It's Already Monday Again....

The weeks are going by so fast. Feels like I'm at this computer every other day.

This keyboard blows and its making my fingers feel swole.  There's gotta be wet cement wedged in between these keys or something because this is way too difficult hahaha. 

The first one, Loyce. Loyce is a humble gogo that is a relative of another one of our investigators and she is awesome.  We had our first lesson with her about the restoration and you could just see how prepared she was to receive that message.  She told us she used to go to a couple churches but 4 years ago she just stopped looking and stayed at home praying that God would show her the right way.... sooo powerful. And at our followup visit, she told us she prayed and she already knows our message is true.  She even committed to come to church with her daughter in law who is also investigating and we decided to walk with them.  Its dope that she wanted to come too because she has a messed up foot and it makes it super hard for her to walk but we slowly walked with her and the daughter all the way to church and we were even late but it paid off.  She ended up meeting a lot of her friends that are members and she was asking them why they didn't tell her about the church and she was very happy to be there and participated in all the classes.  We even heard from a member that Loyce told them she wanted to be baptized..... Soooooooo cool.  She is awesome.

The second, Idah. Yes its Idaho without the "o" haha.  And she has a daughter named Alpha and they have been coming to church for a while and they are even giving us referrals but Idah had been kinda involved in polygamy so we had back out of teaching her but recently we visited them and we found out the whole story and its not what we thought so she's totally okay to be baptized with her daughter.  They are super cool too. 

Steven, the one-armed guy I spoke of last time, is powerful.  We were worried because at church the lesson in priesthood turned into a discussion of baptisms for the dead and family history so we were expecting Steven to get confused.  But rather than being confused, he was super interested and at our next appointment we taught him the plan of salvation and at the end he asked about what we learned at church and while we explained temples and families to him, he was just smiling and he was so happy.  He even asked us, "So how can I help my ancestors receive the gospel?" it was awesome.  Listen up kids and coaches, the Spirit of Elijah is true haha. Also, Steven's daughter has a good friend that is a member at church and they both committed to come next week.  Soooo sick. 

On a rather disappointing note, a previously promising investigator confessed to us that she is a self proclaimed prophetess this week...... Literally everybody wants to be a prophet here and I dont know why.  So that was weird but luckily her husband has a lot of sense and is super interested in our message.  So hopefully the wife will pull herself together hahahaha. 

So yeah my comp and I are just out here doing work no big deal.  Every day this week when we got home we were so tired hahaha we slept so well. And we always ask each other, "maneta?" which means "are you tired?" in shona and then the other one replies "sitereki" which means "very" hahaha. 

Oh yeah, so Cholera is back in Chegutu! hahaha there was a small outbreak that killed 4 people and hospitalized like 15 but no worries. We are pretty sure its been contained.  The last time Cholera came here was in 2008 and we heard the stories of how like over 100 people died every day.... insane.  But yeah we are all well, we were just advised by our mission leaders not to accept food from anyone which is like the unpardonable sin in Shona culture hahaha so we had to tell everyone we were fasting for a couple days.  T'was rough.  And we have to thoroughly wash all the stuff we eat that isn't packaged and sealed.  So yeah.  just one of those 3rd world things.

I had the best mango the other day.... obviously i thoroughly cleaned it but this thing had to have been on the tree of life my goodness.

Well this is the start of week 6 of the transfer so next Monday I'll let you know if I'm staying or not.

Also, I think we are going golfing later today... bout to make my district look silly out there. Still got it dad.

Alright thats all I got for this week. Love you all and I hope you love this church as much as I do.

Stay Steady Grindin'

Young Money Militia

-Elder Anderson

These kids are so dope!

Got more Zim Dolla Bills lol!

Zvikomborero Zvakawanda

The translation thereof is "many blessings".  My companion and I worked hard this week and it paid off.

So I want to start by talking about this guy named Steven Mvula.  My companion contacted this guy before I came but we followed up with him and he's awesome. He's a school teacher and he has a big family and he's just a super down to earth and humble guy.  Also, he only has one arm. He has understood our lessons super well and we were a little cautious about extending him a baptismal date but we just went for it in our lesson this week and he accepted! So I asked him why he wants to be baptized and he said that from our lessons he learned the correct way to be baptized and he said that he wants to follow Jesus Christ the right way and stuff like that. It was so cool. And he committed to come to church so we walked with him yesterday! Hopefully we can start teaching his whole family this week.

We had zone conference this week and it was awesome. Got to see a lot of my friends so that was dope. I took a ton of pictures so I'll attach some.  We also heard more about how the mission will be splitting in July this year and its exciting! And the mission is starting to use smart phones to introduce family history! They are starting with only the zone leaders right now but maybe later in the year the rest of us will get some. Also we got the news about the total baptisms for 2017 and we smashed our goal of 2000 and we had 2130 or something like that! That is crazy! So the goal for 2018 is 2400 baptisms.... We all have work let no one shirk am I right?

We had our interviews with president this week and his instruction this week to us was about faith and he promised us if we did, we would record miracles in our journals each day.  So my companion and I exercised faith a lot and worked hard and saw the small miracles that happened each day. It was awesome. We also had a lot of new investigators this week and we had 8 investigators come to church yesterday! It was awesome! Thus the title, zvikomborero zvakawanda.

So nobody in my house knows how to cook really, so Chef Anderson saves the day most days. I just try to remember how previous companions and elders have cooked things and then I just go for it and it usually turns out good hahaha.  

I learned more songs on the guitar this week. Awesome. 

Still waiting on my Elephant sculpture from that drunk dude. I hope he comes thru with that. 

We went to a river in our area last Monday after emailing and it was awesome. We were out in the bush in Africa for a little bit and it was dope. We saw a small python too! My comp thru a stone at it and we're pretty sure he killed it but it was dark and we lost sight of it in the bushes. 

So we walked by a madzi baba church this week (ive talked about them before I think. they wear all white robes and headdress things and have their services out in the wilderness) and heard them singing this hymn and they were saying "Tevera Mwari! Vano taura chokwadi" which means, "listen to God, he speaks the truth." And at first we didn't understand what they were saying but them Elder Mokoena pointed it out to me and then we just started laughing. I'm not sure why but it was sooo funny and we were laughing so hard. Then for the rest of the day we sang the same thing and it was so funny. We were laughing the whole day. Few times have I laughed that hard. 

Well that was my week. I hope yours was good too! I know I have said that each week but I really do hope you had a good week haha. Love you guys! Stay happy. 

Stay Steady Grindin'

Elder Anderson

Mvure River

Views

young money militia.  After we went to the river we were chillin with our feet out the window on the ride back for whatever reason. 

Fili

My family tree. from left to right, elder Till, my father, elder Thompson my son, and elder Nyirenda, my grandson. 

Hunnid Gang

The Kadoma zone. 

Elder Mbabela from South Africa. This guy is too funny. Always makin me laugh

Found a turt at the other elders house in Kadoma. 

 Not really an explanation for these pictures. 

So all the mamas here where these things and they call them zambias because they are from Zambia.... clever right? But yeah I'm totally bringing one home for you mom.

Nzou

Okay first things first, I totally got my totem this week. So something in Shona culture (and some other tribes) is having a totem which is some kind of animal and this week a member gave me mine and its Nzou, which is the elephant.  So sick. And because i know all of you are going to spronounce it wrong, nzou rhymes with slow, not cow.  But yeah that was one of the highlights of my week, and there's this drunkard guy that in our area that is insanely good and making stone sculptures and he's making me an elephant for $2. 

On a related note with shona culture, I'm picking up more and more of the language each week.  Its funny how much I understand now haha

So we found this family, the Tembo's and started teaching them last week and they are awesome.  They don't go to church but its the baba and mama and one of their kids that stay there and they loved our message of the restoration and the baba committed to come to church and bring his whole family.  And we told them we'd walk with them so we walked all the way there and he was the only one ready and the rest of the family was slacking so we just left to get to church on time but we got brother Tembo there and it was awesome. He made really good friends with one of our other investigators that came, Mark, and he was really happy after church. It was so cool.

Speaking of Mark, he came to church by himself this week and it was awesome. He's basically a member already haha but marriage is the problem we have to solve before he's married. With the bride price custom of marriage, finding married couples is difficult so we always have to marry them. No problem tho.  Mark is awesome tho, my comp told me before I got there they were teaching him and he struggled with smoking and stuff but when they taught him, he changed and now he's given it up and he reads from the Book of Mormon all the time and we can see how the gospel is changing his life.  Testimony builder for sure.

We also met this mama named Vimbai this week and she was a referral from a member and we were told that Vimbai had satanic ideas about our church and that we dont read the Bible and we dont greet people and some other ridiculous things so we met with her, greeted her, taught her the restoration using the Bible and testified of Jesus Christ rather than Satan and it cleaned her clock of all the things she heard haha. It was awesome. And she was really excited to continue learning. She doesn't really know a lot about the gospel but when we taught her she started asking questions like "Is there life after death?" and other questions of the soul and we told her we had all the answers and would answer each of them the next time we came. She's so dope, and the husband is this super humble guy that is gonna join our lesson this week so we have another family to teach!

We have found a lot of families but all of them have marriage problems hahahaha So if I stay here for the next transfer, we could have a lot of weddings.

So yeah we had 3 investigators come to church this week and it was fast and testimony meeting and two members blasted each other with their testimonies.... Like they called each other out for spreading rumors about each other and the spirit totally left the meetinghouse. It was so stupid. Then they both walked out of the chapel and went home..... but from there the rest of the testimonies were powerful and the members did a good job and talking with the investigators and explaining thats not what usually happens. So in the end it wasn't too bad.  Super funny to see those two go toe to toe in the chapel though haha.

Well thats what i have for this week. My companion and I are bringing back Chegutu and finding a lot of people to teach and we have like 7 people planned to give baptismal dates too this week.  So sick. When I got here there were 0 people who were serious enough for a baptismal date so I'm happy we are getting work done. And man I love my companion. The chillest guy ever and we have the same mentality about everything so we basically know what each other is thinking at all times hahaha its awesome.

So this morning my breakfast, was eggs and toast and a mango fresh off the tree in our backyard.... so sick.  Mango season in Zim is crazy. literally everyone has a mango tree in their yard so their always just eating mangos hahaha and they give us some sometimes when we stop by. 

I just want to say that I love teaching the restoration to people. It makes sooooo much sense its sad to see how many people are blinded here because they believe in a prophet who is stealing money from them or they go to witch doctors that do miracles and stuff and there's so much confusion about the gospel here but the restoration just confounds everything.  Its so cool. Being in a place like this for over a year now has built my testimony of the restoration so much and I know its true. 

Love you all and have a stellar week. 

Ndonana nguva ino tevera

Stay Steady Grindin'

Cheers,

Elder Anderson

Farai, Mbali, and Wayne,

Mokoena and I feasted last Monday. pizza, and chicken and chips.

This is brother Tembo and I'm not sure who the kid is haha

So i told you our house is nice but in case you didnt believe, this is our kitchen....

Chegutu

Well multiple missionaries should be arrested for false advertising because the things I heard about how this area is booming are not true.  Hahahaha. I opened the area book the first night and there were 0 people on baptismal date and the previous week, no investigators had come to church..... I was like.... alright then. So needless to say, a lot of work needs to be done. And a lot of work was done these last two weeks. My companion and I found 20 new investigators in the last two weeks and one of them is this powerful guy named Mark who came to church last week and he is so prepared and after we help him get married, he'll be baptized.  He's honestly the most humble guy ever. And he's always happy even tho he has been thru a lot.  so yeah that's the deal with this area now.

I started learning Shona again to add to what i picked up during my first year and now I'm gettin there. I can mostly understand what people are saying now and it makes me so happy to hear people and be able to answer them hahaha. A lot of people are shocked to see the white guys speaking their language.

So there's an elder in our district that stays with us named Elder Morrison and he has a guitar and is super good so he's teaching me more songs to play now. So sick.

My companion is so dope. Like I said last time his name is Elder Mokoena and he's from South Africa.  We listened to the same music back home and we agree on pretty much everything. He's a super chill guy and I love working with him.  We're always just talking and laughing in the area. Makes the days go by super quick.

I now have a mom here in Zimbabwe named Sister Makore. Since she was baptized in 2015, she has always had the missionaries over and she does our laundry and cooks for us and she calls each missionary her son.  She is the coolest person ever. She's the one who's helping me with most of my Shona now and its awesome. Whenever we have nothing to do we go to moms house and chill until we get our motivation back and then we go to work haha. 

Christmas was awesome for us! We went down to Kadoma and spent the night with 10 other elders and then got up early christmas morning and played soccer in the rain for like 3 hours.  The funnest thing ever. I was killing it with the Africans on my team. Started makin people look silly.  I love soccer now hahaha. My comp was on my team and we were puttin people on skates hahaha it was awesome. then we went and started skyping and I got to talk to the family and it was perfect. Love you guys!  Weird that I'll only get to skype one more time on my mission.... hahaha what the.  But after skyping, we drove back to Chegutu and got pizza and ate it while listening to christmas music all night. Pretty good way to spend my last christmas in Zim.

New Years was less exciting. I had some fireworks and was planning on staying up with my comp but at around 11pm I started feeling super tired and kind of sick so I called it a night. but i managed to say awake until I say the clock tick to 12:00 so I'm happy hahaha 2018!!! I totally go home this year.....so sick. This morning my comp and I were blowing up glass bottles with my fireworks tho so it was still legit.

So thats all I got for this time. I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and are ready for the new year! Love you all!

Stay Steady Grindin'

Cheers,

Elder Anderson

Meet the Comp

Sis Makore/Mom

Sis Makore's grandkids. Mbali and Wayne

 We had this wicked bonfire my first night in Chegutu haha so sick. 

 Rained super hard this last week and left rivers where we needed to walk haha. We got soaked this day. 

Some of the YSA's in our branch. 

Some pictures of the area

This is Wayne. He stays with Sis Makore and he never stops making me laugh hahahahaha