New Companion

Yo yo. My week was great. Flew by again.

Ya water problems was annoying but we’ve
learned to be prepared in case it goes out,
which is does every few days so we keep a few
jerry cans full of water as well as some wash
bins full.

We have FHE’s almost every night here with
different families. Just last night we actually
had one at the new Second Counselor of the
Branch’s house. It was good. They fed us and we
watched the R.M.

The only time I eat fish here is if I go and get the
fish fillet at Park Villa. I don’t buy things in bulk
for the week but I’ll just buy something and prepare
it for that night, or something I can just eat. I don’t
do much shopping still haha. Yes I still hate it.

The mosquitoes here don’t bite during the day, only
at night so I don’t have to wear mosquito repellent or
anything like that. We’re also getting our furniture
today possibly, I did get my bed this last week though
which was really nice.

So this week went by fast. Monday was just regular
P-Day but on Tuesday and Wednesday we had trainings
for the new way we are supposed to teach and prepare
as missionaries. I gave one of the trainings on Wednesday
which was for an hour and it was in front of the whole
Jinja and Mbali zones. It was about 45 minutes long and I
was scared the Mission President would say something
bad about it but he didn’t. He actually told me
“your training was good, I expect nothing less than that
from you though.” So I was glad that he thought that even
though I wrote down the wrong scripture to close with
and felt stupid. The scripture was ironically about how
the Holy Spirit will bring things back to your
remembrance and I could not remember it!
Tuesday I was also able to go on an exchange with
Elder D who is one of the four AP’s. He’s a cool guy
and has about 3 months left.

Thursday was the first day with my new companion!

His name is Elder M and he’s a local missionary from

Kampala. His mission call is to Detriot, Michigan and

his reporting date is January 4^th I believe so he’ll be a

local missionary until than. He’ll enjoy the cold.

It’s good to have him around though to translate for all

of the people who claim they don’t know English into

Luganda.

Saturday we had our baptismal interview for S.

I learned more about him from this occasion than I

ever had before. I didn’t even know he was married!

Really showed how I need to ask better questions!

Sunday we had the baptism for S. The water was

only about a foot and a half feet deep again so he had

to sit to be baptized by Farouq. I felt bad because he

wanted me to because he didn’t really know anyone

in the church that well but I told him how we wanted

a member to do it. I’ve been the one missionary who

was able to be with him throughout the whole time he

was taught. His friend, J, was also supposed to be

baptized but he didn’t feel prepared so he’s going to

be next week. Next week in Bugembe we have like

6 baptisms set up so hopefully all goes to plan.

It’s going to be a struggle to find baptismal clothes

for all the people though.

This morning we also had a zone activity so we

played volleyball at the Jinja chapel. It was fun

but I got a little sun burnt. It’s Elder Fs last P-day

too on mission so we’re going to grab some good

lunch and stuff for his last one here. That guy is

pretty cool so I’m going to have Clay chill with

the guy. They’ll get along because they both

like guitars and longboarding and all that other

boring crap. Well that’s the week for me.

Later!

Elder Welch

No water week :(

Ephesians 2:19-20 I think. Look what the foundation
of the church is. The scriptures both Old, New,
and Another all convince me of the
truthfullness of the church each, and every day!

So we’ve moved in well. We still don’t have the
new beds or the new furniture we were planning on
but all is well. It’s in the same neighborhood as
our house before, just about 200 yards up the road.
It is actually a really nice place so that’s why
everyone around here probably thinks that we are
just rich as can be or something but it
turns out the house costs about 250 dollars a month
to rent. That’s nothing if you were in the U.S. so
our money is going far here.

The fish and chips here are good. They have almost
everything there is back in the States too like
Pringles salt and vinegar chips and stuff.
Those are pretty expensive here, well probably about
what they are back in the U.S. but 3 dollars for a
can of chips is too expensive for me to buy them often.

The baptism was kind of funny and I should have at
least taken a picture of what it looked like but it
slipped my mind. I’m really glad
we were able to accomplish it though.

It actually is the rainy season right now.
It rains at least every other day lately but it is
just hard to put your finger on exactly
when the rainy season is. Since we’re on the equator
the rainy season changes on occasion. The temperature
is the same all the time though but a little bit
cooler when it rains which is really nice.

Sundays are always great. This last one we had a goal
to have 18 investigators come to church but we were sad
when only 9 came.

So this week we’ve had some new goals from mission
president we were trying to accomplish. 30 other lessons
a week, 12 new investigators every Sunday, 20 contacts
a day, and 33 baptisms for the Jinja zone by
the end of September. Some of them are a bit hard,
especially the 12 new investigators every Sunday but
we will do our best to accomplish
them. We’ve been busy trying to do all of that this week.

So Tuesday we ate breakfast at the Shipley’s which
was delicious. They made us omelets and it was legit.
The only bad thing was that morning
we had absolutely no water and we wouldn’t get it
back until Friday night. That was hard. One of the
pictures is of the water I had to use
to bathe in a few times in a row. Gross I know but,
at least I was bathing right?

The rest of the week was pretty basic with just
lessons and contacting.
I show the pictures of you guys and the rest of
the family often to investigators and members of
the church so they can see that we are
normal and have families too.


Elder Welch

Where the Nile Begins...

It's pretty good here in Uganda.
This week was very much
more interesting in a lot of ways so I hope
I can remember all the crazy things that happened.
We did move into our new place on Tuesday.
It is much nicer than our old place. We spent the
whole day cleaning and moving things up the hill to
the new place with the help of the couple
companionship.

Last Tuesday we spent the entire day moving into
our new place. It was a lot of things even though it
seemed like we had nothing. Maybe it's just because we
had to move everything ourselves. We also
had a celebratory burning of one of our old wicker
shelves that was completely ruined, so don't worry,
that's what the pictures with the
fire in them are.

Wednesday we finished things up and had Elder U be
with Elder B and myself in Bugembe. The other zone
leader and him spent the night at our place Tuesday
and we went on exchanges for the next day.
It was good switching things up a little and seeing
how others contact and teach.

On Thursday we all went to Jinja for a Zone Development
meeting which was good and went out to eat with some
of the other missionaries at a
place called Park Villa. It's the place in Jinja I like
to eat the most and isn't too expensive. I got fish and
chips there like I always do. Everytime I get it though
I ask for vinegar and the people think
I'm mad. They think it's weird I put it on the chips and
fish. One of these times I'm just going to ask for the
Vinegar and then just sniff it and give it back to them
or something. I feel like that's what they
expect me to do anyways.

Friday we just had weekly planning and correlation meeting
but still ended up with about 7 lessons which is good.
We even made it to Jinja for Elder M birthday at Two Friends.
That restaraunt was expensive! It was like 6000 shillings
for a milkshake and 1500 just for a soda. The food was pretty
good anyways. That seemed like the Mazungu hotspot. Over
half the people at that place were white.

Saturday we had to make sure and hunt down David for his
baptismal interview. That seems to have to happen everytime
we are planning on baptizing someone as the devil tries
his hardest to stop it from happening. This time seemed
like he worked the hardest though. It started to rain right
before we were supposed to have the interview,
David started getting sick with Malaria, and even on Sunday
we realized the water wasn't filling the tank from the night
before so the water was just a little over a foot deep.
What we had to do was I had to kneel in the tank and David
had to sit as I baptized him. So things went off regardless
no matter how hard satan tried. Good always
triumphs over evil. I actually wasn't originally supposed
to baptize David but Saturday night I was laying in bed and
David calls and says he's changed his mind and wants me
to baptize him. It would have been too hard to say no,
that we wanted a member to do it over the phone so
I just said ok. It was good to have that baptism especially
after I forgot to teach David the W.O.W. last week.
I think my companions were more happy about it because
they haven't had too many baptisms on
their side so they were happy to count David as one of
theirs even though I don't think they've taught the guy
more than once or twice
haha.

We also had 13 investigators come to church on Sunday
and the fast and testimony meeting was awesome!
My favorite part was when 2 children
bore their testimonies and it really shows how the church
is growing here. It was the best part of my week to
tell you the truth. There were also a lot of other great
testimonies and thankfully none of them
seemed to weird as to scare off any of the 13 investigators
we had.

Sunday night we also met an awesome family who lives a
few houses down from us. A guy named Godfrey and his 4
sisters sat as we taught them about the Book of Mormon.
This Godfrey guy had 2 friends from Bugembe
who were serving in Kenya and South Africa and told us he
believed us and knew what we were teaching him was correct.
Their family was super nice and it was cool because they
actually had a pretty nice home,
which we aren't used to teaching in.

And finally today was the best day of the week.
This morning we went to the source of the Nile River with
the  missionaries from Njero. Itwas awesome!
It cost 5000 to get just into the place but it was so
sweet to see where the worlds largest river made its start.
I got a lot of good pics from that, I hope I am able to
send all of them today. We also after getting some cool
pics started to 'contact' some
monkeys. We also got to feed them and chase them around.
It was pretty funny.

So that was my week.

I wish you could be here and see everything that I get
the opportunity to see as I'm doing the work of the Lord.
Also you guys should read the book of Revelations again.
I read that book in depth this last
week and wow! As Mormons we know so much more about that
book than anyone else in the world. Going to the temple
helps me understand half
that book so much more,

God Bless! The Church is true.

I’ll just say that this has been a weird week here
for the missionaries in Bugembe. My companion Elder M
actually had to be retransferred up to a threesome
in Kampala so we’ve been in a threesome between all
of us Mazungu missionaries here since Monday
night. The work has been a little harder to do since
the three of us have to be together to cover the two
areas. The work has slowed a little bit but we’re still
working hard and I should be getting a new
companion soon. The one I should be getting is from
Mango which is a suburb of Kampala so he is a native
Ugandan. It will be nice to have someone who knows Luganda
but the only problem is he won’t know
anything about Preach My Gospel.
So I’m pretty much training now. He has only been
a member for probably a little over a year. It will be
nice though. If you’re training they say you are a father
of that person, but since he is a local they say I will be
his step-father instead? Haha.

Still haven’t moved into the new place but we are hoping
very soon. We walked past the new place and it looks
amazing now though. They’ve repainted the whole building,
walls, and the gate. It looks very nice
and will be nice living in a home that is safe from animals.
We will also be getting new beds, mattresses, nets, and
even furniture. I’m excited to move in. The old place was
only infested with a few bugs and a few other things haha.

So on Monday of this week we just had a family home evening
at the church like we always do which was fun. It’s nice to
get the teenage members there so they can all make friends
and to be able to see some new investigators. We played
volleyball in the church “parking lot.” I
also found out that this branch has 11 missionaries out
from it so it’s nice to see the work is progressing well
enough to progress it in other areas.


On Thursday we met a guy named F who wanted to become
Christian and be baptized. We taught him and we met with
him two days in a row but the third day he sadly wasn’t
there. He’s pretty legit though and
is definitely one person who has been prepared to hear
about this. We almost didn’t even contact him but we got
delayed looking for something and we just started talking
to him.

This whole week we also tried contacting at least
20 times a day and often got up to around 40. We
contacted probably about 150 people throughout the week
and we were hoping to see a few at church because
of all of our labor. It is kind of hard and depressing
a little bit to see that at church not a single one of
those people showed up. Even a
lot of our investigators didn’t show but it seemed
like all the kidsnwe “contacted” came. There were like
30 children there at church.
It was pretty insane in the membrane.


Sunday was good again. We had about 94 people attend
sacrament. It’s a good thing all those kids came!

So the pictures I sent are many. I hope you get them all.
Some are of cats, dogs, and those are monkeys in those
trees just look very closely. We worked hard as you can
see trying to preach to every“creature” on the earth.
We took a lot of pictures from the big hill that our
house is on. The pictures are of
Bugembe as well as Jinja in the distance. I took some
pictures of our house and the new house as best as I
could as well from the top.  There are also a
few pictures I had Elder Benson take of Elder
Doney and myself contacting someone.

Everything is going awesome. I love hearing about how
things are going there in the States.

Keep the faith. The answers are there
just look for them.

Love,

Elder Welch