Makadii Week 91!

The final week of the transfer has arrived and a new transfer is about to begin, Elder Byrom and I had a pretty normal week, just trying to contact and find new people in Kadoma to build our teaching pool and to keep bringing people closer to Christ. We had a few new people at church yesterday, but we still have a ways to go. We had a mid-week baptism on Friday for Annie and it went well. Her brother Adventure is a Priest and he performed the baptism. We did it in the evening soon after Seminary so all of the other youth were able to attend and support her. With Annie's baptism it makes a total of 10 new members in Kadoma 1st Branch for the month of October, quite a busy but successful month for us. All those baptized have been confirmed and we are now moving on to a new month. We are back to the basics of finding, teaching, and helping the members. We will see how things progress in November! 

It is tough to tell what next transfer has in store for me. Being a zone leader for over 1 year brings some unknowns about what my final 10 weeks as a missionary will bring. I have had a feeling that I might be training one of the 13 new elders coming into the mission next week, but I am not quite sure what the Lord wants me to do in my final weeks in Zimbabwe. We will find out soon, I will let you know the news next week. :) 

I am in Harare yet again for my 13th MLC meeting today and tomorrow. It might be my last, so I will be doing my best to soak it all in and enjoy it. 

I love you all and wish you the best. For those of you back home, Happy Halloween! :) For Halloween, I will be dressing up as Elder Byrom, and Elder Byrom will be dressing up as me. haha :)

Talk to you next week!

Makadii Week 90!

Hello again! :)

Well, with many things planned this past week, there was a chance for a lot to go wrong. However, all of our plans went through with no problems, and we had a wonderful weekend in Kadoma with a marriage and 5 baptisms! That is now 9 baptisms in the last 3 weeks. I have never been blessed to have baptisms on 3 consecutive weeks until now, but it has been a wonderful thing to be a part of! Talent and Beven Nyanhi were married and baptized this week along with their 9 year old son Kudakwashe. Also baptized was long-time investigator Collen Chirenda and Valentine, a extremely kind and humble young lady. There are many unique conversion stories among all of them, but a can mention a few things. The Nyanhi family was eager to join the church back in 2013 but because of misinformation and other problems they stopped coming to the church. After 4 years, and many prayers, Talent came back to church again determined to do what she felt was right by getting baptized. We met her a month ago, and soon started teaching her, her husband, and the rest of the family again. Br. Chirenda first knew the church back in in the 1990's and came many times, but never progressed to baptism. His son, Simba, was baptized in July and he started coming back to church and had a huge desire for baptism. His brother even served a mission for the church some years ago. Valentine was just a humble and very prepared person to hear the gospel. We were blessed to find her and teach her. A wonderful group of new converts! :)

We were mainly busy this week, making sure everything went well in preparation for the baptisms and marriage. There were some very hot temperatures this week here in Kadoma, one day even reaching above 110 degrees Farenheit. We had an exchange and are now looking for more new people to teach and bring to church. We have found a few people but are struggling to find a similar success of the past month. We will be having another baptism during the course of this week for a young woman named Annie, so we are excited for that as well! :) It has been quite an eventful transfer for us in Kadoma, and the month of October is coming to an end. 

Elder Byrom and I are doing well and enjoying our time together. 2 weeks left in the transfer, and chances are we will be split up. Another milestone happenend for me this week as I now am left with just 12 weeks as a missionary in Zimbabwe. (For missionaries, 12 weeks is a special number. We are trained for 12 weeks when we begin our missions, so we sometimes joke about our last 12 weeks as being something similar.) I will be doing my best to enjoy Kadoma these next 2 weeks and will find out what the remaining 10 weeks of my mission has in store for me. :)

One fun thing from the week: The marriage officer was late to the marriage, so we passed the time with the Nyanhi family and some other by playing some UNO, and other card games. It was fun to teach them how to play UNO. It was a fun time while we were waiting for the marriage officer, President Chiore, to arrive.

I love you all and wish you a wonderful week! Yebo! 

Makadii Week 89!

Hello! Another week gone, this one was very hot.

We had another good week and ended it with the baptisms of Precious and Makanaka, two young girls. They are the daughters of a long time member, Sister Patience. She was inactive for 10 or more years after being baptized in Bulawayo in 2005, but we found her in Kadoma about 1 month ago. She came to church with her 3 girls, and told us she wanted the two oldest girls to be baptized, and we were able to reactivate the mother and teach and baptize her two children. The last born is just 8 months old, but Precious and Maka were both of age for baptism. It was cool to help this family come back and make their covenants. Sis Patience is now a strong member and is one of the very few members there before the start of the Sacrament. It is cool to see the spirit work on people like her, and how she went from inactivity to full activity again. :) The girls were excited to be baptized and are doing super well.

We had yet another wonderful week with 16 investigators at church! We will be having a marriage/wedding at the chapel this Saturday, and a baptsim of 5 people on Sunday. 3 straight weeks of baptisms can be stressful, but were so glad that all things are working out. More about the upcoming baptismal candidates next week! :) Their names are: Talent, Beven, Kudakwashe, Br. Chirenda, and Valentine. It will be a busy and fun-filled week for us in Kadoma! :)

The zone conference in Gweru went well and my training was a success. I ended up doing it in front of only a smal group of missionaries, but it was still ok. Crazy to think that I have only 1 to 2 more zone conferences left on my mission! The drive there and back was very smooth. We have 3 weeks left in the transfer and we will be busy with baptisms, exchanges, and interviews in the zone. Should be great! :)

The weather was very very hot this week, and the rain we did have was very short lived. We will have to wait for another month or so for the real rain to start. All is well and the work is progressing. WIth 13 weeks remaining, I am just doing my best to enjoy Zimbabwe while I can. Things are a bit crazy with food prices in the stores going up a lot, but it hasn't affected us too much yet. 

I love you all so much and wish you a wonderful week! :) Go Pokes!

Makadii Week 88!

Hello everyone! Not too much to report today, but I will do my best to fill you in. 

We ended the week by watching all of the sessions of conference and it went well. I really enjoyed the talks and the conference was very uplifting. It is very weird that I will be home for the next conference in April. After the conference sessions on Sunday we had a baptism for two of our investigators, Sekai and Sibongile. The baptism went well, Elder Byrom and I both performed one baptism each. It was a great end to the week. Another huge blessing this week was that we had 19 investigators attend conference on Sunday. It is by far the highest attendance that I have had on my mission in just one unit. It was a blessed day and the future is bright. Things are moving along quite well here in Kadoma. We have 2 more baptisms coming up this weekend, and then 4 baptisms next weekend. :) 

My 12th MLC in Harare went well on Tuesday and the mission is near 1700 baptisms right now for the year. We have to average around 120 baptisms these last 3 months to hit our goal of 2000. We are going to hit it for sure. Lots of miracles in Zimbabwe this year. This week we have a zone conference and some baptismal interviews. Should be a good week! I am giving my first training at Zone Conference this week, after 12 months as a ZL, this is my first time to give a training at a conference. Should be sweet! :) 

The weather this week was very suprising in Zimbabwe. We had cloudy weather and rainfall. I was very happy that the sun was behind the clouds. I am getting worried to return home in the heart of winter in January. I don't even remember what a Wyoming winter really is. haha :)

One of my favorite talks from conference was Elder Cook. The focus was on humilty and I learned a lot. Humilty really is the key to so many things, and I am realy trying to be humble always. It is something I have struggled with at different times in my life but the Lord is teaching me a lot right now about being humble and accepting his will. 

I love you all and wish you all the best this week. Go Pokes! :) 

On to another week!

Makadii Week 87!

Hello again everyone! :)

I am in Harare yet again for my 12th Mission Leadership Council. This now my 12th month, 1 full year as a Zone Leader. I am one of the 3 oldest members of the council now, so it is a bit weird to think that the younger missionaries are now looking up to me. The drive from Kadoma was good this morning and not many problems. Officially 15 weeks to go, 3 full months and 2 weeks. 2017 is in it's closing stages already!

This past week went well in Kadoma. Gogo Martha was confirmed yesterday and is doing well. We now have 8 people on baptismal date for this month, and all are doing well. We will be having a busy next few weeks with baptisms scheduled for the 8th, 15th, and 22nd of October. We have some really great people we are teaching and we are always doing our best to find more to prepare for more success in November as well. Sekai and Sibongile will be baptized this Sunday after we view the General Conference. Should be awesome! More info about the other investigators getting baptized later will be in next weeks email. We are blessed and are looking forward to much success in October! :)

I realized today that I now have only 3 more fast Sunday's away from home. Pretty crazy actually. We were able to watch most of the Priesthood session yesterday after church, we had Fast Sunday yesterday while many of you were watching conference, but the electricity went out in the middle of President Eyring's talk. I really enjoyed President Uchtdorf's talk.

My first temple recommend expired this past Saturday so I will be having an interview this week with President Mkhabela to renew it. Kinda crazy that it has been 2 years already.

I don't have much to say this week, I am just thankful for all of my blessings and for the many experiences that I have had. These next 5 weeks will be full of miracles for Elder Byrom and I, and I hope and pray that all will go well with our investigators and that the work may proceed.

I love you all and wish you a wonderful week! :) Go Pokes!