20

So yeah now I'm 20.

My birthday here was soooo sick.  Started off by buying 4 kgs of pork and beef and some drinks and then we took them to Mom and Wayne and then we had some powerful lessons and then we did some baptismal interviews and then returned to moms house with the ZLs and had a braai.  And it was the best thing ever.  We ate so much pork hahahaha.  Wayne is a master of braai.  Afterwards the ZLs brought in a cake and they all sang happy birthday to me the zimbabwean way.  Its the same as we all normally sing it but after they add a lot, they sing another verse where they say, "How old are you now?" and then after that verse, I have to sing back, "I'm 20 years old now" for the 3rd verse.  And then the next verse they sing, "WHo is your girlfriend?" and then I replied "Rejoice Makore" (mom's daughter) hahahahaha man we were all laughing so hard.  the funny thing is they sing all verses with the same tune that we all know but they just add a lot more. We all call Rejoice, "sisi" which means "sister" so when I called her out as my girlfriend, mom was like, "Iwe fut seki!" which is like a curse word in shona hahahaha. Man it was funny.  Also, mom was telling me throughout the day that in their culture, the people throw dirt/sadza and water on you if its your birthday..... So the whole day I was making sure nothing happened and then right as we were leaving, my comp and one of the ZLs each had huge buckets of water and just soaked me on my way out of moms house hahahahahahahaha and then mom was like, "Okay NOW you are 20 years old" hahahaha.  Then after we returned home we bought a bottle of this non-alcoholic wine stuff and then I got to pop it, it was so sick.  So yeah that was how my last birthday in Africa was....truly dope.

 Finally had another baptism! We baptized Stephen, the one-armed guy.  Man he is powerful.  In his testimony after the baptism, he said, "I want to testify to you that I really feel that I am in the right path now".  Touching.  I'll attach the pictures. 

We met with Keshias again this week and his wife was still being nonsense,  we could tell that she told her kids to tell us that no one was home but luckily we saw the husband and he gladly welcomed us in.  We kind of reviewed some of the things which we have taught them and Keshias started saying how he wanted to be baptized.  We never even invited him hahaha he's so dope.  And then we talked about how they need to be legally married first and talked about how we could do it thru the church and the wife's heart was softened when we talked about that and her countenance changed and she seemed more willing to listen to us and come to church.  We invited them to come to Stephen's baptism and they came! Unfortunately they couldn't come to church this week but hapana worries they still solid. 

Met a few new investigators this week who seem powerful.  Hopefully they don't disappoint. 

One of them is this guy named Wezo and he's awesome.  He has never tasted alcohol and he's never smoked and he's like 30 something.  He has two kids who used to come to our church and the wife is outta the picture so no marriage problems.  He is best friends with a member and he's very smart.  When we taught him the restoration this week, it answered so many of his questions and it was awesome.  The spirit was strong in that lesson, I hope he progresses.  Solid dude.

Well everybody, Thank you so much for all the emails and birthday wishes.  Love you all and I'm so grateful for all the support that you've given me throughout my mission. 

Stay Steady Grindin'

Sharp fede

-Elder Anderson

(so now the computer isn't letting me send pictures.  comin atchya next week no worries)

Miracle

Ladies....and gentlemen whats up?

This week started off super lame because we had fall thru after fall thru.  And even with the people we thought were progressing but now we are considering dropping them. Darn. Life goes on.

So I had quite a brilliant idea this week. Recently I have been getting super pissed whenever people call me "murungu" or "white man" and sometimes even just "white".  So I decided to start telling everybody what my name is.  So like when a group of 20+ kids start screaming "MURUNGU HOW ARE YOU!?!?" I'm like, "ah iwe! Uya pano." which means "come here" and then I tell them my name is Anderson and get them to say it with me and then as I walk away they say "Anderson! Anderson!" hahahaha. Started doing this last week and now there are some streets that we walk down and I start hearing the kids say, "ANDERSON!" hahahaha which is infinitely better than getting called white man haha. Soon, the whole of Chegutu will be calling the missionaries Anderson instead of Murungu lol.

Alright so we had a miracle happen this week.  We found this guy a couple weeks ago and his name is Keshias and he is a super timid and humble baba.  When we started teaching him and he was agreeing with everything we said and he seemed super promising and even committed to come to church but recently he dropped off the face of the earth and we can never see him.  But... on sunday we walked into church and we were early by a few minutes and we saw Keshias sitting there with the Book of Mormon we gave him.  He had to run home after sacrament meeting so we didn't get to talk to him right then but then after church we walked over to his house and he was there and was super happy to see us and we asked him about church and he loved sacrament meeting.  He said he learned a lot from the speakers about love and forgiveness and the life after death, which is amazing because this guy barely speaks english and all our meetings are in english.  And he even said when he took the sacrament he felt "Ndakachena" which means "clean".  Amazing.  So we shared a small message and reviewed the restoration very slowly and simply with him and then asked him what he understood about our message.  His response was something like this, "For many years I didn't know which church was true,  but now I know this is the TRUE church.".... This guy is so ready for our message its awesome.  The only problem is that his wife is nonsense and thinks she knows everything and is trying to pull him to her church... but we blasted her with the husband and told her the truth and she was like, "ohhhh okayyyy." hahaha so minor roadblock but no worries.  Keshias is powerful.

Also, we met this girl the other day named Belinda and she introduced herself to us one day on the street and told us she was a member who was working in Chegutu temporarily but is from Harare.  We told her where the church was and came and visited her at the hospital she works at and taught her and she is powerful. We told her even tho it was far, to invite some of her colleagues to church and she said she would and on Sunday she showed up to church with 3 of her friends...... and they walked freaking far to come it was so sick.  Hopefully we can teach them before they all return back to Harare.

Steven also came to church again.  He's basically a member now.  Participates in every class.  Mom told us she talked to him at church about him bringing his family with him to church and he told her, "I'm working on it. One day they'll come." Sooo sick. Steven is getting baptized this Saturday.  He's honestly someone you could see being the branch president. He's awesome.  One of the most prepared people I have met.

Including those ones, we had 10 investigators at church....niiiiicccceee.

Touching moment this week.  One day in the area we got a call from the elders in Marimba Park (my first area) and I answered and Elder Khumalo was like, "Yeah so elder Anderson, theres someone here that wants to talk to you" And then I heard my man Shawn! the first kid i baptized!  It was so nice to talk to him haha he's like 13 and he's powerful. Going to be a missionary one day.  Got to talk to him and his family for a few minutes it was awesome. 

We work with this member a lot named Blessing and she told us that people call her "B".... and I was like, "No way.... thats what people call me too" and now we call each other "B" hahaha.

So obviously we had a dope week.  Hope you guys did too.

Stay Steady Grindin'

Sharp fede,

-Elder Anderson

from left to right, Elder Mwamba from Congo, funniest dude ever. Then Elder Ntshangase, my companion, chillest dude ever, Then me. 

My breakfast this morning.....

I would also send you a video of the crazy rainstorm we had this morning but it would probably finish uploading when I step off the plane in Boise.

Pachi Pamwe

First of all, I'm sad that the Patriots lost the super bowl but hapana worries.  Brady still a legend. 

Also, I want to help you all to be able to say my companions name. So its Ntshangase.  nnh-chahn-gah-say.  thats how your pronounce it. I hope that helps.  Even the shona people find it hard to say and I just blast them like, "C'mon, even a white guy can read that and you cant?" hahaha

So yeah Elder Ntshangase is from Durban, South Africa and he's super chill.  Different from Elder Mokoena but still chill.  He comes from a huge family and he is the only member!  And he's 25 years old.  Listens to house music and loves eating so we basically best friends already hahaha. Nah but he's a cool guy and he actually served for a transfer in Capetown waiting for his visa so he's already a powerful missionary.  And he speaks Zulu so I can talk to him in his language a little bit from what Mokoena taught me.

Also, the other new missionary in our house is Elder Mwamba from DRC. He's learning how to speak english right now and he speaks french so his accent is dope.  He's a funny dude. We are going to have fun this transfer.

Due to our weird schedule this week, we didn't have a lot of time to proselyte but we still had success.  At church we had 6 people come! Sooo sick.  Steven came with his two sons and it was awesome.  We also had this girl Chipo come to church which surprised us because we thought she was starting to be a joker but now she proved us wrong and we are probably going to baptize her on the 17th, along with two others!  Finally going to baptize in this area!

In other news, I finished Jesus the Christ this week. 

So on Thursday and Friday, we had the training meetings in Harare with our sons and it was so cool to be back.  I hadn't been to Harare or the mission office in almost a year hahaha. so weird.  But the food that we had was amazing. The American senior couple cooked breakfast for us.... need I say more? And Sister Mkhabela made an amazing dinner for us.  She's too good at cooking.  We met a lot of the new missionaries and there were a lot of sisters fresh out of the states and man....white girls are weird.  hahaha.  I got to see Elder Fili and Elder Parco again tho so I was super happy.  The 3 of us lived together in Masvingo for a long time and it was good to hang out with those guys again and talk about all the weird stuff that happened in Masvingo. 

Our water pressure is super low so today we were back to bucket baths... So sick. 

Last thing.  One day we were leaving mom's house and she was like, "Anderson, you're looking bigger" in shona and I was like."....thank you so much" hahaha so hats off to me guys, I'm gaining weight in Africa.

Oh yeah and "pachi pamwe" is the equivalent of "nice to see you again"

Solid week. No complaints.

Love you all!

Stay Steady Grindin'

Cordially,

Elder Anderson

Me and Parco

Cooking chicken with Mom and Wayne

 this is moms daughter Rejoice. She's dope

 pulled up to moms house one day and Wayne had on this jacket, so i tried it on and we took mean pictures. 

Another Son

So transfers happened and Elder Mokoena is leaving me....... I am going to miss that guy so much hahaha.  But now I'll be the district leader and I'm going to train a new missionary again.  So now I'm having another son. I dont know much about him but his name is Elder Ntshangase and he's from South Africa I think. And he wont get here until Thursday so that means from now until then, I'll be with Elder Morrison (from California) because he is also training and waiting for his son.  Also.... I'm driving again! soooo happy, but its automatic so I'm kinda upset about that. No worries tho, a car is a car. 

This last week was dope tho. We had 9 investigators at church.... and like 7 of them came for the first time. It was awesome!  We also had a braii on sunday after church with mom and Wayne and it was dope. I'll send some pictures. I was so happy after that meal.  

Cholera is mostly gone. Nobody else died so that's good. 

So today is the start of my 11th transfer on mission........wow.

I now know like 20 songs on the guitar thanks to Elder Morrison.

There were a couple times this week were I had a fluent and extensive conversation in Shona with someone. So sick.

As far as investigators go, the same people I talked about last week are progressing still and they are awesome.  Might have to drop a few of our investigators so that's sad. Sorry I dont have much to say about the week, haha I'm still upset about Elder Mokoena leaving. 

While we went around saying bye to people with Elder Mokoena, he shared a message with one of his recent convert family and it was so powerful.  HEwas really sad to leave them because he helped them so much and got them married and baptized and he saw them grow so much and he told them to endure to the end so they could see each other again in the celestial kingdom and while he was talking I felt the spirit so strong and I just knew that the plan of salvation is real and we will see each other gain.  It was amazing. 

Well guys I love this church.  Love you all have a great week

Stay Steady Grindin'

Be Happy

Sharp,

Elder Anderson

Sadza and chicken. my favorite meal in the world

Us with Elder Silotile. Another dope south african that just went home. 

Me and Mokoena

Sunday braii with mom and wayne

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....