I'm Tired... (9-19-16)

I can't think of a better way to describe what I am feeling other than pure exhaustion.  This was a great week, but I am dead, and I am scared to see how much more tired I will be after this coming week.  Then hopefully I will be able to calm down and just do regular missionary work for a change.  Last week we spent all the time with the new missionaries it seemed.  We picked them up tuesday night and wednesday morning.  It was super fun, they are all super excited to be here and I think they will do great.  After that we gave them a training.  Because of the rush of things I never really got trained on how to give them the training and the last time I saw it was when I came into the mission.  But because of the lack of time and the fact we had to give the training in two languages I gave it to the americans in english and my companion in portugues to the brazillians.  That evening I walked with Elder Goes and Anjos as they were waiting to go to zone conference in beira, that was a lot of fun, Elder Goes is going to Nampula so I really enjoyed getting to tell him all about my favorite area ever.  We flew up to beira on thursday morning.  That was fun, we had some divisions.  I walked with Elder Combs(My first trainee, now a  Zone Leader), Elder Morris(From St. Georgeish), Elder Fuchs, and Elder Ribeiro.  They were all fun divisions, and I enjoyed getting to work with different missionaries, and also getting to work in Beira for the first and probably last time, haha.  We had zone conference on Friday, I enjoyed it, we talked about working with members and we brought the stake president to come and help us with some role-playing.  It gave them a more real feel, and I think it was valuable.  The zone leaders gave similar trainings to ours, and I really hope that the mission can faithfully apply what we talked about, it is a super basic principle, but I think that it can make a big difference if faithfully applied.  On sunday we had District conference in Manga, that was good, it was kind of weird as it was my first time watching a sunday meeting in a ward that I am not assigned to work in, but I enjoyed it and I am super excited to see the progress in Manga and hope that the Zone up there can keep it up and get the Stake we have a goal for.  The good thing is that all of the requirements that we missionaries can effect have already been met.  Now we just need the district to meet the requirements that it affects i.e. tithing and such.  They are super close though so remember the manga stake in your prayers.  Tomorrow we will have Zone Conference in Maputo, it will be fun to go back to matola for the first time since I left 6 months ago.  Then we will have a normal day on wednesday, fingers-crossed, and thursday I will drive Elder Mataveis and myself down to swaziland, it will be a good time, please pray that I can make it safely, I am not worried, but it is the first time I have made a trip this long in a while.  I am super happy with what I am doing, I am learning every day.  I hope you all have a good week.  Also pray that I find a new battery for my camera, my camera will not turn on, or charge and I think it is the battery, but I hope that it is just the battery and not the camera.  But I love and miss you all and am grateful for your support.

Love,

Elder Holt

I am in my 14th transfer, what the freaking heck... (9-12-16)

So either revelation has ceased in the church or the Lord though he would play a joke on me (Joking)...  I got called as the Assistant to President Koch.  So really I have known about this for a few weeks know, but for fear that if I told you all, president would change his mind I waited until I was actually down here.  But so I am back here in maputo learning what an assistant does.  Last tuesday I spent hand washing my clothes as our washer had broken, then drying, then we ran to correlation, and I ran home and packed my half-dry clothes up, and first thing wednesday I was off.  When I landed we went to eat at this hotel, it was nicer than anything I had seen for 6 months, I felt really uncomfortable, Thursday we had a meeting and the office couple took us to lunch at the fish market, they had gone earlier in the day and bought a ton of shrimp and fish and paid someone to cook it all, and they took all the staff to lunch.  Friday I learned how to drive, but it turns out I am illegal to drive so I expedited an international license because I need to be driving, but yeah.  It is super crazy here, everything is on the right side, so I had to adjust, also the hardest part is that the blinker is on the right side, and so I always accidentally turn the wipers on.  Other than all this learning stuff we had a baptism on Saturday, and we have started prepping our zone conference trainings.  We were up at 4h30 this morning to take a missionary to the airport and we will be traveling the next two weeks for zone conference.  All in all I am enjoying myself, I thought I was tired with normal work, but now I am just exhausted, I love you all, and hope you have a good week.  Sorry this week there is no pictures, I packed my charger and haven't been able to unpack yet, so I will send some next week, but I sent you 75 last week so it is ok.

Love,

Elder Anthony Holt

Another Good Week (9-5-16) Picture Overload-It's a good thing!

So this week we just chilled in the house a ton....  I promise I don't suck as a missionary, we just have had a lot of work done on our house and the mission rule is that if someone is working on your house you have to be with them supervising, so we got stuck in for a few days with that.  Other than that we tried to do 6 days of work in 3, so that was fun.  I felt bad because we didn't get to visit all of our investigators as much as we should, but we did our best.  We have our Second Counselor in the Branch Presidency who has been giving us a lot of references and a good amount of them came to church yesterday, he was more than proud of himself, haha.  He couldn't stop beaming, he was directing elder's quorum and he was like, hey, you need to give the Elders references, just look at all the people that I have brought to church...  But hey, if you give us references you can brag about it all you want.  Yesterday was fast and testimony meeting, my last in Nampula, that was kind of rough, I will miss this place a lot, but it has been good time here, and I know that it had to end sometime.  I am super happy with how I am leaving the area.  My goal for my mission was to never leave an area worse than I found it, and we made a lot of improvements here and I am super happy with them.  Granted I know it wasn't all me, it was my companion, our desire, our work, and mainly the will of the Lord.  But we are growing little by little and we will be a large stake here in Nampula one day. We also had a solar eclipse, except the clouds covered it during the coolest part.... I really can't think of much else that has happened recently, but I ask for your prayers for our investigators.  It looks like I will be going to Maputo sometime this week, I think closer to the beginning rather than the end, but that should be good.  I will talk a little more about that next week.  But I love you all and miss you, and hope you have a great week.  And give references to the Missionaries so you can brag about them at church.

Love,

Elder Holt

Let's be real, this is the only part you all care about, so there are some of the crocodiles and my comp poking it with bamboo, us with Sergio and Rosalina, and the Shawarma Guy I always tell you about, oh and my attempt at a picture early in the solar eclipse that happened

CROCODILE...

With Sergio & Rosalina

Solar Eclipse

With the Shawarma Guy

So Elder Taukiuvea took these pictures and I figured since I was sending them to myself to keep I might as well send them to you all as well, I am sure you wont mind, at least my mom wont...

Moçiro, (Mow-see-row)- African Facial

So to explain, here in nampula we often see people, mainly the women with this white stuff all over their faces during mid-day, especially on holidays, when they paint it on in designs.  It is called Moçiro, (Mow-see-row), so I bought some and some of the youth from the ward taught us how to use it, they said it is good for your skin, so basically we got african facial, and I am not ashamed, and now I know how to do it.

THEY HAD A DANCE, THE ELDERS TOOK GOOFY COMPANIONSHIP PICTURES!

COUPLE PICTURES... 

GROUP PICTURES...

FOOD...THEY ROASTED A PIG!!

MISC PICTURES...