Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Jan 4 A time of refreshing.

Time flies! I'm here once again at the internet cafe but now with totally different feelings and emotions than last week! 
Sunset over Lusaka.
Elder Barrett flies out tomorrow but today he has all his going home stuff like interviews with the mission president; testimony meeting; and dinner, so I will drop him off at the mission office at 15:00 and go to the bus station immediately after to pick up my next companion, Elder Madilu!

Elder M has been serving in the Copperbelt his whole mission (probably around 9 months). I think he has even been in the same area all those months too like I was in Chilobwe. He is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, so he came on mission hardly knowing a lick of English but now he is completely fluent. Everyone that has served around him tells me how great he is and how nice he is so the future looks bright! 

I'm gonna miss Elder Barrett too though. We had a good companionship and I have learned so much from him. It was time for a refreshing though. That's what transfers are so good for. A refreshing. You are able to change personally and also change how you do the work in the area. I have made goals for both. 

When I was writing my letter last week, I started to get some chills and just felt really cold. When we left I even got in the sun-heated car and it still felt cold. So I knew something was coming on. And something did. I got really sick. Food poisoning I think. A fever began along with a very very runny stomach. I don't think I slept much Monday night because I was getting up for the bathroom every 5 minutes (literally). On Tuesday, I felt a bit better so we made it an errand day since I still wasn't well enough to go and teach. Being driven around sucked pretty bad too though but I couldn't let Elder Barrett just sit in the flat for the whole day when it's his last week so I persevered.  It cleared up on Wednesday and we began to proselyte.

We had an amazing week. Elder Barrett finished stronger than anybody I have seen so far. We were going all day everyday. We had many lessons this week and finally started helping people gain a testimony. 

Over the past weeks we have just been visiting members and getting the area down and we had been meeting many potential investigators as we did so and we were just lining them all up and finally this week we began with them and started teaching them and committing them to church and baptism.

One man named Kennedy is a really great investigator of ours. Kennedy just started coming to church on his own and has come every Sunday since we came here. One week he was late and so he attended Woodlands Ward (the 11:00 service) since he understood it was still important to go. We started visiting him lately and he is progressing very well. He should be baptized with this little girl, Enia, probably on the 17th of January!

This week was a week of good byes for Elder Barrett so we went back to our old area too and saw many of them. It was very tender to see how sad these members were to see him go. He is a very well loved man.

OH! Finally we visited our Bishop and his family. He finally invited us over. They fed us such a nice dinner and we just got to know each other. He was the 3rd missionary from Zambia to serve. He served in Johannesburg so he shared many great mission stories. His wife is an Indian woman from South Africa. He went and lived there after his mission and met her there and now they have 4 children, the youngest just joined the family 2-3 weeks ago! 

I love Libala so much. The work is so good. Life is so good.

Love
Elder Grant Hiltbrand
Elder Barrett, Brother Noel, Grant.