July 21, 2014

Another interesting week full of the spirit, surprises, and really weird things.  But hey that's Kenya for you.

As far as investigators go for us right now, we only have like 3 we are working with.  Just this past week, we have out of no where lost a lot of them.  A big problem we have is that we have a great first lesson with people, and then after that people just seem to disappear.  Its really frustrating because we can't meet people constantly.  Either people all of the sudden get super busy, or they hear some rumors about the church.  So its been frustrating with investigators, but we are really trying to work with those ones who seem to be serious right now.  Like this lady named Jane.  she just moved to Kitale from Kisii, and is still pretty new in the area.  We found her because of her brother tho. He is a member in Nairobi, and knew the church was in Kitale, so he found our number and called us and told us to visit his sister.  Huge blessing for us! She has come to church 2 weeks in a row now and brought her 2 little boys with her, so we are really happy to be working with her now.  Blessings of members being involved in the work! We visited that deaf guy again this week, only to find out that he will be going back home to his village soon, so wont be able to see him for a while, but hey seed planted. 

One cool thing this week was that we were using the Book of Mormon a ton! Mostly reading it with less active members.  It was a HUGE blessing! Wow every lesson where we did that with less active member the spirit was really strong and we could tell that it got to the people we were reading with.  One really cool lesson we had was with Mama Daisy.  She is less active big time.  But, on Saturday we saw her and she brought up a big concern that she had that was really bothering and worrying her.  So we talked to her about it and then turned to Alma 57, about the 2000 stripping warriors.  We especially read from vs 18-21 and 25-26 and discussed this part of the story.  We related it to us today, saying these young men were really in a bad situation, that they were about to get dominated by the Lammanites.  But, because of 3 main factors, being 1) exact obedience 2) having true good works  3) solid faith in God and his will,  they were able to experience ''the miraculous power of God''.  So the same is with us.  That God wants to help us, but we need to to all we can do before he can send divine help.  We have to use our agency for good first, then his divine intervention can be made.  After we shared this with her, she was like ''wow, this makes a lot of sense''. Ya it does, its because its true!! But huge blessing that the Book of Mormon is.  Guiding us to the answers that God needs us to know in order to return back to him.  Mama Daisy came to church the next day. 

So we have been visiting less actives a lot lately, but not seeing much success.  BUT! Sunday we had 10 less active members come to church! it was super awesome!!! All of them are people that we have been working with a lot, so it was cool to see them have that desire to come back to church and take of the sacrament.  We are going to visit all of these less actives and take advantage of the progress they are making and try to help them to make it a desire to come to church every week.  But man it was amazing to see so many less actives come!

So that's the spiritual awesomeness.  here is some other interesting stuff.

1) Got offered some drug by this guy on the street.  He was snorting it and it was all over his nose and mouth.  I declined.  But he was up in the clouds for sure. 

2) Got punched in the arm by a passing crazy man.  I didn't take offense to it, because the week before the same 6'4'' crazy man headbutted elder Dick.  So i was lucky!

3) During street boarding, 10 drunk guys came up and started helping us contact people.  ya it was interesting.

4) Saw 2 little kids during the week squat in the middle of a main path and well... do their business. Looks like corn has been the meal of choice lately.

But im loving my mission.  Its great to be in Kenya serving the Lord. Im grateful for this wonderful opportunity. 

LOVE YOU ALL!!
Mpaka wakati mwingine...Kwa hereni 

Elder Thomas