Traveling Kills (7-11-16)

So this week we did a lot of traveling, we were up late sunday night packing so we didn't lose time during the day, and then we were off at 5am to catch a plane monday morning.  From there we spent a few days in Beira for our mission tour.  Elder Ellis from the seventy who is in the area presidency came and gave us a training on tuesday, and then we were up early again on wednesday to catch another flight to Nampula.  We came back with six instead of four as we were doing a division with the district leader from Quelimane and his companion.  We sent them off on friday morning at 4:30am, and were finally able to try and normalize.  But man it was exhausting, this week was the first time I have fallen asleep in my work clothes.  Thankfully i had taken my contacts out.  We planned, and then the shower was busy so I made the mistake of laying in my bed to wait on my turn, when Elder Taukiuvea woke me up and said I should probably change I had been asleep for an hour or so.  Through the week I was super tired and I am looking forward to taking a nap today to try and recuperate a little bit, haha.  We were able to find some families this week and we have a lot of hope for our area.  We will have a marriage this week.  The family is the first family from Pemba, a city 5 hours north of us, to be married and in a few weeks we will baptize them, so that is super historic.  They come once a month or so and we teach them when they come, they found the church in Tete and have super strong testimonies, all they need now is to get baptized and gain their conversion. Another family that we had been teaching that is now in the new elders area opened the marriage process and should be getting married in a few weeks.  All in all we are seeing a lot of good stuff and I can't wait to see where it goes.  The other good part was getting a call from the elders in some of my old areas telling me that a family I had taught and a family that I found got married and baptized this last week.  And then another call telling me that two families I found and worked with were getting really close to being baptized.  It really makes you super happy to hear things like that.  Other than that I have been trying to be my best.  It is super interesting, although it is a mission and we should all be adults, sometimes it feels like I am in High School again, and no matter how hard I try to do MY best, in someone elses point of view, I am being fake or a hypocrite.  I just wish we could all just focus on who were are serving and doing our best to please Him, but I guess as the mission goes on, I get a little more tired and a little more tough, and at this point, I really dont care what people think of me, as long as I can present myself before the Lord as having done my best.  My wish is that we, those of us on missions and at home, may learn to support each other in our search for perfection rather than beating each other down.  I love and miss you all and wish that you all have wonderful weeks.

Love,

Elder Anthony Holt

These are some pictures of our trip in Beira and the bagunzas we did.

Happy Fourth of July (7-4-16)

So to celebrate today, we woke up at 5am and got on a plane and came to beira, then we played some gator ball, and ate out.  Now we are doing internet but because of everything we had to do I dont have as much time today, so I am sorry about that.  But I will make up for it next week.  We did once again, wait for it... missionary work all week.  But we have found some fun ways to improvise.  We dont have a big focus on teaching youth right now because we want families to help the church grow.  But we still have a lot of youth, members and non members, that need support so about a month ago we had the Idea to take a couple of hours on saturday afternoons and host mutual/family night for the youth, to teach them but also to get them to come back to church.  I dont like to go little so we have had some super fun activities for super cheap. We played teh present and oven mitt game, last week we introduced the youth to water balloons, and then this weekend we taught them american line dances; macarena, cupid shuffle, electric slide, footloose.  It was a blast and the youth loved it, I had to teach all the dances, and lead them so by the end I was dripping and dead, but it was super fun.  I will send pictures next week when we get to our good internet place.  But Other than that have a happy fourth, and for a spiritual thought, we need to remember that God is not real only when we believe in Him.  A lot of people figure that simply by not believing in God, His influence can be taken from your life, just as much as His rules.  But he has not ceased to be God and never will so we should start respecting Him a little more, or a lot.  

Love,

Elder Anthony Holt

Adjustment Week and More Miracles (6-27-16)

So things up here in Nampula(that is down for you all), are going great.  This week has been a week of adjustment as we are getting used to only working in half of our area.  The side we gave to the new dupla had all of our progressing investigators.  But yeah, yesterday at church all of the old investigators were telling us how they were mad that we dont come visit anymore.  I guess they will get used to it, it is part of progress.  But yeah, other than that we had not as good of the week as we are getting used to working the other side, and we need investigators we hit a couple finding jackpots this week, but then none of them decided to come to church.  We are working on being more even in our work and doing what we can to find new people everyday instead of just a ton of new people one or two days a week.  They other thing that is kind of difficult is organizing a way to work in our area.  It is also weird living with other missionaries.  I haven't lived with anyone other than my comp for 3 months, so we got a little distracted at times.  So other than the we taught lessons, knocked doors, and asked for references kind of normal missionary stuff that I always talk about, we did have a pretty cool experience this week.  We were in church on sunday when a man comes to me and says, "I speak french, no portugues, little english" and then he handed me an envelope.  It had some documents in there and asked us to take it to the Mission President, but to also read it.  So I did.  This man is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  His letter told of how he found the church in tanzania and was baptized and received the Aaronic priesthood in tanzania in 2014.  He has since then come to Mozambique as a refugee with his congolese wife and their children.  His letter told of how in the camp they have found 3 other families that have had contact with the church, but were not yet baptized when they had to leave the congo.  It appears that they are meeting every week and they have a Triple Combination written in Swahili that he translates into french, a primary teachers manual, and a copy of the red family manual.  They have been reading from these, praying, and his letter is a plea for the authorization to meet as a group as they are far from Nampula and their conditions make it nearly impossible to leave the camp.  As I talked with him, I remembered seeing a copy of a french book of mormon in an old dirty closet in the chapel, and I went to get it for him.  I ended up finding 2 french book of mormons, unfortunately they were both fairly water-damaged and about 10 swahili copies of the book of mormon.  This mans eyes lit up when we offered them to him, and he said he will save for a few months and should be able to come back in 2 months.  I really wanted to get a picture of him, but he disappeared before I could.  It was truly a touching experience and I even got a little choked up as I read the letter.  It was a true tender mercy of the Lord.  Especially as I have been struggling a lot lately feeling as though many members here do not seem to value their religion as anything more than just another church.  We try to teach sacrifice and we try to teach faith, but it seems that they just dont want to give anything up no matter how much it holds them back.  I have prayed a lot wondering why I feel this way, especially as I haven't felt this way my entire mission.  But this man was definitely sent to show me the humility and faith of the people here.  There are few that do not seem to care, but I have noticed that a lot of my frustration came from my own pride, which I have a lot of.  But it was truly touching to see the look of contentment on this man as he partook of the sacrament for the first time in probably a year, and how happy he was to be at church even though he didn't speak an ounce of the language.  But please remember Brother Msabah in your prayers and we look forward to hand delivering his letter to President Koch in a week at our mission tour, it will be especially cool as he will be with Elder Ellis of the Seventy for our annual mission tour and it is a cool story that I think President will relate to him.  But yeah, other than that I Believe in all that I am doing, no matter how hard the mission gets, or how much I want to be trunky sometimes, I believe He lives, and I believe that through His love we can be saved, and that is why I am doing what I am doing.  I love and miss you all and hope that you will be happy and protected throughout this week.

Love,

Elder Anthony Holt

New Week, New Transfer, New Email (6-20-16)

So I went into my 12th transfer today, and the big news is... I am going to stay here in Nampula.  I wasnt too worried about leaving, Elder Taukiuvea and I both tried to hint to President in our emails that we would like to stay together here, I dont know if that is why, but I am staying.  I haven't been here too long anyways.  But I am super excited for this transfer.  Especially because the best thing about transfers was on thursday we got a call from President to let us know that we would be recieving two more missionaries up here.  I was so excited I literally couldnt hide it.  Elders Jimenez and Osorio got here late saturday night and last night we showed them the area.  We split the area and we are going to give them the half with all the families ready to get baptized, haha.  So it is back to the finding for us, but that is the thrill of missionary work.  The work his in Nampula is historic.  In the 3 months I have been here we have been able to get from a sacrament attendance of 81 my first week to 148 yesterday.  We went from like 7 eternal investigators at church my first week, to 25 investigators yesterday, almost all of which are coming regularly and progressing.  and the best part is we are only finding more.   It is such a historic time to be here right now.  We are seeing this super small branch go from one little branch, to working and growing until, hopefully at the end of this year we can establish the first district here.  It will be the third city in Mozambique to get a district, and if the growth continues at the rate we are seeing I see no reason whey in 5-7 years we cant have a stake here.  It is humbling to have been called to be apart of it.  Before the mission I read stories of Wilford Woodruff and Heber C. Kimball, and the other missionaries in early england, the benbow farm, and everything.  But now I am here in Africa seeing the very things they recorded placed before my eyes.  While I havent met a congregration of 600 people waiting for us, we have been invited my some pastors to preach to their congregations and I am so excited because this is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and we are coming everyday a little bit closer to having the blessings of a stake, and one day having a temple here in the blessed country.  We had a baptism on Saturday, a man named Junior and a young women named Janete.  Junior has know of the church for like 5 years, but he was finally ready, we just got to be the lucky ones to baptize him.  Janete, I think I talked about her a few weeks ago.  But the first time we visited here there was such an overwhelming look of sadness in her eyes.  But little by little we have seen her become happy, and laugh, and love the church.  While she still has a long way to go, yesterday after her confirmation I asked her how she felt and she said, "I am happy, just happy."  I was talking with Elder Jimenez yesterday, and we were talking about the spiritual side vs. the doctrinal side of the church.  It is interesting because both sides are 100% true and lead people to the church.  For me, as well as most people that grow up in the church our testimony is based on doctrine, and how much every thing makes sense.  For converts to the church it is usually the spiritual experiences that bring them to the church, especially experiences with the atonement.  But they are both so essential to conversion.  It is like a puzzle.  For me, before the mission I saw how it all fit together and it made sense, and I liked that it made sense, but i put the puzzle together upside down and couldnt see the picture.  For those who are drawn by the spiritual side, they see the picture, and it is beautiful, they just aren't quite sure how to fit it together.  The mission has taught me how to merge these two sides together, and it is something that I am still learning, but I know that this church is true, when I have a doctrinal concern there is always the spiritual side to get me through until the doctrince makes sense and vice-versa.  But this has been an awesome week, and please pray for me, I have learned that on the mission often times the highest of spirtual times are followed by the lowest of spiritual lows.  Pray that I may keep the eternal perspective and grow from whatever mountain the Lord in is mercy may send me.  I will pray for you.  I hope all you fathers had a great fathers day.  I thought about making a dead dad joke, but that wouldn't be appropriate, so tchau.

Love, 

Elder Anthony Holt

Baptism Pictures

A little filipino kid in our area.  His moms roomate is a member, they always have us come over on saturdays and he wouldnt eat his dinner, so I made a deal with him, we would race to eat our food and if he won I would take a picture with him

We played the oven mitt box game

A family night (Us helping the youth keep the commandments)

Work, work, work, work, work.... (6-13-16)

Work, work, work, work, work.... i heard that song in a chapa the other day, and I thought it described my life pretty well...So we did a lot of work this week, like normal.  But we are finally getting to our maximum in terms of work.  Seeing as we work with an entire city our time is very precious, and as much as we should be visiting our investigators at least 2-3 times a week, we are barely able to get there once, let alone twice because of how many people we have to teach.  The best part is almost all of them are progressing, or new families that we find every week.  The only problem is it is getting to the point where we have way more to do than we are capable of.  In the past I would just get rid of the things that werent urgent and important, the problem is now, that almost everything we are doing is urgent and important.  and it is so hard.  yesterday at church i was running everywhere, making announcements, helping new investigators, and just trying to enjoy the meetings, and both me and my comp were exhausted just after 3 hours of church, aha.  But we will rest today and get right back at it tonight at 18.  We have been asking president for a second dupla, but we just dont have enough missionaries to send another one up here.  So we are trying to baptize like crazy so that we can prove that it is worth it to send another dupla.  We have worked super hard and havent hit all of our goals, but in working for them we have managed to set our area up pretty well.  I am hoping that I stay here at least one more, I am not worried, i think I will so yeah.  We have a ton of super good families that are just sooooo close I can feel the baptismal waters, but every possible problem you can imagine always happens.  and it is super stressful.  But that is just missionary life.  So a funny story, we have a large population of muslims here in Nampula, but they are cool muslims, not the extremist kind.  Anyways, this last week they started their religious holiday month of Ramadan.  I dont know much about it, but I do know that for the month they fast every day from sun up to sundown, so that is pretty interesting.  But we were knocking doors last night in a nicer area, and the muslims always live in the nicer areas, so we knocked on quite a few of their doors, but they usually just say, hey, we are muslim, and we say, oh thats cool, have a good night, and then walk away.  But last night we knocked this door, an hour after sundown, and this arabic man opens it up, and it was clear that he was a muslim family, and he looks at us and say, DIDN'T YOU KNOW THAT WE ARE BREAKING OUR FAST!!! and then shut (not really slammed) the door on us.  Man, I think every sarcastic switch in my brain flipped, and my comp had to basically drag me out of the predio before I tried to knock again to answer his question with: well today isnt fast sunday so how was I supposed to know, we would love to come in and teach you about fasting in the way the Lord has prescribed. as well as a dozen other less nice responses.  But we kept knocking other doors, and eventually found a non-muslim family who seems pretty cool.  Other than that, we were able to help the family from pemba i talked about a few weeks ago to get their process going, they are at the register right now, so I am hoping all goes well.  Other than that, I am just enjoying missionary life as I havent been trunky the last few weeks, ahah.  But have a good week, and be member missionaries, we really need them.

Love,

Elder Anthony Holt

Well this week was super fast.... (6-6-16)

Yeah, so we went to Beira this week for zone conference, that was cool, but being out of the area for 3.5 days really makes the week fly by.  On monday, tuesday, and wednesday we were able to teach a good amount of people.  I was really happy to get the work done on those days.  I feel like it was the most effective I have worked in a long time.  Every area is super different, and so you have to learn how to work the different areas.  I definitely think this area has been the most challenging for me.  In my old area, if I had a ton of investigators I felt really good about myself and that we were doing a lot.  But here, even though we are teaching a ton of people, I just never feel like I have done all that I can do.  I always feel like there is more to do, and I am always so tired. I am really getting tired of being so flipping tired all the time, but I guess it is whatever.  Our investigators are going well.  We have an investigator who needs to get an ID card and yesterday she was sick, but her husband came, and we were able to get one of the documents they needed through another investigator of ours.  But it was sunday and we gave it to him, and he started freaking out because he was so excited that they could finally progress towards baptism.  He said to my comp, "can I go get her ID right now"  my comp responded, "no, they are closed on sunday, but you can go first thing tomorrow morning"  he was so excited he looked like a little kid on christmas morning.  It was super cool to see an investigator so excited.  We need to find some more, that is for sure.  But we have another investigator who is the neice of a family we are teaching, the family stopped progressing, but this girl kept coming to church, and so we began teaching her.  She is 17 and the first two times we taught her we could just feel how sad she was.  It was really depressing, but the last few visits it seems that she is getting progressively happier, and last night she told us that she wants to serve a mission some day, so that is super cool.  We had a good time in Beira, learning from President and the AP's, when we were giving our zone training there was one part where we could not explain what we wanted, and it was so frustrating.  Thankfully we have a president who is way more in tune with the spirit than we are and he got up and in 45 seconds explained a concept that we took 10 minutes trying to get our zone to understand.  We are super happy as we see our zone progressing, we really think that we are getting better, and we are super happy to be a part of it.  I also got to see some stuff around Beira, so that was nice, and seeing the other missionaries was a good time too.  It is always depressing flying back to Nampula, because just when you get used to being around people white people again, you have to fly back to be alone, haha.  But I love it up here, and it felt like coming home, and I didnt get sick this time so I couldnt have asked for more.  I want to express my gratitude for the atonement, and the knowledge that tomorrow I can be better than I was today.  That is really the hope that we all need to have. Too many people in this world are stuck thinking, I am just this way and that is how I have to be.  But I know that I have a Perfect Father in Heaven, who sacrificed His perfect son, so that I could become perfect one day as well.  So even though I might not be perfect, I have a perfect desire to be perfect, so I am grateful for the atonement that makes that possible.  I love you all and I love this gospel, I am so grateful that God has restored it to the earth today, and that he guides us today. I miss you all and love you more.

My homies at home (5-30-16)

Bom Dia for me, and Boa noite for you.  This was a good week.  Elder Taukiuvea and I worked and we found and we did some baptizing too.  But yeah, to be honest, I really dont remember anything crazy.  We did normal missionary work, so I guess I could send you my weekly numbers or something, but that probably wouldnt mean much to you all.  We have been prepping our families for baptism, and they are getting closer and closer.  We have one family Arlindo and Virginia, they are a cool family.  They live in a little mud house an hour and a half away, but they come to church every week.   They are pretty poor, but that is normal here I guess.  They like everyone are having difficulty arranging money to get married.  He needed to travel to get a birth certificate and to buy the certificate and pay the trave would be about $17US, just to give you an idea, but that is enough to feed a family of 5-6 for like 2 weeks, and he didnt have that money, and we didnt really know what to do.  But a few weeks ago we got a church headquarters reference for a guy, except he lives super far from the city in a district called moma.  But he was coming into Nampula that weekend so we set up an appointment and we visited him, he liked the message and we were able to give him a book of mormon and stuff and he went back, and he lives so far away that we can't expect him to come to church, it is like 8 hours by chapa.  But we found out he was from the same district where Arlindos documents were, so we called and sent some money and he bought the documents and sent them with a friend coming into Nampula, it was super cool to see that the Lord will help us.  I dont know that this man will ever progress, but at least he was key in helping someone else with desire get baptized.  This saturday we had the baptism of Jose and Euzebio, that is a whale of a story in itself.  We went to fill up the font on saturday morning, and would you believe, the font has a hole in it, like a big hole.  So we run around town trying to find something to use to patch it.  We find something, run home set it up, and start filling.  Then we check the font an hour later, and water has stopped flowing.  We found out the water company hasnt been pumping water for a few days so our 2500 liter tank was empty and the font was no where near full.  To make matters worse it was draining because our patch hadnt held super well.  We were frantically calling trying to figure out if there was a river that was deep enough out of town that we could get to or something, but there was nothing, and we couldnt think of any places with a pool.  Finally someone tells us to try this club, so we go.  This was 30 minutes before the baptism was supposed to start, but we get there and this stupid portuguese man tells us we have to go and that we cant use the pool, we asked who he was to tell us that, and he was no one related to the club, he just wanted to be a jerk, so I told him off (I am repenting of that one), and we left.  But we checked the pool one more time and found some old guard dude.  We talked to him and he said we could use the pool becuase it was a baptism and he was a pastor and knew that it was important, so we did it, and it felt really good to spite that prideful portuguese sucker.  But yeah, so we baptized them in a public pool it was pretty cool.  That is about all that happened.  For a spiritual thought, I was reading in the Book of Mormon, the account of nephi going back to get the plates with his brother, and I was super confused, like why didnt they just get the plates on the way out instead of the 116 mile travel just to go back, I am pretty sure God knew he was going to want them to get the plates, and of everbody, Lehi probably could have negotiated for them way better.  But yeah, I was confused, but then as I read, I got to 1 Nephi chapter 5:8(i think that is the verse), where it says that sariah had been complaining against Lehi and not trusting in the Lord, but then when her sons got back she said that she now knew with surety that her husband was called of God.  So had they just brought the plates the first time she wouldnt have had that surety and could have doubted at a more crucial point of the journey.  So yeah, sometimes God prompts us, or lets us suffer a little bit, to prove to us that he has a plan.  So have faith, and I love and miss you all.

Love,

Elder Anthony Holt

Baptism Pic

Cool Sunset in the Area