Hello Hello!
So this week has been
an interesting week. The work here in Kilungu/ Kamba land is proving to be very
difficult and quite frustrating. So, this week on Wednesday, we went
proselyting in Matua. It’s mainly members there, that’s good because we are
mainly to focus on teaching members here. The branch needs a lot of
strengthening. At Big Mike’s, he always feeds us, so this time he gave us Ugali,
a dish made of Maze Meal and water mixed together at a high temperature to make
this solid white mass. You break off pieces of it and dip it in sauce or milk.
It was served with sour cow’s milk and it was chunky chunky haha. I pulled the
"milk makes my stomach hurt" card after taking one bite. Ii ate the Ugali, but after tasting the milk, I
decided to pass it up.
On Friday we went to
a wedding thing put on by the Branch President, (he requests a ton of our time,
but if we don’t go there is literally no one in the village to teach.) The
wedding thing was entirely in Kikamba, so we couldn’t understand a word. I took the liberty of reading from a great
book, "Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow”. It has proved to be a great read and has a ton
of great advice on feeling the spirit and how to get more out of studying. We
were at the wedding thing for 3 hours, then we had to walk a totally killer
hill home. Big Mike was walking with us. As we were walking, whoever was in the
lead, they called it American airlines, or Mogabi Air and such. This got me to
really laugh. I guess I walk quite fast, so the speed of American Air made them
huff and puff getting up the hill.
Luckily on hard days
where we aren’t able to teach anyone, and we walk a lot, I have the beautiful
landscapes around me to appreciate and look at, they are seriously incredible
at the sunset time, the sky lights up orange and purple and cool colors like
that. Oh also last week we had ZTM, zone training meeting, where the elders
from Kilili and the ZL and DL met with us at the church. That was really a
great learning experience. We discussed how all the branches here in Kamba land
really need work and figured out a way to go about doing it. I mentioned that
as President Monson has said, it is crucial that we look at their potential,
and then approach the situation with love towards the people, trying to throw
everything on them at once is discouraging to them, and leads to more
inactivity.
Yesterday was a good
day though, I really tried to learn the importance of setting, working towards,
and achieving goals we set. We set a goal to teach 6 recent converts, and when
we got to Matua, we found out it was a market day, so everyone was gone, even
big Mike who is always around was gone, that was really strange. But we didn’t
give up, we just figured we'd have to work harder to achieve that goal. Amazingly, through faith and guidance by the
spirit, we were able to pull off our 6 lessons.
It felt so good to achieve this goal! So as we saw on Sunday, this
Branch is crumbling due to the language here; the people refuse to use English.
We are trying to do our best to strengthen the members, but the lack of keeping
their commitments, and running away from us, makes it difficult for us to help
them prosper. I’ll have to talk to the mission president next week during my
interview with him and see what he recommends we do and how we go about it.
Also something I
forgot to mention, is that that Africans are predominately small people, so the
doors are all very low. So I being kinda
forgetful, smash my head on the door wells incidentally almost every week. They’re
made of cement, so they really hurt. I learned how to cook beans and rice this
week. I never knew it’s such a lengthy
process that requires sifting through the beans to get out rocks and sticks and
such, then boiling for 2 hours. I didn’t know you shouldn’t eat them late at
night, so my stomach killed all night and the next day, I took some activated
charcoal, and it really helped relieve the gas in my stomach. Another funny
thing my comp pointed out to me was that all American missionaries have
terrible eyes. We all wear contacts or glasses, and not a single African wears
them. I’m not sure why we all wear them, but it’s funny.
Another thing I
forgot to mention is that our bathroom probably has 3 different types of
spiders, and 10 different types of flies. They’re everywhere, hence the reason
for a toxic waste suit for cleaning.
Okay now for some
spiritual stuff, okay so this week I had the privilege to listen to the
talk "Charity Never Faileth" by President
Thomas S Monson. It really is a great talk. It was given at a Women's conference
a while back, but it applies to everyone. I’ve been able to study the
scriptures a lot this week and I’ve come across some really good ones. 2 Corinthians
5:7 "for we walk by faith, not by sight" is one of my favorites from
the New Testament. The whole book of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon is incredible.
Also Listen to the song "How Firm a Foundation". Listen to it closely or read the lyrics.
I feel it applies so well here in Africa, and it really shows God is watching
over all his children. (Click on the highlighted title and it should link you to the article if you would like to read it.)
In closing, I’ll
leave a quote by Ugo Betti "To Believe in God is to know that all the
rules will be fair, and that there will be wonderful surprises."
Love you all,
Elder Hiltbrand
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