2 Bawili's

Hello everyone! How's life treating you? We're back here in the Ville with another Email from Elder Baird ha-ha. 

I apologize to everyone who think I might not exist anymore, I am still alive and well doing my best to invite God's children to come unto Christ. 

On Tuesday, we went over and visited Bawili, she's a one eyed Swahili speaker from Congo. She's currently on baptismal date for the end of the month but we aren't able to meet more than once a week so it's hard to know when she will be ready. We talked about the plan of salvation and after we prayed I went to stand up and the spirit told me I had to call a member to testify. I sat back down and called a few people from Lexington and Bawili, the branch president back in Lex picked up. He was on his way somewhere and pulled over to testify. It was awesome and I'm so grateful for him!

Wednesday we just tried to get in touch with a lot of people but never were able to sit down and teach anyone until we were leaving we got a call from a new member here named Abdou. He's awesome and converted from Islam so he mostly works on trying to understand Christianity but he definitely has a testimony and I love working with him. 

Thursday we went over to find 3 young men named Bonheur, Ndatimana, and Ruboneka. We tried Bonheur and Ruboneka's house and their siblings pointed us to a third one and we found them chilling with their family. These boys are so cool! they read the bible for like hours a day and are genuinely interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon. We also talked with their parents but they speak only a tiny bit of Swahili and mostly Kinyarwanda. It was rough to translate through their children but worth it ha-ha. 

On Friday, I gave a training and the ZL's came to district council and then we went on exchange. Elder Glenn joined me here and we just went around Friday and Saturday meeting with people and working on Swahili. I can confidently say that my Swahili has definitely improved since the last time I exchanged with him haha. Its been like 3+ transfers haha but I feel proud of where I've come since then. We also talked about how if I ever feel like I haven't made a difference on my mission, that if i follow the spirit as District Leader then I will have strengthened the testimonies of my fellow missionaries and as they subsequently go out and teach then I will have accomplished my missionary purpose. 

Sundays here are crazy, we have a separate sacrament meeting with all the Africans and its hard to get many people to come often. So we usually lead everything which is alright but questions are arising if we should combine every now and then in the English group. 

It's been a good week and I'm happy to be here back in Louisville, It may have been a surprise but I know that it was all according to plan! I love missionary work!

Have a good week, love you all!

Mkutano Mkuu

Truthfully this week has been a very large blur but I'll do my best to remember most of it with the help of our calendar ha-ha. 

Monday, we sang songs with Jeanne again, and it was fun. We will be doing that again tonight with her. Something interesting is that these Africans don't know our hymns very well or at all, and we have had many women asking if we will teach them our hymns so they can actually start singing along in church. It's fun to share these hymns that I have come to love with them. 

Tuesday was very interesting. We went to bed with a wind and flood warning. We woke up and learned it was predicted to have 2 major hits. We walked outside after working out and it was lightly raining but by the time we had gotten ready the wind was going crazy. We were warned to not go out much and we had a bunch of video lessons planned, so we didn't really go anywhere. We helped some sisters from Canada teach a Swahili mama and taught a member. We did lots of calls and study too. We also tried to visit a doctor for Elder Ransom but their power was out so we had to go across the city where there was power. Also, the thing covering our car got blown over and we didn't even hear it happen somehow. We get a knock on our door during our Tuesday morning mission zoom and it's a maintenance guy saying that we should move our car. We walk out to find it had been totally blown over but only 1 car got minimally damaged somehow. It was crazy. 

We taught a new friend named Sofia on Wednesday, she made a self referral online a while back and we finally got to teach her. She was really nice and we introduced the Book of Mormon. 

Thursday, we did a bunch of knocking, many people were not home and there was some uninterested people. We saw Precieux and we tried to see a YSA aged member named Faila with the YSA sisters but she hadn't gotten home from school yet. So instead we got to go to an activity and institute. They had a nerf war and it was super fun! Then we learned about Jacob and how his use of the word anxiety isn't how we use it.

Friday, we had district council and Elder Ransom invited the Shumway's to come give a training. It was awesome! They talked about keeping new members active and how the Covenant path is so important. 

Saturday, we went to Msafiri for the first session, he wasn't home so we watched with Byenigulu and then he fed us fufu. That was really fun. We then watched it with Jeanne the unbaptized mom of a member family and she was great. Then we went and watched it with the Lacy's in the church because their internet isn't set up yet and after we got to know them. They're from Southern Utah and both know French. I'm super excited to work with them! 

Sunday, we had a bunch of people unavailable to watch with because there was a funeral for a Mom and her son that recently passed in a fire. That was really sad to hear about a bunch from a ton of different people. But we ended up watching with Byenigulu's brother named Mashemango. They're both short funny guys and really fun. We were eating lunch and called Degaule to ask if we could come over and he said he was talking with Vestina during the funeral and they wanted to go watch the last session with her non-member husband. So we show up and nobody arrives until the end. We watched the whole thing ourselves in Vestina's house ha-ha. Also a Haitian friend of Vestina's showed up at the end and watched president Nelson speak and he was asking us all kinds of questions. We ended up teaching him about the spirit world. Then Degaule got there with his family and we had to  leave to go to a member meal. 

We had lots of fun watching the eclipse today and playing outside in a field. The sisters here are way fun. 

Well it looks like I was able to remember a lot ha-ha. Thanks Calendar! It was a good week. 

I want everyone to know that Russell M. Nelson is a prophet of God. He is the mouthpiece of Jesus Christ on the Earth. Christ is our Lord and Savior and he leads and guides this church the same way he did in the new testament. He inspires his apostles through the Holy Ghost and without a foundation of prophets and apostles this church would not be the church of Christ. If you want to know that for yourself I can promise you that all you have to do is seek and ask. You will receive your answer by the same power that guides them, the voice of the Holy Ghost. If you didn't watch or didn't watch all of conference go do so. They are speaking to you. I love you all! Have a great week!