April 29, 2012

the work is still blessed. i am keeping a sweet journal so that i can make up for the lack of detail in the emails. it's hard to get so many things written in 30 minutes.

the waffle eating contest was cool but i lost hard core. i only ate 5 (in my defense though, i wasn't really competing cause they were running low on eggs and milk) compared to two of the elders who ate 13. my companion got down 10 then she almost threw up. the elders tied cause they ran out of ingredients for the batter.

this week had a lot of time spent preparing for the young ambassadors who are visiting. sister hadlock was given the assignment of being the choir director for the pre show which has been rather stressful. we have been trusting in the promise that there are many honorable ways to find people to teach as we have been spending a lot of time working on making it sound nice. i say we cause by default i am singing in the choir. the mission president has approved it and is thrilled. so thus it is going to work out great. most of the botswana dignitaries will be in attendance, who knows, maybe we'll baptize em all and then the population of 2 million botswanans will follow... !

satan is being a jerk to our investigators, they just seem to be struggling at the moment. each one of them has a challenge of some sort, and they are beginning to not want to see us anymore. we hope it's just a phase and they'll get over their challenges as we continue to help them. we are doing the best that we know how. 

love you all, keep being awesome this week

sister blum

ps, i was sent here for so many reasons,

1) god knew there were certain people I needed to help. Everyone that i come into contact with i know that god sent me to them so that i can help prepare them (to some degree) for the blessings of the gospel, and it was only me who could touch them the way that they needed. 

2) for myself. i needed to learn lots of lessons that could have only happened in this environment and culture.
 
3) i could build relationships with the members. there are so many people here who i just know that we knew each other before this life and we needed to come together and be friends again. it kind of isn't fair cause we gain all of these relationships with so many treasured people and then you have to leave them. fortunately modern technology is making it easier to stay in contact with people.

i like to look at bots as my personal training ground. god put me here to save others and to save myself (as strange as that sounds)

i have rejoiced in my service above that of the world! enos 1: 26 the work is sweet.

April 22, 2012

the district i'm in right now is great. it is full of six americans

elder epstein from mes arizona
elder richardson from logan
elder sparks from some tiny town in utah
elder young from roberts idaho.
and us.

we went on a game drive this morning. that was fun, we saw a million impala, wart hogs and ostriches. some kudu, a zebra, and an ostrich egg! pretty sweet eh? all on a nice pday morning. later today we are planning on having a waffle eating contest. wish me luck, elder young is a HUGE man, and elder richardson has a tape worm and can eat everything, usually he helps all of us finish our dinners at da's.

it is nice to have a united district, all of them are so willing to help and support. it is easy to feel like we are just one. the two new elders (sparks and young) are white washing their area. they had a baptism yesterday and it just went so well cause the four of us knew the investigator really well due to the past unity of our district. we counted it as a district baptism.

the young ambassador's are coming to botswana. they will be here on may 2nd. yesterday, due to my companions amazing musical talent, the bishop of the ward asked her to be in charge of the choir for the pre-show... i am just amazed at how talented she is. i almost wonder if she sort of knew something like that would happen cause it seems like she just knew exactly what to do. she had a song chosen, sheet music and everything within two minutes of the assignment. moral is, we will be singing on may 2nd... rumor has it there will be some dignitaries there (whatever that means).

missionary work continues. our area is doing so well at the moment. god has been blessing us a lot. our people progress so slowly, but they are progressing. the best part is, they will be gems in building the kingdom once they are converted. I like how this week seemed to be a break through week for a lot of them. they are showing fruits of conversion. they are becoming happier, more united with their family members, and independant in their testimonies of christ and his church. God has rewarded us so much these last transfers. i think more than at any time on my whole mission. i love this work.



Love sis Blum

April 15, 2012

we watched conference and it was G O O D! i love the talks by eyring
and uchtdorf. each one was filled with lots of council that i needed
(and our investigators needed) to hear. i think that is the coolest
part about conference on mission, the talks are not really about you,
but you get so excited when they share something that you know your
investigators will benefit from. we have these two ladies (the golden
ones i talked about a long time ago kutsafalo and dimpho) who came to
conference and they were helped so much in their life by it. it
pleases my heart so much that they are doing well in their conversion
and they are grasping the "mormon culture" lifestyle. It has been neat
to see them make so many sacrifices for the gospel. i can see their
testimony and relationship with christ growing so much and it makes me
happy inside. i sure love them, and sure loved conference.

transfers was this week. looks as though i will be finishing my last
transfer in gwest with sister hadlock! another awesome six weeks lies
ahead. i can't wait for the miracles that are yet to happen and the
people we are going to find and help. sweet is the work. i love this
missionary work stuff, we are going strong, and the area is doing
well. it's full of some real quality investigators. thanks for you
consistent prayers on their behalf, if you could please keep them
coming it will be so much more apreciated, we really need all the help
we can get out here.

you are in my prayers as well, i hope that the struggles you are
facing and have faced in the last 18 months that i don't know about,
have left you a better person than before. i look forward to seeing
the difference in your spirituality when i return home. keep praying,
reading, going to church, repenting, and becoming converted to christ.
i'll do the same.

ke a go rata thata! (i love you too much)

sister blum

Conference Weekend

dear all, this week will be short. my apologies.

we started a prank war with the elders, (with a few rules though, we
aren't allowed to interfere with proselyting) now we are all on the
edge all the time. sadly i am not sure if they will win... sister
hadlock is kind of crazy and i have not lost a prank war yet (except
for when it was against dad). we'll let you know how that goes.

as far as work, we had a super sweet missionary fireside that pumped
up the enthusiasm of the ward to help us missionaries out. yesterday
we received two referrals and lots of people who want to come teaching
with us this week.

our next plan for our district is to have a district car wash. we will
be inviting the ward to help out and give tours of the chappel as the
people wait for their cars to be finished.

the less active group i mentioned last week are still less active...
hopefully things will get better as we keep doing our best to help
them.

love you,
sister blum

 things are going well. we had a great turn out at church yesterday. unfortunately i had to go to the other side of the city to be companions with the other sister missionary (sister banda). sis hadlock (my companion) has an incredible singing voice. she felt prompted to sing in sacrament meeting for the ysa ward. sis lovell (sister banda's companion) is the only one who knows how to play the piano so we had to do a little bit of an exchange. i went to the sacrament meeting at gwest (the ward i serve in now) then i left to exchange with sis lovell in broadhurst. i wish a lot that i could have been there to hear her sing, apparently it was stupendous and fantastic. everyone keeps calling her sister dion (as in celine dion).

church in the old ward that i used to attend (broadhurst) was nice. i was able to see a lot of the people that i baptized and what made it better was that they had callings and were teaching classes and things. :) i miss that side a lot. it was a little crazy because sister banda had a baptism that wasn't prepared for. fortunately, we were able to work it out and the service ran smoothly and was very nice.

funny story, the ward (in gwest) decided it would be a good idea to have me play the piano. the piano has a lot of recorded songs and all you have to do is locate the song and press play. i thought "sure, how hard can it be?" especially cause i know how to work the piano. when the time for the opening hymn came, i couldn't find it on the system anywhere so the conductor just started everyone acapella. then i found the song and waited until i thought was the beginning of the next verse. when i pushed play, the congregation was in the middle of the chorus, then it just got worse, i stopped the music then started it again, and on and on. the bishop finally stood up and started the song over. the second councilor had to sit with me and re-teach me how to use the piano, and the corrister wasn't too pleased with me. the missionaries in my district were laughing so hard they couldn't sing and my companion was so "proud" of me.

one of our father-led families came to church for the first time! that was nice too. they had a great time, participated a lot in classes and made many new friends. we have been teaching them for about 4 months now and they are progressing! whoot whoot.
anyway, that was an adventure from the week. hope the rest of you are doing great, i am loving life. one request would be to pray hard for our investigators, they are all struggling. satan is making it so hard for them.

anyway, love you
sister blum

February 12, 2012

thank you for your emails, they sure do make me excited to be on mission! 

let's see, this week i was taken back to the time where dad owned that water park and we were there swimming. Remember when i asked mom if i could go to the bathroom and she told me to go in the pool? so i took off my bathing suit and went to the pool! the same type of thing happened in a lesson as the 1 1/2 year old daughter of one of our families, decided to take a potty break on the floor. not very many of the children here wear diapers and she definately wasn't! it made me chuckle to remember that. we paused the lesson and cleaned up the mess. it's funny to know that kids are the same everywhere.

our week was filled with sick people. we got the brilliant idea to go to the hospital and visit with the patients. it was nice (and sad sometimes) we were working in the surgery ward, there were a lot of patients preparing to go for surgery, some of them were really scared and it was nice to sit with them and comfort them before they went in. one of the women was one that we had met last week saturday at the local shopping mall, so it was nice to see her again, she invited us to her house for this week so we can teach her and her whole family :).
 when we started our morning, we were put in the icu where we prayed for 3 patients, one 10 years old, another 13 years and then an old woman recovering from brain surgery. i don't like seeing sick people but it sure was nice to give them some comfort. 

the sick people didn't end there, my companion is not well, and neither is the rest of botswana for some reason. almost all of our canceled appointments were because the people we were supposed to see were sick. a lot of the others that we saw were sick too. we spent a lot of time this week just comforting sick people. 

ironically this transfer i have decided to work on charity, as a result i have been praying really hard for greater charity and i think this might be God's way of answering my prayers. He works in a mysterious way sometimes. i do feel myself having a greater capacity for compassion and love towards others. i am just sorry that i may be part of the reason so many people are sick these days! 

the music thing... not sure how that is going. the man i am supposed to be teaching lives an hour and a half away and he doesn't quiet understand that we aren't allowed to go and see him, he thinks that we need to come and teach him there... we keep trying to explain to him that we can't leave our area and the president says no. we didn't see him yesterday. more details when the time comes. thank you for sending what you could. i hope we can work something out so we can see him. it would be really nice as well if you could send some rosin and an electric tuner/metronome. i am planning on giving it to him, turns out it is really hard to get things for a violin here. not really a common instrument that people play.

love you,
sister blum

Pictures!