The one guy baptized last week was Sudanese and his Sudanese friend baptized him. They are living here in Addis because of the stuff that was going on in Sudan I believe.

Timcat means baptism in Amharic so they were celebrating the baptism of Jesus. Pretty much people get together and they get baptized again. Some get baptized by just spraying a hose everyone… It’s like the Ethiopian spring break, but a little bit less immoral.
The Ethiopians use what’s called njera. You can look it up online but it’s basically used for picking up the food and kind of soaking up the liquid and stuff. I actually really enjoy the Ethiopian food.
We were anticipating the arrival of the 7 missionaries who had to leave because of visa problems and we finally have them back. We picked up 4 of them on Thursday night and President Parrish took us all out for a nice dinner which was nice of him. The missionaries had been in Uganda for 2 weeks and it was kind of slowing the missionary work down. We were glad to have them back.

Thursday morning we were able to have a ZDM and we had the district leaders give trainings on certain principles we had talked about at the ZLC. It was great and we keep hoping the missionaries will feel more accountable and responsible for their areas. A lot of missionaries have this “I don’t want to be a baptizing machine” attitude. When they say that I tell them well good job you are achieving your goal of not baptizing. I really see all the missionaries so much happier when they are actually baptizing people. I hope some of their attitudes change and they actually want to see success here on their missions.


Friday we were in Debre Zeit for the weekly planning the missionaries were having there. We also were able to do interviews for 3 people who were baptized this weekend there. The missionaries there are really changing their attitudes and are having success. That’s an example of how much happier they are because of it. I also ate something funny so right after the interviews I was trying to drive through town pretty fast to get back at the missionaries house for my interview with the toilet… Ya that happens sometimes here.


Saturday we met up with C and talked about the Priesthood and a lot of other things. He’s a smart guy, knows the Bible well, and he says things that are exactly what we believe. He believes we can become like God, he believes Jesus Christ is our older brother, he even sees why polygamy was practiced by us and thinks it will come again. He feels anointed of God already but he says he just wants to also find the right church to unite himself with for the brotherhood and stuff. Hopefully he wants to join the church because it’s true!

On Saturday we also had a new investigator referral from the Phillipinos in the Branch. He was at their house as we taught their maid, M, and he works at the airport as the head chef for a few of the airlines onflight food. His name is A and he seems interested in learning more about what we have to teach. I hear he has a lot of questions for us when we meet on Saturday again.

Sunday was great, President S wasn’t there so his new first counselor, S, who is Sudanese conducted the meeting. It was his first time and he thanked and announced who was playing the music and sutff like 4 different times during the meeting. He’s a funny guy. We also had sister Z baptized on Sunday which was great! That family is pretty awesome. I was also able to teach about the Sabbath day in the Sudanese gospel principles class and I was able to teach about missionary work to the Young Men. It was missionary Sunday so four of us missionaries spoke on missionary work and I spoke specifically on full time missionary work.

Well that’s been the week’s highlights.
Elder Welch