Hello People
Another week in Uganda has passed. It was a nice week over all. This week we were taken care of in a lot of different ways.
But before I tell you about our experiences teaching, it’s story time as always. :)
I don’t have any crazy stories but I have two stories that are kind of cool. One of my favorite foods for breakfast while living at home was biscuits and gravy. Since I have been on my mission, I haven’t had them at all. I have missed warm soft biscuits. SO this week I decided that I was going to learn how to make good biscuits. So I kept trying and trying and trying to make them. Every time they would come out of the oven like hard baseballs.
Well after a few attempts and a lot of wasted flour, I finally got it down! I now make amazing homemade biscuits. They impress even me! Of course I must remember that I haven’t had any biscuits in such a long time my taste buds may be deficient. But they are just perfect--a nice golden, crispy outside with a fluffy soft inside.
Story number two: So in Uganda and especially in Jinja, fish is extremely inexpensive. The reason is the River Nile starts in Jinja. I decided since fish is plentiful, I should learn to cook fish. I bought a fish. It still had all of its parts, so I plan to gut it. Then I am going to slice onions and lemons into discs and put them inside the fish and sprinkle some random spices as well. I will then bake the fish whole. (I am thinking of the most recent Spiderman movie.) I will be sure and take some pictures of my first experience cooking a fish.
Now let’s talk about the important stuff because we are not really here to learn about food. Although I have to admit good food is nice.
As I said earlier, this week was a good one. I want to start with Sunday. In the Jinja Zone, there are some people that haven’t come to church for a very long time. My companion and I had decided that we would try to focus on one or two people encouraging them to come to church. One of the people that we chose was Celine.
We chose Celine because her husband and daughter come to church every single week. We wanted to see them go to church as a family. We decided to walk to their home on Sunday morning and then walk to church with them. (We had invited Celine to attend church with us earlier in the week.) They live a long way from the church (about 1.5 hours). We started walking from our house around 7:00 a.m.
The walk felt like forever. When we arrived at their home, the father, Wilson and their daughter, Millicent were there but not Celine. At first, we were disappointed. But we chose to not let it show. We walked with Wilson and Millicent to church. As we were walking, we were stopped by people that would say, “I have wanted to learn about your church. Could you teach me?” or “Hey I was once taught by missionaries. Can you teach me?” This happened over and over again. It was a really cool experience.
We had been working hard to find new investigators and we had found some. But none of them really seemed to have a strong desire to learn about the gospel. At first I didn’t really notice the blessing. But after church, I realized that even though Celine didn't come we were truly blessed. This experience really taught me that we work, the Lord provides in His way.
This Sunday was the best in my mission thus far. It wasn’t because the speakers were great, or the weather was cool or anything like that. But this Sunday, we had a great turn out at church and a lot of investigators came as well. Some of the investigators we had just tracted out earlier that week. The icing on the cake was that they stayed for all three hours! It is common for people to leave after the first hour.
For me the most exciting of these people that we tracted were Julius and Janon. They live together and are from the same village in Lira. (SUPER HOT THERE) On Tuesday, they welcomed us into their home and allowed us to share a message with them. As we shared, there wasn’t anything overwhelming or amazing about it. But they listened, thanked us for the massage and asked us to come back. At the second lesson, we taught them the restoration and about Joseph Smith.
During that lesson, it was just about the same again. No amazing feeling. We wrapped up the lesson and left. When we have lessons like that I usually find that really happens. I guess I’m a doubting Thomas. On Sunday I was happily proven wrong. When they rounded the corner of the church dressed in their best with huge smiles, I burst into a huge grin. I was touched to see them dressed up knowing their humble circumstances. They gave me a warm handshake and continued into church. They listened intently during the meeting with huge smiles on their faces.
William is still coming to church and is progressing. He has really changed his attitude towards the church. He used to despise the church and wasn’t very supportive of his family being members. He now wants to join the church. He is an amazing guy. He will be a great strength to the branch. I’m excited for him. :)
Overall life is good out here. I have been trying to learn how to make the local food lately not because I love it so much or anything like that (laugh out loud). But it would just be cool to share it with everyone back home. For example I am learning to make Kalo, posho, maltoke, lots of sauces, and rolexs for everyone yahoo!!! The one food that is really awesome though is Injera. I can’t make that because I do not have the ingredients. But there is a restaurant in Salt Lake that makes it in case anyone wants to try it out.
Well I’m just about out of time again. I love you all and I really appreciate all your emails. I hope all is well in the land of the free and the home of the brave. :)
Sincerely,
Elder Bitter
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