Of mice and missionaries, storms, investigator progress, fireside

The week has been nice. The other night I just felt like not sleeping with a mosquito net. Not sure why. I've never done it before. I know other Elders who don't use them very much. I figured I had a fan on and I always take my pills everyday... So as I prepared for bed very tired, I decided not to use it, and just went to sleep. I woke up that night to something furry in my ear. Very fast I swiped at it, but missed. I heard it run down the head board of the bed. A little shaken, I just went back to sleep. The next morning I went to use the toilet and when I came back in I saw a mouse climbing down the head board of my bed. I then realized that it indeed was not a dream. There was a mouse crawling on my face while I was sleeping. So I think we need to find a broader term for these nets we use at night. But don't worry, the mouse is dead now.....

We've had some serious storms! Friday night one found us very far out in Kimaka visiting Patrick at his shop. As the wind was blowing in the storm, it knocked a small tree down on the power lines just across the street where we were standing. There was basically a small explosion that you could feel. I thought we were dead... But then the rain came and we just took cover in Patrick's shop with him. It's about the size of your old walk-in closet back in Ohio made from scrap wood and a tin roof. The rain was hitting the tin roof so loud that we just sat in silence. Even if we tried to talk, we wouldn't have been able to hear each other. I just pondered the signs of Christ's death and what that must have been like. But everything was alright. The really big storm happened Saturday night while we were sleeping. It knocked over a bunch of trees and just made a mess throughout Jinja. But as far as I've heard, everyone's fine.

We had zone conference on Friday. Sister Christensen gave some powerful insight on inviting people to make and keep commitments by using John 6. I liked it a lot. We had a nice lunch, and it was that time of year where we got to take our "warm pills." We always take them the conference after general conference. It's weird to think that I've already gone through my third general conference on mission. One more, and then I'll be at home for the next.

Ramadan missed church yesterday, so that means that we'll have to postpone the baptismal date he committed to. But Isaac is going strong. He'll be interviewed this week by the zone leaders, and hopefully everything will go smoothly. Our big family is doing good. They all came to church yesterday except the mother. She "had to work." I hope it's true. Branch President said that he saw Patrick getting a ride from an excommunicated member during the week who likes to pass around anti-Mormon literature that he has. So that's not cool. But Patrick never mentioned anything about it, and he came to church. Those are good signs. But the tricky part is trying to progress the whole family together so that they can be baptized together and stay united. And that means we have to focus on the mother. "Slowly, slowly", as they say... Mpola, mpola...

I organized a missionary fireside Sunday night. The whole focus was to teach the members how to teach the message of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ using the information given to us in Preach My Gospel. I typed out the 40 min. lesson plan at the end of lesson one and gave it to everyone. And then each missionary taught how to teach each principle. It worked out nice since there are eight missionaries in my district and eight principles in the first lesson. And then we had a branch missionary stand and bare testimony of the blessings he's received from working with the missionaries. It worked out really nice. Fifteen members came! I was expecting ten at most. So my expectations were exceeded. We're doing a follow up fireside this Saturday so we can actually give them an opportunity to sit down and try and teach. Preach My Gospel calls it "role-playing." Hopefully this will encourage them more to work with us and bring referrals. And then to actually teach with us rather than just sit and watch us teach the friends. I don't think that's very effective.

Krueger's cool. Sometimes I forget I'm training him. We have a lot in common, so it's difficult to stay focused on the work while you're walking around because for us the conversation can go just about anywhere. With a lot of my other companions we didn't have much in common except that we were both missionaries. There's always the ups and downs to things. In the end though, me and Krueger work well together.

Have a great week!

Zac