Hi All,
I lost track of time this week. I feel as if I emailed everyone just a few hours ago! I do not have a lot to say because the week has been pretty uneventful.
In the past few weeks, we have had a lot of our investigators decide that they are no longer interested in the church. It has been kind of a bummer. Consequently, we have had less people to teach and more tracting to do.
One family that we have been teaching for a long time is Salome and Geoffrey. They are a younger couple in their late twenties. They are the most humble, kind people in the world.
We have taught Salome and Geoffrey everything that they need to know to be baptized. The holdup is that they are not married. So Elder Kanthunkako and I have really been working on getting them to get married. They had committed to get married on October 12 and to be baptized on October 13 (Grandma Bitter’s birthday). They were happy to accept the commitment to get married and be baptized. However as time went on, they shared with us their problem.
The problem is that in Uganda when a man and woman get married, the man is expected to pay the woman’s parents a dowry. The man sits down with the parents and they negotiate a settlement of cows, chickens, goats etc. This is difficult for the young couple.
The same is true in Geoffrey and Salome’s case. The parents refused to let her get married until he paid a good portion of the dowry. This young couple have very humble means so the payment of this dowry will take a long time. After they explained the situation, I was afraid that they would lose hope and give up.
Thankfully, I was wrong. They said that they still want to be married in the church and be baptized. It was just going to take a little bit longer because the parents would be very unhappy if they disobeyed them. So the good news is that they get to continue on learning about the gospel as they try to pay the dowry.
This week my companion, a few other elders and I had a meeting for our mission. It was a great! It lasted for about 5 hours and it was a very productive. We discussed how the mission is doing and how things are moving forward and our weak spots. As I was sitting in the meeting, I kept thinking the Lord’s church is amazing.
It is remarkable to see the Lord prepare each of us to serve missions. The preparation is throughout our whole life. He gives us experiences that help shape and strengthen us. The church has been set up by the Lord. Every possible situation there is a solution. The work moves forward like a smooth running clock. It is smooth and efficient.
Well that’s all I have this week. I hope that everyone has a great week and that things are going well.
I love ya all!
Sincerely,
Elder Bitter
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