Birthday Week

dear parents, family and friends,

 

i am not sure if i have ever taught obey and honor the law so much in my whole mission than i have this last week. For sure, it was a hectic and awesome week. God has been blessing my companion and i so much. our area took a huge hit from a nuclear bomb and it is slowly recovering. with our super hard work and good laughs things are looking up. this sunday was a long needed boost of confidence as we had many investigators at church. It even rained and people still came :). There are a few things these people are afraid of, cold weather and rain. when those two things are combined we have close to zero church attendance. yesterday was no exception. it is the middle of winter and therefore it is cold, and it rained like i said before. we were blessed yesterday.

 

i was asked what the hardest thing to teach the people here is, i would like to answer by saying...

 

1. adam and eve in the plan of salvation

        basically, there are SOOOOOO many churches here, it is a christian country and because of that they all have their crazy beliefs about the plan of salvation. the thing that always takes the most time is Agency and the fall of Adam and Eve. a couple questions frequently asked are, "what was the fruit?", "does adam have a belly button?", "how many feet did snakes have before God took them away?" and so on. It always takes the longest to teach.

 

2. prophets

       basically every other person in Botswana is a prophet. We meet so many people, in fact once we were in a first lesson with a family of five and we began to discuss prophets. they told us that the youngest daughter (she was about 16 years old) was a prophet, she can tell peoples future and she can speak in tongues. when we asked the father to close with prayer for us, he called on his daughter... for sure, i have never heard a prayer like that before, my companion and i just looked at each other and didn't really know what to say. just a bunch of jiberish and swaying back and forth... it was interesting. 

 

3. speaking in tongues is always a common concern

 

4. do we have deliverance services and how often are they held?

       they have a belief that spirits of animals can possess us, therefore when you are possessed by an animal spirit you must go to the local prophet and he will deliver you from the evil animal spirit. most churches hold deliverance services a couple times a week. traditional doctors will even prescribe different prophets for the ill person to seek deliverance from. 

 

this place is awesome. basically God knew what he was doing when he sent me here. i was thinking about that this morning, for sure, i love this place. it is almost as crazy as me, only i don't believe in all the crazy weird things a lot of people do here. this is one of the reasons why the gospel is going crazy right now. people are thirsty for truth, there are so many who, when they hear the gospel, instantly know it is true and cling onto the iron rod with all of their heart. it is amazing to see how thirsty they are. To be able to take a huge jug of testimony and watch them fill their glasses and drink, is the hugest blessing i have been able to receive. they really are such choice and amazing people

 

this church is true.

 

mom i got the package long time back. thank you a lot. 

i am happy (and sad) that my truck was sold. good thing, but sad because i loved it. it will be nice to have some dollars when i get home though.

 

sounds like the party week was crazy. good to hear you are all well still.

 

i am glad that you were able to have so much fun with the Pugh family. they really are great, i hope they are doing very well. speaking of which, i need their address, can i get that somehow? did you play cranium with them?

 

my favorite scripture is 3 nephi 30:2. it puts the whole gospel into a nut shell. i also really like Mosiah 4:9

 

the adventure continues, until next time.

sister blum