gaborone to work and such. the women come here, have a baby, and send it to the village where the parents or the grandparents raise the child. to have a child that someone isn't taking care of is very strange. adoption really doesn't exist either, i guess marriage would also fall under that category.

 

if by chance someone wants to be married they have to pay a bride price (called lebola), it is just like johny lingo and is even payed in cows!

 

if there is a man who wants the child who is in the village with the mothers parents (the child is called by the mothers surname) basically the man has to pay a similar thing called "damages" to the mother. when the man buys the child, he has the right to change the surname to his own. that is how marriage and adoption work here. that is why it is very uncommon, it takes a lot of money to buy cows, and a lot of money to pay damages.

 

otherwise, things are going well.

 

Dad,

awesome job on all of the success. it is great to hear you are doing well finally. i have been taking a lot of photos on other people's cameras, i printed some today and will be sending them home when i finally get around to sending that package.

 

i understand what you are saying about finding some people to love here, we have been following your advice and are finding that it is true. it started with a baptism we had when i first got here, her name is ellen. next we met the muslim family (because we knew ellen) then we met another man named tshepo who has just become another extension of our love for ellen. tshepo will be baptized on june 12. the Lord has been blessing us. we hope to continue finding those people who can be added to the family that we have made here. we love missionary work, we love our recent converts and we love the people who just keep on adding themselves to the group! it is a natural thing for the newcomers, we just let them come and spend time with us awesome people. they are taught the lessons by the recent converts, we just sit back and direct their comments. i never knew things could be this awesome and amazing.

 

thank you, i love all of you, may the lord bless you even more and more

 

sister blum

May 23, 2010

sounds like africa is the place to be right now :) cape town will be so blessed to have them in their mission. maybe when you guys come and pick me up, we can see what we can do about going to see them. it is far far away though. when do they leave?

 

happy birthday to karli and me! thank you so much for your well wishes :) turns out may is still the best month to have been born in. all of the birthdays in this month were sister misisonaries! way to go sisters! at zone conferrence they sang to us and it was awesome.

 

anyway, time is almost up.

 

poor tommy, lost one of his fingers... hope the fish like it. i have a feeling it will not get hime down, i am excited to hear the funny jokes and things he comes up with about his missing finger. great guy, i miss him a lot.

 

how is the rest of the crew?

 

turns out my cup is running over, i don't know how i came to love this place so much. it just sort of happened. i think i would be perfectly content to stay here for the rest of my life. i love my companion, i love this area (even though it is in a city), i love the people we teache, the ones we have baptized, the other missionaries, everything. it is great.

 

the bishop told me i needed to give a talk this last sunday, i prepared and when i got to church and put my stuff on the stand, he pulled me asside and told me he actually didn't need me to speak because those he had assigned came. he was using me as a back up plan just in case oone of the speakers didn't show up. the ones who spoke were less active members who did a good job. despite a couple "halelujias" "amens" and "praise the Lord"'s. another reason i love africa, the people are just so funny.

 

we climbed the tallest hill in gaborone today, it took us 30 minutes, i took a lot of pictures and will be printing them soon. on the way down we ran into a pack of monkeys. the monkeys formed this wall and i am pretty sure they would have charged us if we wouldn't have run away. the elders ran faster than us and were yelling over their shoulders for the monkeys to take us first! they are so brave. thank goodness our elders are so good to us sisters! ha ha, the most dangerous things here are the monkeys.

 

the camera, i think i will be getting one here, better not risk having it be taken in the post. not sure when i will get one, but the sd card you sent in a different package has really been coming in handy.

 

thank you for the love, the packages, (haven't gotten them yet, i wait and am excited everyday to see if the post is here) and all the prayers, they are helping me a ton. please pray that i have patience. i really struggle with that one sometimes.

 

till next week,

 

love you,

sister blum

 

ke tla le bona ka monday! "i will see you on monday" (i don't know how to say write you on monday)

the language, i am the most fluent one of the missionaries save another sister who has been here for six months more than me :) fluent by i know how to say hi, by and ask about families.

May 9, 2011

happy mothers day yesterday!




mothers... congratulations on being awesome. the holiday itself is not as

huge of a thing here, but we still dedicated sacrament meeting to praising

all the moms out there.



it has been six months since i started this journey, looking back on it now

i have so many good memories. i have a deep love for the people and i really

enjoy this missionary work stuff. this transfer has grown my faith a lot. i

think i have realized something through all of the trial, hard times are

like the fertilizer to our little trees of faith. also i have realized that

there truly is so much more to missionary work than baptizing the world. i

love the lessons i am learning, i highly doubt i would have been smart

enough to learn them on my own. through everything i have found great peace,

a love for the savior, a happy heart no matter what, and a deep love for all

people.



some missionaries in the past made a list of "you know you are a missionary

when"... and the ones i liked was,



you know you are a missionary when you do ring checks on everyone, and not

to see if they are single.



when you become best friends with a stranger in a minute conversation.



when that best friend/complete stranger breaks your heart because they

didn't come to church.



when you can bring up a conversation with anyone about anything.



when your companion wakes you up in the middle of the night because they are

bearing their testimony that "Joseph Smith REALLY WAS a true prophet!"



you have one appointment that will never cancel, church!



when you fall asleep the moment you sit still.



i love this mission stuff. i love the people and all of their funny little

traditional things. there are many funny things.



first off, everyone is so good at soccer. we play every saturday morning and

everytime we have these nine year old boys who come, the only thing i can

beat them in is blocking the ball with my face.



there are 8 kinds of animals; goats, horses, cows, donkeys, chickens, dogs,

and a couple cats. they live wherever they want. it is not uncommon to have

a huge traffic jam because the cows are just chillin in the middle of the

road.



you never wear shoes on a carpet



you always wear shoes on concrete floors



you never sit on a floor without something under you



if it rains on a sunday, prepare to have 0 people at church.



there are a million and a half different churches and they all believe

different things, it is like joseph smith described his home prior to the

restoration of the gospel.



people love to talk about Jesus, and they also love to have prayers prayed

for them. sometimes they will stop you on the street because they need

deliverance, so you need to pray for them.



those are all the things i can think of right now.



it is amazing for me to see how the Lord has prepared me to serve my mission

here. all the things i have experienced in my life have prepared me somehow

for this, the greatest thing is that this is preparing me somehow for my

life in the future! it is also amazing how the Lord has prepared these

people for me, i am meeting so many people that i know i knew before i came

to this earth. seriously, it is a miracle. we are teaching a family right

now. they are a young married couple with a 7 month old baby. they live next

door to a recent convert. we started teaching this pastor man who has a

little candy stand in front of the recent converts house. the husband became

interested in what we were saying and started to join us. we gave him the

commitment to pray (he is a muslim) and left him with a plan of salvation

pamphlet. he read the whole thing and prayed about it. we saw him on our way

to another appointment and he asked us if he could have a book of mormon, we

gave it to him. a couple days later he said he had prayed about it and he

even offered a family prayer for the first time in their whole marriage (we

didn't even ask him to, he just felt like he needed to pray with his

family), he also said we needed to teach his wife. we started teaching the

two of them. turns out the husband is a muslim, the wife is a christian.

they got married and started joking about how they needed a church that they

could both go to. they joked for a while, then became serious. they stopped

going to church and started searching a week before they met us. they have

come to church two weeks in a row, they come to every activity, they have

read the book of mormon, and they know that this church was their answer.

they will be baptized the end of this month.

seriously amazing. the Lord is good, i love the gospel, i loved talking to

my family and i will keep being awesome and having a good time!



love you a lot,

sister blum

May 2, 2011

dear all,

sometimes i forget that i need to have bucket loads of fun. my companion is
really good at reminding me that i just need to laugh and take it easy!
thank you everyone for your love and support, i have gotten some people
telling me that they actually read my blog! wahooooo! that makes a girl in
botswana africa feel pretty good.

so we are teaching this man right now, he is 71 years old. man alive, i love
teaching him! he has been taught everything, we are just waiting for him to
be baptized. so we make him teach us a lesson each time we go over. last
time it was the plan of salvation! i have never met a man with a more story
telling personality than him. he explained like this (in short version) "so
there was God, he was sleeping. one day he woke up and the universe started.
he saw that there was all of this stuff around so he put them all together
and made a world. he realized he was bored and he thought he needed to put
something else in the world. it took him three days to come up with the idea
to make a man so he made a man, and named him adam. he told adam that he was
not to eat the forbidden tree. then god realized this man is lonely, so he
gave adam a huge sleeping pill and an injection with a large needle that
made him go to sleep. when he was asleep, god took a huge knife, and cut out
a rib from him. then he woke up. when he woke up, god had made a woman, her
name was eve. they built a home, things were great. then one day, eve was
walking in the garden and a huge, sneaky snake pretty sure it was a black
mamba) went to eve and said, you know eve. god has been lying to you. he
told you not to eat the fruit but that is because he doesn't want you to
know anything. take it! eat and merry!" in a womans voice "oh thank you, it
is good" the snake then says "take a lot of the fruits, take them home, make
a pie and feed it to adam!" the next day, adam comes home and enters the
house. he says "eve, i am hungry, what are you cooking me!" she answers, a
nice pie made of nice fruit from the middle of the garden! adam says, eve,
that is not good. she says sure it is, here eat it. so he did!" and the
story continued, i tell you, it was the funniest interpretation of the plan
of salvation i have ever heard. he was acting, changing voices, and
everything! ah yah, a good man.

i think a lot of people are interested about what food we eat... we eat
lintles, rice, beans, chicken, chipate (like a taco shell) papa (similar to
mashed potatoes but made from corn flour) and morojo, similar to spinach.
anyway, i need to go, i seemed to spent my time telling the story of our
dear investigator. i think he would be really good in primary as the sharing
time director! kids love him. as long as he doesn't teach false doctrine i
think it will be ok.

anyway, things are continuing, i love mission and i love life. peace out and
keep up the good lives you are all living. keep me posted, it is good for me
to hear. love you all too too much.

sister blum

mothers day, i am not sure what is going to be happening, i do know one
thing, i will not miss the phone call for the life of me. it will happen and
i will let you know more details when i do.