Happy Halloween

we have an investigator who has a heart problem that no one can figure out. she was just referred to a specialist and is going to johannesburg to receive more treatment very soon. unfortunately for us, we will miss her a lot. we met her by accident, we went to her house thinking it was someone elses house, when we realized it wasn't the right place, we just talked to her. she is 21, a university student, lives alone and has a large yard that didn't look very well kept. after speaking to her we asked her if we could help her with her yard to which she said yes. so the next wednesday we rallied the forces (the elders in our district) and all of the tools and went to work. we gave her a book of mormon and set an appointment to see her the next day. when we got to the appointment we found that she had read from the very beginning to 1 nephi 3. she came to church and left half way through, when we went to visit her we found that she has been sick with a heart condition for a long time and when she works too hard, or is in new situations, she gets very bad chest pain and then she becomes dizzy, even to the point where she can pass out. so the reason why her yard is unkept is because she is physically unable to do it! it also turns out that her parents were visited by missionaries when she was six and she still remembers, especially about the book of mormon. everything about us meeting her testifies to me that it was 100% not a coincidence, when we went to her house the first time, she wasn't even home. she met us outside as we were about to leave. another testimony to me that i don't know the mind of God. we have really grown to love her and she is doing so well (minus the heart thing) truly we will be so sad to lose her, please pray that she can get better soon.

another reason why i don't know the mind of God, WHAT? I get to train?! i am excited and nervous, thank you for all of your advice, i will do my best and the Lord will do the rest. :) 

love all of you, and i love the work! thank you for all the support.

sister blum

October 23, 2011

Dear everyone,

If anyone asks how I am doing tell them... I'M SO GREAT! Mom, thank you for the motherly advice, although, you should probably tell my companion that, she doesn't eat anything. She pretends to eat by putting a lot of food on her plate, but after taking a couple bites, she gives me the rest of it because she is full. One thing I have learned to do is to never take very much because I know she will always end up filling my plate. If I say no, she will sneak it on when I am not watching, or she will feed it to the little kids around her. My Kenyan companion is a funny one! I love her very much, she is a great missionary and we are having a great time serving people around us. Sadly, this is her very last Monday on mission, she will become the dearly departed this time next week :( But the good news is, she is still going strong AND I will be getting a brand new little missionary, either from Zimbabwe or Zambia. Pretty excited about that, any tips for being a trainer?

There is a heat wave blowing through Botswana right now. It started two days ago and is expected to be over by Wednesday. Yesterday it was 37 celsius. today it is forcasted to be 38 and tomorrow 39. whatever the forecast says, it is HOT! 

We were meeting with a member yesterday who has a pretty amazing story, right now she is suffering from a brain tumor and is here in Botswana visiting her children. She is going back to South Africa this week for her final radiation treatment. this sister started having headaches about two years ago, didn't think anything of it until they got worse and worse and lasted for a long time. so she started going to a specialist who didn't tell her anything. after a while of no success, she went to a random doctor who decided to run some type of test on her. When the results came back they didn't really show anything, except for one of the results (that the doctor didn't ask for). at first he was confused because he didn't ask for that result but then he realized that there was something there. from there she went in for a scan and found that there was a 2 cm big tumor just millimeters away from her optic nerve. she has now been battling this tumor for about 6 months. the amazing thing is that she has so much faith and never wants to think of herself. when another sister in our ward got sick, she went over to her house to help her clean, she found that the woman didn't have food, not even a broom, or a mop to clean the floor. so this sister went and got her all the groceries she would need for a week, a mop, a broom, cleaning supplies and the works, then she cooked for her everyday until she felt well enough to cook for herself! this woman is truly incredible. I hope all of us can learn something of her example. let us be more christlike in reaching out to our friends and neighbors. 



the work continues, and i love it here in bots. ke a go rata tata!



sister blum

October 17, 2011

We saw some few miracles this week,

1. secretly I have had this nasty cold that has been staying for weeks. it made me sort of really tired all the time. Anyway, the miracle came just recently, I got a blessing from our district leader about 3 weeks ago, and in the blessing it said according to my faith I would be healed. Well, i guess i needed more faith because I didn't get healed! but you know what, God has his plan for each and everything.

the miracle came finally. as a district we weren't really that unified, so we made a unanimous decision to change that. we decided that each companionship, would take turns every Sunday cooking lunch and then serving our fellow district members. About the same time we made that decision, I got sick. at first it was ok, but then it got somehow worse. our unity as a district began to improve more and more, and i finally got a blessing from the district leader (like i said before). then members of the district began checking up on me to see how i was doing. yesterday, we came to know that they had began praying for me, almost instantly, I got better, and now i am 100% again. I decided that God is funny. that was a good joke on his part. I do know that all things are for our experience, i think all of us needed that lesson. I know God lives, he loves us, and he teaches us what we need to learn. but once the lesson is learned, he moves on to something else. just pray that the next lesson won't include my health.

2. On Monday last week we had a zone activity with this man named Elder Hartman, he came and spoke to us about the color code (you know red, yellow, blue, white personality types? if you don't you should go check out http://www.colorcode.com/ Sister Chirchir and I have both decided that it has revolutionized the way we teach. I think we have finally figured out teaching people and not lessons. Who knew the key would be learning about the color code? We have one investigator in particular that we have been struggling with for the last 3 months. He is a member referral whose family is so anxious to see him be baptized, however, despite our best efforts, he has budged very little. After learning about the color code, we came to the decision that he is a red, thus when we went to teach him this past week, we were able to totally teach to how he wanted us to teach him.

 It was a complete miracle to see the change in him as we taught to his needs. The lesson itself was inspired beyond belief, we talked about goals and about what he wanted to achieve in life, then we helped him realize that there are many things that he is doing that are preventing him from achieving them, he has begun to make steps towards dropping the bad behaviors and picking up good ones.

From our visit with him this last week to now, he is a different person. He came to church on his own after an absence of 3 weeks, and he was actually smiling, he was excited to greet us (which doesn't happen), and the list just goes on! We were able to identify his concern with the help of his member brother, and together they are working it out. The brother is a returned missionary and after that lesson he explained to us that we were totally inspired, he said that "I wish I would have known when I was on a mission that the people who are not progressing are not actually rejecting the message, they just have a concern that won't allow them to progress." I have gained a stronger testimony of Teaching people not lessons.

3. On a sad note, we met a less active return missionary, both Sister ChirChir and myself are not exactly sure what to think. He came home and slowly by slowly, broke some commandments and then tried to justify them, then he got caught up in trying to find "more truth" as he put it by searching for anti-mormon literature, then it began to escalate, now he is totally less-active and wants nothing to do with God. He doesn't believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and he doesn't believe that God is our Father, he thinks of God more as a Grandfather (as he put it... not really sure what he meant by that). He still reads the Book of Mormon every blue moon, and when he reads it he feels so good, but he denies that those feelings are the Spirit. He doesn't believe there is the Holy Spirit at all. We are afraid he has been blinded by the craftiness of men. We are not really sure what to do with him. We will be seeing him again this week and we are going to try to rekindle his testimony (which he claims he still has, because he feels good when he reads the Book of Mormon, but he doesn't believe in God, Christ, the Spirit, the church, the prophet, or anything...). 

October 9, 2011

hey hey, mi familia! 

I just love you all. 

Thank you for your emails (tonkie rolie mashie) as my companion would say. So once again i decided that i love africa. i miss home, but i think home should come here. it is the best! the greatest blessing is my companions! i have had companions from madagascar, uganda, new zealand, and now kenya. I know none of them are from botswana, and one is not from africa but i sure do love them. the greatest things that i have been learning lately are:



1. the mission is the training center for life.


2. the world is like a fruit salad, each person brings their own fruit and when it is mixed together it is nice, but when there is the sweet dressing stuff poured on it, it is divine (the yellow personalities, such as myself ;), are like the dressing).


3. your sanity is based on how well you can adapt to different situations and circumstances.


4. obedience is the most important attribute of Christ. if you are obedient, you will grow in every attribute automatically, without even trying!


5. i am a child of god (it isn't just a primary song)


6. God wants all of his children to be happy, he doesn't give a hoot if you are black, white, purple, red, yellow, orange or blue. He just wants you to live his gospel and have joy.


7. serving will make a friend faster than anything else.


8. the five words that (if applied) will change you completely, smile, be kind, show gratitude.



at the beginning of this transfer, God threw a whole new ball of wax at the botswana missionaries, i can't really put my finger on what it was, things just became so complicated and hard. emergency transfers almost every week, missionaries without residency getting kicked out of bots by accidentaly crossing the border... illness (i was sick with a cold on wednesday), and many other trials. on the bright side, a lot of dinner appointments. 

thank you for your prayers, aunt tami, i needed those prayers a couple of weeks ago, the whole mission did, that was an inspired thing you did and i am happy you listened and obeyed that spiritual prompting. as a mission we are fine, just random crazy trials that have been coming. and where there are trials, no matter how small, there is a need to pray. thank you again.

 I love you all.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!! 

Stephanie, even you 

hyrum, even you i guess.

 


ha ha, love you all. serious



sister blum

October 3, 2011

WOW. i have been out for a long time. things are great still. Sister
Chirchir says hello to everyone.

we were teaching a seventh day adventist the other day, ironically she used
to be a seventh day adventist herself. threfore she could relate so well to
him. it was a very interesting lesson to sit in on. it wasn't the first time
she has shared her experience of conversion with a member of the sda faith.
normally when they hear that she changed to become a "mormon" they say she
is lost and decieved. in that lesson we were able to find the man is
actually rather prepared, we gave him a baptismal date, and when he heard
the story it was like someone turned on the lights in his brain. he
understood the whole thing and what was greater, he felt the truth of what
she said. turns out he has been studying our literature, especially the
lesson pamphlets that he inherited (found on the ground) from his house
mate. i guess sister chirchir uses her story to test the preparedness of the
people we teach. this man passed the test

a muslim investigator i taught with sister clendon was baptized this week! i
am learning more and more that the true gospel of christ doesn't care who
you are, or what religion you are. it is the truth, and if you aren't living
it, you must re-adjust your path. also, there are prepared people everywhere
to receive the gospel. keep looking and you will find em! God is great, the
gospel is true, please pray for me that i can learn scriptures better.

the diet is going great, i have lost 7 kg's! only a few hundred more to go
;)

please keep praying for the missionaries out there, they need your help.

sister blum