The Flood - September 8, 2014

Sorry I am a day late in posting. The Mission President asked us to come down to Kampala yesterday so that we could take care of some things for the zone. The drive to Kampala is not a short one. We basically drove to Kampala, picked up the supplies etc., and drove back to Lira.

As we drove home, it really started to get dark and gloomy outside. It was a low light so we had to slow down and go really, really, really slow. The light was so bad that we couldn’t see the potholes in the road. Consequently, we got back really late so we could not email yesterday.

So we are grabbing a few moments this morning to email and let you know we are alive and then we will get back to work. Let me start with a funny story that happened on Sunday. This morning was like any other Sunday morning. As we were preparing for the day, I received a call from our branch president. When I answered immediately I heard, “Elder Bitter, there is a water emergency at the church. We need you and the Elders here now!" We hopped right in the truck and drove over to the church. When we got inside the church, we could not believe our eyes!

There was 2-4 inches of water throughout the whole building. The time was 8:30 am and church starts at 10:00. Luckily the floor in the church is tile so the floor was sealed and protected. The Branch President looked at us and said, “We need all this water removed before church starts.” Well we got to work. We grabbed buckets, filled them with water, and hauled them from the building. My job was to fill the buckets and then the rest of the group would haul the water out. For some reason I was standing around waiting for the others to get back so I could fill their buckets. It was going so SLOWLY!

I realized that they were carrying the buckets down the stairs and out the door of the building. (We are on an upper story of a bank.) After they all came up and gave me their buckets, I grabbed one bucket smiled at everyone and walked over to the window and threw it out the window. It was pretty funny to see their faces when they realized how easy it would be to just throw the water out the window.

Once we had removed the majority of the water, we broke out towels and squeegees and went to work trying to dry the floor so that it wouldn't be super slippery. At 9:40 we were finished! We put our shoes on, rolled down our suit pants and welcomed everyone into the building. It was pretty awesome. When it comes to tackling a task in a small amount of time, we nailed it! It was a funny, fun, and wild experience all mixed in one. I was really nervous that we would not have the building ready for the members but it worked out. The Lord wanted us to have church.

Now for the work!!! So this week, we spent the majority of the time finding. And we found some awesome people. They seem to be prepared and ready to receive the gospel. One of them is a guy named Alex. He is a really kind guy who is married. (Hurray!) At first, he was somewhat hesitant about letting us share with him. However, as we shared with him our message, he really tuned in and was able to understand what we said. This made it easy to teach him.

After our water event on Sunday, we were really hopeful that some of our new investigators would make it to church. (We did not have anyone else coming.) Instead of those people that we had found during the week, people we had taught in the past but had stopped teaching because they would not keep their commitments came. To our surprise not a single one of the people we had tracted during the week came to church. But many of our previous investigators came instead! We were really stoked about this because it was their decision to come. They didn’t come because we had asked them to.

So basically the Lord once again provided a way for us to be successful. One thing I have learned on my mission is that if we just put forth ALL our effort, the Lord will make it possible for things to work out. Sometimes it is not the way we expect but it does work out.

Well that’s all I have for this week. I sure love ya all and hope all is well.

Sincerely,
Elder Bitter