Makadi zvenyu?

Another week in paradise. 

(googs translate the title)

No zest to start this email so we'll just get started hey?

So last time I spoke of one of our more than powerful new investigators named Memory.  In short, she's getting baptized in two weeks.  She is super powerful. It helps that she lives with members but still.  We are excited for her.  The family she stays with is so cool. The gogo is Sis. Chaduka and she is the African version of my grandma Rass.  So I always joke with her and she is super funny. My love for these people grows every day. Memory's brother Blessing is also doing well and we taught a powerful lesson with him this week.

We recently started teaching these two sisters named Grace and Phumzi (I may have already told you guys about them).  They are powerful and Grace is 19 years old and plays professional cricket for Zimbabwe hahahah crazy.  But they came to church this week again and we taught them a powerful lesson.  They don't even have a fellowshipper but they like coming to church and said that its more welcoming and happier than other churches.  We hope to give them a baptismal date this next week. 

This week we didn't have as many lessons as usual so we were forced to do some contacting.  It was pretty funny on Tuesday we decided to knock on this one door and this baba and mama stepped out and we introduced ourselves and we very quickly found out they were Seventh Day Adventists and that they didn't want to here our message and didn't want to take a pamphlet. Can't blame their ignorance though. If everyone was telling me that the Mormon's were Satanists I would also be somewhat apprehensive.   It is funny how were wear the name of our Master on our chests everyday and they still believe the nonsense that spreads amid the gossip. Hahahaha anyways Fili and I just laughed and walked away.  We don't usually get "No" for an answer so its humbling to be slapped with one of those every once in a while. Keeps us on our feet.  Contacting was nice though we found some nice potential investigators that we will follow up with this week.

Another cool experience this week with the Priesthood. Saturday we were contacting and decided to stop by this members house and visit the family.  As we came, one of the kids outside told us that the mother wasn't feeling well.  This was a huge understatement.  We walked in and Sister Manaki was in bed and could barely move or speak to us.  We asked what we could do to help and she asked for a blessing.  Exerting her energy, she sat up and we proceeded to give her a blessing.  We left thinking not too much of it but to our surprise, the next morning, she was at church and was bright and happy as ever.  After church I talked to her and she told us, "You guys came at the right time. Thank you very much."  Man, experiences like these will be cherished for ever. Its so amazing that God allows us, as imperfect, weak, and mortal humans, the same power and authority by which he created the universe.....I'm so grateful the chuch has been restored along with the priesthood of God.

We stopped by the Manaki's place after church and she introduced us to her neighbors as referrals for us and we set up an appointment and they promised to come to church next week too! We are already super good friends with them and we are super excited to start sharing our message with them. 

Fili and I are still doing great. We wake up each day by beating each other with our pillows hahahahaha and this morning we watched The Other Side of Heaven and now I call him Koli Poki hahaha he understands everything that is said and sung in that movie. Its cool to watch it with a translator. We always mess with each other too. Like I locked him in the bathroom while he was showering the other day hahaha and then that day, at the end of each appointment, he said, "Okay so now we invite Elder Anderson to say the closing prayer" I prayed so many times hahahaha. He is a joker and I'm always laughing during the days. Too much fun.

Sidenote, we play soccer at the church every Monday and I'm slowly starting to not be terrible at soccer.  Wont play football for two years so might as well learn how to play soccer lol. 

Honestly guys, being a missionary isn't like what I thought it would be.  Its way better.  I love waking up each day with the same purpose.  I love living among Zimbabweans and teaching them about how God loves us and restored his true and everlasting gospel to the earth.  I know this to be true and it makes me so happy. I never have any reason to be upset. Love you all and want to sincerely thank you for all the support, emails, prayers, and everything else.  Stay happy in the promised land.

Stay Steady Grindin

Cheers,

-Elder Anderson

Baptizing My Mother

Woahhh. Here me out. 

My first baptism in Masvingo!  On Saturday, Melody Maride was baptized.  She's super powerful and will be a strong member.  She stays super far away from the chapel but still walks each Sunday.  Now, the reason she is my mother. So we were looking at the baptismal record with her after the interview and I looked at her children and one is named Brandon and another is named Michael....... and Brandon's birthday is on the 16th of February....... hahahahahha man it was so weird we were all laughing so hard.  The other elders found out what my full name was so when they saw it they were dying. And then when I told everyone about the birthday we laughed even harder.  It was so weird.  So then the other elders started calling her my mother hahaha.  I was honored though because she chose me to baptize her.  Everyone knows my companion to be a huge joker and she told us, "If I chose Fili, he would be laughing the whole time!" hahahahaha so I got to where all white with her on Saturday.  T'was a good weekend. 

Cool experience.  There's this less active that we found a few weeks ago and she hadn't been coming to church because she was sick. Her name is Valory.  So on Friday, we visited her family again and she was still sick and it even looked like she was worse than before.  During our visit she asked for a blessing, so I anointed her and then Fili blessed her. And then two days later, Valory came to church after being sick for almost a month.   God's priesthood is crazy.  

We met this referral from a member named Blessing and had such a cool first lesson with him.  We taught him simply about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he understood anything and at the end, he told us that he wanted to know more about Jesus Christ and God.  The kid is 17 and is genuinely concerned about learning more of our Savior and Heavenly Father.  Inspiring.  Also during the lesson we met the whole family and they like us and even were asking questions after the lesson. So now we have a big family to teach! 

And, Blessings sister, Memory is best friends with a member and is always at their house and yesterday she came to church and that evening we taught her about the Godhead and she opened up to us and told us she had so many questions and as she mentioned a few, I realized they all relate to the plan of salvation and then I promised her she would receive answers to her questions is if she read and prayed about our message.  She is excited to learn more. 

Also, Blessing has a dog named Sport and its a german shepherd and that dog is my new best friend. Unlike others, Blessing and his family take care of their dogs so Sport is tame and really chill. I cant wait to go back there haha.  

Powerful Family. 

The other day we were door knocking and we found this mama and she came out and we introduced our message, the Gospel of Jesus Christ to her and she was like, "Yeah for sure I will continue having faith and repenting but I've already been baptized so I'm not doing that." hahahahaha I almost laughed out loud.  We're sent to preach repentance and baptize converts and she straight up turns down our end goal.  It was pretty funny. And then we tried to confound her but she was blinded too much and rejected us and said she would call us.... Everyone does that and never calls. Oh well.   It was funny though because during the whole conversation I was thinking of all the scriptures in the Bible that confound everything she believes in hahaha funny stuff.  

We also met a pastor for a church called "Embassy of Power" Or something like that hahaha (All these churches just have nonsense titles that they think sound cool)  And the guy and his wife looked at us acting like they know something and they set an appointment with us.  When we went back, the husband was busy so we taught the wife only and she asked all these questions and we just confounded her and got outta there hahaha. I'm excited for our next appointment.  

The field is black and already to harvest that's for sure.  Hard to find those who are prepared but this week we found some who show a lot of promise.  Excited for what lies ahead here in Masvingo. Love you all and hope you have a good week.  Stay happy.  

Church is true Book is blue. 

Stay Steady Grindin

Cheers,

-Elder Anderson 

Melody

Melody with Elder Fili

Views ye again... a little taste of Masvingo

We went to a Mountain in our area today and took some mean Pics.

Pakaipa

Alright so this week was a mess hahahaha a rollercoaster of emotions and all sorts of whatever. So I'll start by giving a brief overview of the first part of the week because ish hit the fan starting on Saturday.

So lets start off with a good thing hey? We have a powerful investigator named Melody who was taught a ton by missionaries in another city called Chegutu and went to church every week but she recently moved here to Masvingo and now we are just preparing her for baptism. She already has a lot of friends that are members and whenever we teach her she gives amazing answers to our questions. She's super ready to get dunked.  So we are excited for her baptism this upcoming Saturday.

We have another investigator ready for baptism named Shaolin but her father thinks we are Satanists.... So hopefully we can 180 his view of us this week so she can be baptized with Melody. 

We also found two new investigators this week that were referrals from some sisters in our zone.  Their names are Grace and Pumzi.  Its funny because my companion calls Grace, "Crazy" because when reading her name, thats how he pronounces it hahahha. I tried to correct him the other day but he was like ehh whatever hahaha and Grace doesn't care so now it just makes me laugh whenever he says it. Anyways, we taught them a powerful first couple lessons  about the gospel of Jesus Christ and then they came to church! So cool. They even promised to come next week so we are excited to start teaching them.

So now the rollercoaster is on a slight decline if we are still following said analogy.

We have this guy we teach named Prevail and his brother is named Proclaim and he is our branch mission leader.  So Prevail was super humble and we had an amazing first lesson with him and gave him a baptismal date and then we went back to teach him the Word of Wisdom because Proclaim told us he had a problem with alcohol and smoking. So we start teaching him and Elder Fili explains the first part about what the Word of Wisdom is and what we should start away from.  And then asked Prevail what he understood about it. And then he just started going off about how his mother raised them going to Zaoga (another church) and then just stated talking nonsense. Like just saying random things that made no sense for like 3 minutes.... So Elder Fili just looks at me and then is like, "okay okay okay lets just start over." So we did and then asked Prevail again, what he understood. and he just starts going off again talking about random things.  So we start laughing and then repeat the same thing like 5 times. And then Elder Fili was like, "okay lets say a closing prayer" hahahaha and then we left with Proclaim. Proclaim then told us that he has been having mental issues so we decided not to teach him for now.  Then a couple days later we drove by his house again and he was outside walking around without a shirt on and speaking nonsense and like screaming and preaching and doing all sorts of stuff, insomuch that the neighboring children became scared and retreated to their homes. So now we are just going to stay away from there for a little bit until Proclaim can figure out what to do. So there goes that investigator. I feel bad though because he was so powerful during the first lesson and then within a week he goes a wall.

K now the ish begins to hit the fan.

On Saturday we were driving to town to buy food for Sunday and whilst driving thru town we were almost to the store and then this drunk guy starts wandering out into the road and right as we drove by he like throws himself into the back left side of the car. Like homeboy shook the car. And then we pulled over and parked just down the road and the guy gets up and runs over to us and starts saying all this stuff about how we ran over his foot or whatever (keep in mind that he RAN over to the car...after we "ran over his foot") and I'm like, "dude, you walked right into the car." Then homeboy just gets fired up and starts giving all of us fire and then for some reason singles out our DL, Elder Chimtengo, and he starts cussing him out and giving him fire and yelling and making all this noise. (Meanwhile literally everybody in Masvingo is staring at us.)  Luckily some other drunk guys came over and attempted to tame homeboy but no success and he just gets even more fired up at Chimtengo. It was super cool to see how many people came to help us though. Zimbabweans are pretty cool. And then one of the drunk guys started talking to me and i contacted him, and the whole time, homeboy was just yelling and saying all this stuff and finally this security guard came and helped us get away.  We were all shook.  Gained a lot of respect for Chimtengo though because the whole time he said nothing. And homeboy was saying like terrible things to him that aren't worth telling you. Anyways fast forward to Sunday morning right after sacrament meeting. One of the young men that is my best friend already came up to me and said, "hey there's this guy outside who wants to talk to you." So I'm thinking its some member or investigator or something and then I walk out of the chapel and see homeboy just chilling outside the church........ i was like........what.... hahaha so i go talk to him and he's like, hey I'm the guy you hit yesterday. And I'm like, okay haha let me go get my companion. So the 4 of us elders come back to the guy and start talking to him.  We come to find out that this guy filed a report to the police..... So we step aside and call President Mkhabela (who is a very successful lawyer) and he told us to go file a report too on Monday (today).  So then we got our branch presidency and a member who is a police officer together with homeboy and we talked about things and the guy just wanted us to like help him to go to the hospital or something or give him money. He was like whining that Chimtengo didn't say sorry to him.... hahaha and then he made up how that morning his foot was very swollen and he couldn't walk. And he was walking just fine on Saturday and before we had the meeting with him and the branch presidency. As time went on, homeboy finally knew that he was wrong and that if anything went to court he would lose big time so then he told us he wanted to withdraw the case and everything.  So then this morning we get up and go to the police to file the report and the police were saying that homeboy already came in and withdrew the case. And then they told us its all good and we could leave.  So we left and now its all over. 

This comes to show how desperate some people are to get money here.  Kind of sad. But man this guy was being so stupid, and we were all shook thinking we would go to court or something and then the guy withdraws the case.... Man this weekend was so weird.  hahahaaha I'm honestly glad i have another funny story to tell though. 

Yesterday for fast Sunday we got to here the testimonies of the members and I love testimony meetings here.  Back home people get up and say all this stuff they are thankful for and tell stories that have nothing to do with their testimonies.  But here the people get up and legit say what they KNOW to be true.  A true testimony meeting and it is so cool to be there. Just simple testimonies reassure mine each fast sunday.  Love it here.  Ate a ton a food for dinner after breaking my fast. Had a plate of sadza with some members and then came home and we made pasta with meat and this sauce and i had a phaaaatttt plate of that too.  I feasted.  

After the police department this morning we went for a district activity to the dam in Masvingo and took some cool pictures.  So I'll attach those. 

So yeah there's my week.  Pretty crazy hahaha.Hope you enjoyed the story haha.  Church is still true. lol. Love you all and hope you have a great week. You all stay in my prayers. I know this church is true and I love the (quote) "beautiful simplicity of the restored gospel" (end quote). God speed guys.

Stay Happy

Stay Steady Grindin

Cheers,

Elder Anderson

Elder Chimtango

There was this tiny chapel on one side of the lake haha...

Elder Parco and Elder Fili