Feb 22 Kwach' ya doin?

There is never a dull moment in this mission!

Tuesday was a shocking day...all that needs to be said is that I will be getting a new companion soon. Probably this week.

Friday was the day! The whole zone arrived at the chapel about an hour early and sat reverently to prepare for Elder Andersen. Our meeting with Elder Andersen was amazing. He had everyone laughing the whole time, but also had us all feeling the spirit and being inspired as well. It was amazing how he answered many of the questions I had come with without me even having to ask them. He also addressed many of the missionaries concerns in the zone without ever being briefed on the zone or anything. Basically he helped us all to 'raise our sights' and he reviewed what took place in the Worldwide Broadcast. That just shows that those topics are what the Lord wants us to be focusing on.

Elder Andersen and wife front left.

After our meeting we got to attend the member devotional and we had front row seats. Elder Andersen didn't actually plan anything for any of the meetings, but instead conducted the meetings by the spirit. Elder Ellis, of the 70, spoke first on multi-generational families and then Elder Carl B Cook just spoke about his experiences traveling with an apostle for 9 days (since they were previously in the DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo,  doing a temple ground breaking). He shared that right after our missionary meeting and before they went to the devotional Elder Andersen said to all the leaders 'Wait, there's one more important thing we need to do before the devotional! It's my grandson's 9th birthday" and he pulled out his phone and got his grandson on skype and they all sang Happy Birthday to him 1000's of miles away whilst in the middle of a busy meeting schedule.

Once again in the devotional elder Andersen was hilarious: ''What's this money called?'' someone answered, 'kwacha'
him: 'kwacha?!'....''As in, kwach'ya doin?!''

Yeah...had to be there.

When President was driving Elder Andersen out of the parking lot they stopped and Elder Andersen told Pres that he could invite all the elders to the meeting tomorrow as well (which we previously weren't invited to). That meeting was for all the branch/district/stake/ward leaders in Malawi and Zambia. So I got to see President Chikapa again and Bro Banda who is now the Branch President in Zingwangwa since Pres Chikapa is in the District Presidency! The meeting on Saturday was amazing as well.

I am so grateful for this week and for everything that happened. Sorry I can't tell you too much about the people we are teaching due to time and length of this letter (I'm sure nobody else will even reach this part except you mom!) But what I can say is that we taught more this week than any other even despite being in so many mtgs. This area is so amazing. We are seeing so much success.

Love

Elder Grant Hiltbrand

How could I forget?! We baptized Christopher Mayondi on Sunday! He was so happy to be baptized by his father (actually his uncle but there's no such thing as an uncle in Zambia. haha)

The assistants truck basically exploded this week so we had to sacrifice and miss some of our appointments to tow their truck back to the mission office ha.

The office elders also got in an accident (not their fault) this week and the police impounded their truck (discrimination).

Looks like everything falls apart when President goes out of town! (All the senior couples went on a conference to Livingstone this week)