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| 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!
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. |