Lockdown

Welcome one and all. 

I'm sure a lot of you heard about the ma funnies going on over here in this beloved country.  So yeah, basically the military put the president on house arrest on Tuesday hahahahha hilarious.  The streets of Harare were crazy from what we heard but there were also marches by the people here in Bulawayo and in other cities haha. A lot of people don't like this president. Because of the political unrest, we spent Wednesday in the house. It was honestly refreshing to just relax for a day. Played baseball and watched the best two years. Solid day.  But for the past week its all been up in the air because the president still hasn't stepped down and even last night we were eating dinner with some members and the word got out that he was going to give a public address so we turned on the radio and listened and it sounded like he was insinuating that he wouldn't step down.  Hearing him speak honestly was the creepiest thing ever.  This guy is seriously corrupt and the whole nation doesn't really like him. So we will see what happens with that.  We can only hope that having his own military surround his house and put him on house arrest, and having his whole country march the streets saying he should step down, would make him rethink some things. hahahaha  Crazy times here in Zim. Also elections are coming early next year and that's when supposedly things get crazy here. But worry not, we'll be safe haha.  We saw something pretty cool yesterday, we were driving to Pumula to teach someone and on the way there, these two huge trucks full of soldiers passed us coming the other way and as they passed, the cars would honk and everybody on the streets would cheer for them so we did the same hahaha everyone was giving props to the military for what they did. So sick.

Also this week I hit my year mark out here! What the heck.  Last year on November 16th I entered the MTC. Seems like an eternity ago but also like it was last week. Weird feeling. As cliche and repeated as it is, time really does fly out here. Some days move slower than the DMV when its hotter than what-what and every appointment falls thru but looking back it flies.  1 year..... in Zimbabwe. What in the world. So cool. We celebrated obviously.  Had a bonfire at our house and I got this super jing ice cream at the store down the street and we lit off a firework.  Doesn't sound that cool after typing it out but I enjoyed. haha  Also having the whole political unrest thing at my year mark was cool too. Maybe I'll spend the next year with a new president in Zim. Who knows.

We had the craziest storm Zimbabwe has seen in a long time this week.  Man. This sucker was wicked.  I think it was the night of our lockdown day but we started to hear the thunder and we could see lightning a little bit and then we went outside and the clouds were moving super fast it was so cool. So we get inside and then the clouds just start dumping rain and it was loud against our lame excuse of a roof.  And then out of nowhere the coolest thing happened. We see this huge flash of lightning and it lights up the house and as the flash was there, the whole power cut out and right as the flash ended, the phattest crack of thunder ever goes off right above our house hahaha legit shook my body it was so sick. After the heat of the storm passed us we watched it from our house and the lightning was so cool. Apparently the storm tore off the roofs of a couple houses in our area so we helped a member family clean up their house but mostly everyone had it fixed pretty quick. It was cool to see some young men and older guys going around helping people with their houses.  Love these people.

Obviously a lot of excitement this week with other things but also with our investigators! We met this guy named Nqo (the q is one of the clicks so its hard to say).  He is a friend of this family we started teaching a while ago and he just moved here for school. He's like 19 years old and a super smart guy. Said that the church he had in South Africa isn't here in Zim so he is currently looking for a church. Powerful. So we taught him the restoration and talked to him about some things in the church and he was excited to come and join us this Sunday. And he came and brought his friend Nduduzi who i spoke of a while ago and he finally came. And the cool thing is that they stay in Pumula and came all the way to Nkulumane 5 to our stake center! You can look on a map but its a long ways away.  We had this stake conference meeting for a southeast Africa area broadcast thing and Nqo and Nduduzi enjoyed it and are excited to come again! So sick. Even our other investigators had a good time! There were soooo many people there! It was awesome to be among all of those saints.  

So we played "statue-free" this week again with that crazy family and it was so fun. We met the parents this week and found out they aren't members but like all of the kids are.  Recently they've been less active and we told them about the conference on Sunday but they stay in Pumula also so it would be a long way for a bunch of kids to go and hard to find a taxi for them. But right before the meeting started they walked in!!! It was awesome. We stopped by their house later in the day and they taught us this street game called "R" haha pretty cool. Got some pictures with the young one that is my best friend now. I'll attach those. I love this family hahaha we think we might be able to teach the parents too although they are super active in their own churches.

The broadcast was super good. Elder Andersen spoke and some other seventies and all the talks were really good. Super inspiring and exactly what the people here needed to hear. 

We had a super interesting experience this week.  We had one of those mornings where we actually had to do some door/gate knocking and we weren't finding anyone and everyone we tried, no one was home and then we stopped at this one house and there was Shona writing on their car outside so I'm like, hey... shona.... lets knock hahaha just for kicks and giggles. And this lady comes out and we introduce ourselves and she gladly lets us in to teach her and her father. When we get inside, the father was sitting there and we're like, "hey baba how are you?" and he's like,  "uhhh not good. I'm very sick guys" and we get closer we see his legs are just......wow. Looked like he had this flesh eating virus or something like there were just huge holes in his legs and he told us he had suffered with this for like 7 months. man.  We ended up teaching them the restoration and we explained about priesthood blessings.  It was cool to testify that we have the same authority that Jesus and his disciples had that they used to heal the sick.  He told us he wanted a blessing so we gave him one and then left them for the day.  We're seeing them on tomorrow maybe but man. I felt so bad for this baba. Has like 9 kids and cant work to provide for them so his wife has been working.  Rough time.

Sidenote, We found this vanilla stuff so now whenever we get pepsi, or coke or anything we just throw that stuff in there. Amazing. 

So that was my week.

Just all sorts of things going on.

Excited to be on the downhill for my mission. Still hasn't hit me yet.

Love you all and hope you had just a splendid week.  Church is true.   No doubt.

Stay Steady Grindin'

-Elder Anderson

My new best friends. Just chillin under a mango tree while they taught us how to play "R" haha

So we were in town and there was this picture on the outside of some building and we walked by it not noticing much and then McDougal was like, wait.... and we go back and look and its a fetching 1A license plate hahahahaha what in the world. Out of all the pictures, it was this one hahaha 

shout out to Boise thats what I'm sayin

 these huge beetle things fly around everywhere. They are legit huge. And when they fly, their wings make this deep buzz sound haha

 bonfire and ice cream

apple and or grape and or pear....... what? super good juice tho.