So this week has been busy. On wednesday as usual, we had DDM (District Development Meeting.) Afterwards we went to the usual restaurant and got some food, I was one of the few to get food, but I was starving. Usually everyone gets food, but elder Jones is dieting before he goes home. (why? I have no clue) and the others didn't feel like soup. The soup is called Supu which consists mainly of water, cooking oil, salt, and 3 chunks of cow face meat. It makes me cringe watching Elder K crunch on and swallow the cartilage of the ear or nostril.. After eating, we all went our seperate ways. Elder K and I headed over to our appointments. We were supposed to meet with our family of investigators the Makwemas, but when we got there they didn't realize it was supposed to be that day and since they were having a family meeting ( big gathering of lots of people to discuss different matters),
we rescheduled for the next day. We tried to teach other people and members after that, but no one was home, or everyone was busy. It's typical to have appointments bounced because very few people have phones, so they aren't able to let us know these things.
Thursday we did our normal routine of going to Kikoko, sadly though, we found out some funny, yet depressing information. The family we taught knows our new investigators' family well. They were excited to see all of them coming to church. However, he informed us that the head of the family, Brother Makwema has multiple wives.. Our reaction was of disbelief! Just when we have a solid golden investigator, they turn out to be polygamists... and by church stand points, it makes it a very difficult situation and sometimes can prevent baptism. This was terrible news to hear, but I didn't want to accept the new information. After teaching that member, we went to the Moteti's to have them fill out the baptismal record paperwork. Oh by the way, records of birth and marriage aren't on paper in most villages of Africa, so the genealogy is sure going to be tough to do. We asked the Moteti's (who are actually related to the Makwema family) about the number of wives he had, and he started counting on his fingers..Moja... Bili... Tatu... Nne... Tanu... then he just gave up and said that Brother Makwema has more wives that he can count.. I immediately thought "Oh boy...this is gonna be interesting." We met with the Makwema family later that day, and taught them with the help of Brother Kivi Kivi. We discussed the issue with Brother Kivi Kivi before starting and he felt the same sadness we also felt, that they cannot be baptized till the whole matter is resolved and the mission president approves it. We gave them a Law of Chastity pamphlet to help warm things up before the next lesson, but we were dreading it.
Friday we planned to teach in Matua till about 5:00 pm, then we were heading down to Kyambeke, the ZLs flat to stay so we could visit a member who had invited us all to come. Matua is a tough area, everyone there is members, but they don't keep any of their commitments. We taught some powerful lessons to them. We made sure to be loving but stern as well as be led by the spirit. During these lessons, I really realized the importance of what is on my name tag. "Elder Hiltbrand The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day Saints". We are representatives of Jesus Christ. We are doing what He would do, saying what He would say and teaching the doctrine He himself would teach if He were here on the earth today. We emphasized this a lot in every lesson when those we were teaching haven't been understanding our purpose and the importance of when they make a commitment. After teaching we got on a picky picky and headed to Kyambeke. The ride there is never very fun. I'm always on the back because I'm big so I get to sit on the metal racks used for carrying goods. It wouldn't be so bad, if it didn't make me feel like my butt was being sliced open by the metal bars on every bump. It was nice to be in Kyambeke. It's beautiful there. It's in the valley of the mountains rather than on top of the mountain like us.
Waking up Saturday, I got to take a nice lukewarm shower. This is such a rare experience so I greatly appreciated the opportunity even though it wasn't very hot. Don't take for granted the fact you have hot water and hot showers. Just know most of Africa doesn't have showers, and washing/ drying machines. Everything is still done by hand. I get to witness this everyday when little elementary school age children are carrying 20L- 40L (5-10 gal) of water on a rope wrapped around either their shoulders or top of their head. Anyways, in Kyambeke, we left the flat around 11:00 am to start going to the members house. She lives up a mountain, over the mountain and in the opposite valley... It took two hours of hiking to get there. Luckily when we got there she had a huge feast prepared for us. Her husband is a safari tour guide for Mzungus, so they are very well off compared to the others. They still walk 2 hours to church every Sunday even though they have a car and can afford to drive. Sacrifice is something I am learning very rapidly here. We taught her and her extended family and then headed back to the ZLs flat. This time we were going up to the top of the mountain then down rather than up and around. At the top, I seriously felt like I was in Planet of the Apes, tall tall trees all around, and just the wind and monkey noises. It was really a cool feeling. At the very top, we saw monkeys!! They were tiny grey ones, but we still saw MONKEY's! I was stoked! My first wildlife. Sadly they all ran away and swung through the trees in a single file line before I could get close enough for a picture. We sat at the flat for a while to rest, the hiking had wiped us out. Elder K and I then left to get a picky picky home.
This is where Elder K and I had a disagreement. I thought we should go to Kalongo (all the way to our flat) and he wanted to save money and go to Mitini (the Church building which is 30 - 40 min from home). I would have been fine with the latter choice, but it would be dark by the time our 30 min picky picky ride arrived in Mitini. It was just us, and we didn't have a flashlight besides the small one on our Nokia phone. To my disadvantage though, in order to get to Kalongo we have to first go through Mitini . At Mitini he jumped off and started walking rather fast away. Ugh.. I figured if I wanted to be obedient I had to follow him so I did. I asked him why he was being so stubborn and such, but received no response. He is quiet when mad, but I wouldn't accept not having an answer so kept asking. That's when things exploded and we both ended up raising our voices at each other the whole way home about each others faults and lack of cooperation and training and such. Not the best time to have companionship inventory... haha. At home we were both still furious, but managed to have a good companion training and study. I even got a bit teary eyed talking about my conversion to know the truth of the Book of Mormon. After we ended, I said a prayer asking for guidance on how we could fix things and how we could humble ourselves to put aside our differences and learn from one another as well as build a friendship in the five week he has left.
While taking a bucket shower to get all the sweat off from the day, I was reminded by the spirit of the words you used to tell me mom "Be the bigger man, dont be afraid to apologize." This was really distinct to me that it was from the spirit. I weighed it in my head for a while as I finished bathing, then decided to put it into action. After I got back into the apartment, I got dressed then sat down on my bed next to Elder K's desk where he was sitting either praying or thinking with his scriptures open. I then apologized for all I had said, that I didn't truly mean it and that the tiredness of the day had put me over the top. I told him how much I appreciate him and hope to learn from him and build a strong friendship in these coming five weeks and make up for all the time we had wasted being bitter or not friends. I had never done anything to this extent in my life, but it was a true sincere apology. It felt good and it fixed things between us.
Sunday was church and our investigators all came again. It was awesome. Elder K taught an awesome lesson in Elders quorum about sustaining our leaders and what that means. It was greatly needed, because many here think you are voting for the church leaders. It somehow led into a lesson about following the prophet and having food storage. I spoke and taught during this topic, about the necessity for even those here to have food storage. Maze, beans, rice, dried sakuma wiki, etc. Most here don't have it and don't see a need for it, but we explained that when things get tough which they will when not expecting, money will be worth anything, so we will only have the food we have stored. Some agreed with us and are determined to start building a food storage each month. "Start with 2 kilograms per month" that's all you need to do to start. After church we had a Branch mission planning meeting, which was all the priesthood and auxiliary leaders developing a plan for how we can improve missionary work in the area. It went really well and we set some great goals, hopefully everyone can maintain that spirit and help achieve these goals.
Yesterday we were finishing building the Cow coop or shed with Brother Kivi Kivi, Elder K and I were both shoveling cow dung for a while to clean it out enough to dig strong holes. The cow seemed to laugh at this and chose to add more to the pile as we shoveled. It took us 5 hours, but we finished building the entire thing. After finishing we headed with Brother Kivi Kivi to our investigators family. Right off the bat in the beginning of the lesson after asking him about his reading of the scriptures and church attendance, we approached the topic of polygamy. It went way better than we expected. He only lives with one wife, but still has a tribal marriage to the others. This was good news because it gives us something to work with. We taught him about the plan of salvation, and that was the sum of yesterday.
I now close with a quote that I feel is a good motto for my life. "Work as though its impossible to fail. After all, with Gods help, all things are possible!"
Love you all!
Elder Hiltbrand
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