Elder Anthony James Holt: Week 5 Mozambique

Tudo Bem,

Ola from here in mozambique. It has been a good week here. Everyone here said it was a really cold week for here. On sunday everyone was wearing parkas, and everywhere everyone has been telling us how cold it is. I on the other hand am just here in the internet cafe wiping sweat off my face constantly. I don't know though, it seems like it has cooled down a little bit. I guess that we also had the supposed end of summer rain storm. It was basically a torrential downstorm for like 15 minutes, i was soaked though, and it was kind of a nice curveball. We worked hard throughout the week. We have had lots of good stuff happen, and also some stuff that kind of sucks. We have a family that just started to come to our chapel every sunday, and told us that they had decided to "frequent our church" Elder Keck and I started teaching them this week, and they are already gathering marriage papers, and preparing for the 23 of May for the marriage and baptism. We have another family, who finally received there papers necessary to open the process which is super exciting. This week we will teach law of castidade to another family, and they will hopefully be able to get their process started, unfortunately, she is from swaziland, and it could make it fairly difficult to get them, we will pray for the process to be easier though. We are still working on finding more families, and I have faith that as we continue to hit our contact goal, we will be blessed with families who are ready for our message.

This last saturday as a finding activity we as missionaries for the ward here had a ward easter egg hunt. It was a lot of fun, we spent all of saturday painting easter eggs, but because the eggs here are brow, we couldn't dye them. what we ended up doing was painting them with nail polish. It was a lot of work between 4 missionaries and 5 dozen eggs, but it was a little easier than 12 miles and 5 qualified contacts. Unfortunately, with the activity, we lost an entire day, and were only able to teach one lesson. It was also really frustrating, because of everyone that came to the activity, not a single person brought any people that aren't already active members. We were really upset as missionaries, because we lost a whole days worth of work, and we got absolutely nothing out of it. It is really difficult right now, because with the formation of the stakes, the church is now supposed to function independently of the missionaries. We are supposed to assist in the transition, but we are trying to diminish so they can grow. It is nice, because we can focus a lot more on the work, rather than the ministration of the wards, but it is very difficult, because right now we are getting little if any support from any of the ward leaders, and they are doing nothing to get the members doing work with the missionaries. To all of those that are members reading this. We missionaries need you. It is hard enough to do regular missionary work, when we have help from members, it makes things a million times easier, it is hard to share testimony sometimes, but you must not forget that every single person you see, is a child of our heavenly father, and because you have a testimony already, there is no reason why you are not responsible for theirs. I am fearful for all the people that will ask me after this life is over, "you saw me this day, and you knew this message was true, and I had to wait for a long time before someone else brought me the truth that you didn't share with me before, why was it so hard to use your testimony to give me salvation." You all have greater power than any of you realize. I wish the best for you all, and send my love from here in africa.

Love,

Elder Holt

Extra Something:

In one of his letters he stated that the people make fun of white people, so I asked him exactly how they make fun of the white people...his response...

"They call us maloongoo or branco. One is portuguese the other is dialect for white person. Most people assume we are chinese though and then they just start calling us cheenezz, or they yelll ching-chong-wong, and other racist stuff, haha its mostly the little kids though."