April 14, 2014

SO this week was not bad.  But days are flying by now its crazy!!

Main highlight of this week was doing street boarding in Kitale town to find some more people to teach.  The past few weeks have been a little frustrating in Kitale with our investigators, many of them are dropping us and just not keeping commitments.  Sad to see people not wanting to change, but hey its all about agency.  But the street boarding went pretty well.  We had the help of our branch president, Pres Kwendo, and the branch mission leader Bro Silah.  We were able to contact 200 people in about two hours, which was great.  Had some interesting conversations with some people.  I started talking to some guy, but then he said "hey i dont have time for Jehovah Witnesses"... we are not Jehovah's witness!! I hate when people say that hahah.  Also, some drunk guy came up to me and put up the dukes and was ready to fight me! I was like hmm, i dont have time for this, so i just walked away, but that guy wanted to tussle! And then some other people legitimately ran away from us as we tried to talk to them ha. But somehow along the way we contacted some good people and got some phone numbers.  So we really hope to visit with and teach some of these people and help them to learn of the truth!

Mostly this week though we visited a lot with less actives in Kitale.  Its difficult for a lot of the less active members here because the church is so far away from them, more than a 45 minute walk for most.  Its weird because the church is in a weird spot in Kitale, not even in town but outside of town so its far for most people.  Its really crazy how many trials that members here have.  With distance and lack of resources and also persecution from others, its amazing that members here still come to church.  But its all because of that testimony that this is the true church of Christ! And i have really come to see that here in Kenya on my mission.  We are so blessed to have the full understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the things of God. 

But in Sikhendu this week, unfortunately we did not have the baptism for our investigator Maricle.  She has all the sudden stopped coming to church and we dont know whats wrong.  We have tried to visit her at her home but she is always in the shamba now because of the rains ha.  But hopefully we will be able to get back on track with her and help her to be baptized.  Also, we are teaching two awesome girls that really want to be baptized, Mercy and Flora.  We hope to have them be baptized sometime next month, and they are really progressing well so im excited for them.!! Also in Sikhendu we were visiting with a less active member when all the sudden this little kid comes  in from out side, sits on the ground right in front of all of us, and starts peeing.... haha kids here have no shame!! but ya.

Other than that things are going on ok.  We hope to find some more new investigators this week and more people to teach!! We will find out transfer news tonight, and i think that elder Maduna might leave, he has been in Kitale for 10 months now haha.  But love you all!!

Elder Thomas

April 7, 2014

SO really this week not much missionary work got done in Kitale. That's because we were only in Kitale for 2 days this entire week.

So this past week me and elder Maduna we suppose to go to MLC (missionary leadership training) in Eldoret for just Tuesday and Wednesday.  That's what we thought. So all us Western zone leaders were waiting in Eldoret for president Hicken to arrive, by plane.  But then we got a call from the assistants saying that they missed their flight in the morning... and that we would have to get a matatu to take us all the way to Nairobi!! we were all like what the heck.... but hey non of us complained we were going to Nairobi!!!!  So after going to 5 different matatu stages and walking around for one and a half hours we finally found someone who could take all of us to Nairobi. Slowest driver in the world tho, old mzee haha.  He would not go over 80 kms....took us forever to get to Nairobi! But it was ok because on the way i saw plenty of zebras and impalas. YA!

But the MLC in Nairobi was really awesome.  President Hicken is definitely the right man for this mission and is super inspired.  One of the big things that he talked about was becoming a consecrated missionary, using the talk from Elder Tad R. Callister "Becoming a Consecrated Missionary". Powerful Talk wow!! After reading and discussing the talk, i was sufficiently humbled haha. I really thought that i was doing good as a missionary, but after reading this talk i still got a long way to go!! But its ok, there is always room for reproof and improvement.  It just talked about a lot of things that we can do as missionaries to become more focused and sincere to the work.  Putting on the alter of sacrifice anything that might keep us from becoming the best we can be as missionaries. Humbling, but good!  Also we talked a lot about dealing with problems that arise in the mission, and how to deal with problems, especially among missionaries.  President Hicken said that basically we are like the bishops of the mission, and he is the stake president haah.  Just that we need to do our best with dealing with problems in the mission, handling them by ourselves, and then going to him if the problem is not resolved or if it is something beyond us.  I can really tell that president Hicken is trying his best to prepare us for the future, beyond being missionaries, serving in wards and branches back home.  He understands that especially the African elders will go home and really be the leaders of the church in their homes, as the church still is growing.  Pretty cool.  President Hicken is so awesome and i really admire his desire to not just make us good for mission, but for life. 

After MLC, we got to walk around Nairobi a little bit. And i want to go back and serve there again!  i love Nairobi. We were able to go to Java House, which is like one of the nicest cafes in Nairobi, and Kenya. Got a MILKSHAKE!!! wow first time in 24 months!!!! it was nice to say the least.  Also it was cool, i did see a few people from Rongai, which was really awesome! Cool seeing old people from past areas. They all said that i have grown a lot... so i guess that's a good thing.

But finally we were able to get back to Kitale on Saturday! But we mostly worked in Sikhendu.  Its been rough in Sikhendu lately, haven been receiving as much help from the branch as we used to, and many of our investigators are falling out.  Its been discouraging lately, but that's how things go.  Just we will have to do more contacting and tracking, and that's one of our big goals going into this week is to be better with contacting and tracking, talking to more people. 

Church was good in Kitale Sunday, had 6 investigators come to church, which was good.  Its weird because a lot of the time random people show up to church, which is awesome, but then they just go missing because there is no way to get a hold of them because most of them don't have phones.  But its ok.  Just gotta work with what you got!

Also saw part of General Conference!! The Flakes invited us to watch it on their laptop, really liked Elder Nelsons, about faith. YEAH for living prophets and apostles!!

But things are getting along good. LOVE YOU ALL!!

Mzee Thomas