This missionary is doing well. The week has been great. A lot more teaching this week and we were blessed to have a lot of great referrals from some great members. Sister Genet, our recent convert, gave us a couple of women who seemed pretty interested so we taught them and gave them some Book of Mormons.

President A, the 3rd Counselor in the District Presidency (I know, that’s a weird position) gave us a few of his friends who are teachers like him and fathers of some families. One of them actually was attending the church before they had a building. He was attending with President Ammanuel and his family in their home before they ever sent missionaries here. He’s back to investigating and we gave him a baptismal date for next month.

We also went out to Chucko, which is like an hour and a half taxi ride, to see a member and his family as well as two fathers of some big families who were interested. We also gave them baptismal dates for this next month. They seemed very interested and are pretty old. I think they are the fathers of families of 8 and 7 kids. I tried explaining how the Book of Mormon is the scoring goal in a tie soccer game and how it helps us know the one true church, and makes it so we don’t have to bash with people. I hope the analogy landed.

On Sunday we didn’t have many people at church, nothing was organized, but it wasn’t as chaotic because the Branch President was in Addis Ababa. Nothing was planned but the 1st counselor did a good job of kind of improving the meeting. We did have a great referral after the meeting from a guy who is investigating in Addis but was passing through as he was going to his village in Southern Ethiopia. The guy is very interested but he brought his friend to church who lives here. We gave him a baptismal date.

Another great thing on Sunday was one of my recent converts from Shashemene who moved to Awassa came and brought his friend who I had given a baptismal date to months ago when I was in Shashemene. The guy now lives in Awassa as well. He missed the baptism before because he went to Kenya for two months but he was excited to be back and to be retaught. We gave him another baptismal date as well so this next month will hopefully be a good one.

The work is going well. I miss you all so much and you are always in my thoughts and prayers. I hope all is well and all of you are being examples and faithful to what you know to be true. Keep being awesome. I love you all so much. See you soon!

Elder Welch