God did create a great world didn’t he?
Of course there has to be weeds though, otherwise
you wouldn’t appreciate as much the rest of the
yard, or how great the yard looks without them.
(2 Nephi 2:11) By the way, I’m starting to love
the scriptures. They are awesome. Mine are full
of side notes from studying now with all the
great words of God highlighted. I’ve also been
writing all the hymns next to their accompanying
verses in all the scriptures. I found in the back
of the hymnbook how it has all the scriptures in
chronological order with all hymns that have to do
with that particular scripture. I thought it was
kind of neat.

My new area is pretty close to my old area, they
are in the same zone of missionaries like I said.
I can see my old area from here, and I could see
this area pretty well from my old area. I’m still
adjusting but I’m starting to get settled. The only
problem is it’s been raining every day here for the
last week so I’ve mostly seen the ground of this
area as I made sure to not step in too many puddles.

Mengo is a branch still, and the Palace is somehow
on the other side of the area of Mengo we are in so
I haven’t seen it up close.

That bird at the beach is called a Goondy bird
(or so the missionaries say). Goondy in Luganda
means thing, which I think pretty accurately describes
that bird. I hear the spit on them is acidic!

So the week was good. A lot of figuring things out
as to the area and people but there are a lot of
faithful members of the church here. It seems like
a lot of people come and go as they are baptized
but there are a few people who remain faithful
throughout the years. We’ve even been having a few
family home evenings around here and they seem great.
The families we have them with are so close and much
better off than those who aren’t members of the
church, who don’t really have good relationships
with one another.

We had a good DDM on Wednesday and set goals for the
transfer. We agreed on 6 baptisms each from each side
to make 12 baptisms for the district. That would be
great to get that.
We’ve been teaching a lot of people at the church and
giving people baptismal dates right away, the first
time we meet them. It has been good.

Again like I said it’s rained pretty much every day
here for a few hours each day so that kind of delayed
us on some things.


On Sunday there were 5 confirmations and we had 61
people there for sacrament meeting. There is room
for improvement on that one so we hope to see more
people come each week. We also got a less active
recent convert to come this Sunday which was great.
It reminded me of the prodigal son story. Also I was
reminded of the parable of the man who built his
house on a rock and the one who built his house on
the sandy foundation. I related it too on Sunday how
it was drizzling a tiny bit, and yet so many people
didn’t come to church because of that. It really
shows what foundation they are built on if a tiny
bit of drizzle washes their house away. People
need to be truly converted, and not just joining
the church for personal gain. Like Jesus taught, and
the quote mom left, “he who saves his life shall lose
it, and he that loses his life for my sake shall find
it”. I love you all. Let’s lose our lives in the
service of our fellowman because when we are in the
service of others, we are truly in the service of
our God. (Mosiah 2:17).


Elder Welch

So this week I am getting transferred to Mengo.
I told Patty of how it got its name by being
the place where the “men go” to get drunk. That
was a while ago. I’ll be the District
leader there with Elder M, again another Elder
from Zimbabwe.
Mengo is in the same zone I am in now, and it
is very near where I am right now. I should be
picked up later today to head there. Another
crazy transfer.
The mission opened two
new areas in pretty far out places this transfer
as well with 4 missionaries in each area. We got
18 new missionaries this transfer
and only lose about 4. Rwanda was supposed to
open this transfer but they couldn’t get the
final paperwork done so I think that country
might open up next transfer for proselyting
missionary work.

I definitely feel the love from your emails
and packages. I made those pink pancakes this
morning by the way (a little late for
valentines day pancakes I know) and they were
pretty delicious. Thank you so much!

The rest of the week was good. We’ve been
seeing a lot of the recent converts this last
week and still trying to prepare a few people
for baptism in the next two weeks.

Sorry I just found out that they are coming to
pick me up. The week was good though. We were
able to have a zone activity on Saturday so
we all went to the beach and had some fun there
as well as found out the transfer news.
Sunday we said some final goodbyes and I bore
my testimony in sacrament meeting. Today we have
just been cleaning and packing things
to go. Mengo will be nice and that is now going
to be my new focus eh?
I will make sure to take pictures of the new house
there and everything. I hear the apartment is
very nice but the ward has been
struggling for a while with activity and
attendance.


Elder Welch

So the week was good. Mainly lessons all week.
On Thursday I went with Elder M to see a
family from a nearby area he had served in and
we had dinner with Elders Mo and B.

On Sunday we had church and we had 78 people
there. Church went pretty well but it is always
frantic for us missionaries. I always just want
church to be a great experience for our
investigators.

On Saturday we were able to work with the AP’s
in our area and Elder N from Zimbabwe worked
with Elder M and myself for the day.
It was pretty fun and we learned from the
veteran AP.

Keep up the faith and keep
being awesome!

Elder Welch

Birthday Week

The weeks been good.
So Tuesday was a good day. Almost forgot it was
my birthday until I looked at my planner. The
day was good. In the evening to celebrate we
got some pizza (kind of like you mom and dad) and
Tuttle made achocolate cake which was really nice.
We all just hung out and enjoyed
each other’s company.

On Wednesday we had a DDM and I had us watch some
of the training segments from the District 2 and
talk about how we could become better
missionaries. It was pretty good and the
missionaries in that video are great examples as to
what we want our investigators to see us as.

On Friday we had a District Leaders Council here in
Nsambya and it was good talking about each of our
areas and how we could improve. The AP’s were there
as well which was nice. Afterwards we had a lot of
the baptismal
interviews.

On Saturday we started the morning by finishing up a
couple of interviews. I went with Elder Tuttle to
the church so he could interview them and while I was
there they were doing cleaning so I
thought I would help out with that. Well we had the
baptisms and all seven of them were baptized. A’s kids,
K and D , and B. It was way awesome. The Elder’s
Quorum president, J M, was able to baptize them all for
us. He did a great job! It was only unfortunate that my
companion wasn’t able to make it to the baptisms..

On Sunday we had 85 people at sacrament meeting which
was great and all seven of those baptized were able to
be confirmed. We even had a guy named M M do his first
confirmation ever. Actually we had him do three and he
did great. We later demonstrated in Elder’s
Quorum how to do a confirmation. I also gave the lesson
in there on the creation and the aspect of the priesthood
in that. One of the guys in there asked about why women
didn’t have the priesthood. I then
explained pretty much the same thing that my former
teacher at BYU taught, the essay she wrote on women that
I sent, and how women’s ‘priesthood’ Is motherhood. Women
are responsible to bring us into the
world, and men are responsible to bring us out of this
world. I went a little more in depth into it but I really
think they all enjoyed it and hopefully it will allow them
to show more respect for women.

And today, we went to Garden City, this mall area in
Kololo that has great restaurants and other things to do.
I did draw out some cash, sorry, to kind of have a nice
celebration lunch. We ate at this place
called New York Kampala, and they serve pizza, burgers,
shakes, and other delicious American food. It was pretty
great.

Well that’s another week for me.
Also we will have to make that cake and take some more
pictures of that eh! I just want you all to
know how much I love you and how true the church is. The
more I know, the more I feel the Spirit, and no other
feeling can even compare to the testifying witness of the
Spirit that this is the true church, and
that Jesus is the Christ who lived and died for us that we
could return to our Heavenly Father and become joint
heirs with him.


Elder Welch

Staying Safe

Haha 20 years eh! Don’t feel old,
Dad you know you’re still faster than me!

A is a great woman. Her four kids are I
(15 and a half),A (14), M (11), and A (8).
They are great kids and A has actually been
teaching them all the lessons to make sure
they are prepared. We can’t always see all
the kids with all their activities so we
usually teach A and a couple kids and she makes
sure to teach the rest of the kids. She’s great!
The literacy class is just a class where they
teach it in Luganda but also read things in English
to hopefully help the people in the class
know English better. It is doing great actually and
a lot of the people we are teaching are attending
that class on Sunday’s in replacement of Gospel
Principles. They use and read the Gospel
Principles book but it is just translated into
Luganda and they discuss things in Luganda in there.
Sister C, a great member here, teaches that class.

We made sure to buy a lot of food for the apartment,
no worries haha.
We usually buy from both little shops and my favorite
store is the Embassy Supermarket. It’s right across
from the American Embassy and has a ton of things
other stores don’t have that are American. It’s
great but some things are a bit spendy at times. All
four of us live in a house that has a walled in
complex and us American Elders usually
pay a member 5,000 shillings to do our wash each week.

The lock in wasn’t bad at all. We borrowed the tv
and dvd player from the church to make sure we could
watch some things so we didn’t go crazy. We also had
scriptures and other things to read and I was able
to catch up on some sleep. It was kind of like a
vacation on mission? Haha. Museveni made sure to
have military forces out everywhere during the day
the results came out.

Thanks so much for the birthday wishes as well.
I appreciate it and it’s good to be 20 now. Maybe
people will start taking me seriously?
Probably not still haha.

The week was pretty short. Monday we went to the
ARA and played tennis and some other things. I
realized that tennis is actually pretty fun
and I want to play some more of that and racquetball
when I get home.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we were able to teach some
lessons to A and her kids, B, and K and D. We wanted
to make sure to see them as much as possible before
we were locked up. Thursday through Sunday we were
stuck inside besides going out for church on
Sunday. We just watched movies and hung out mostly
during that period. Church was good though. We had
a decent attendance for people being
gone for elections and even Elder M and I had 12
investigators at church. We are planning for those
7 baptisms still for on Saturday.
Church was great but afterwards we went back inside
again to make sure to be safe.

Well that’s the week basically. Pretty boring but it
was good to see things have gone relatively peacefully
since elections and we hope it stays that way. It’s
sad that people don’t have true democracy here
but if they want to change that, I hope they can do that
in a peaceful way. I know that with faith in Jesus Christ
all things are possible, even changing your country for
the better, and that is what us as Missionaries are
trying to do for the people here in Uganda.

Happy 20th Birthday!

Valentines Day

Happy V-Day !
They actually do celebrate Valentines day here.
I’ve noticed signs for parties for it and people
selling flowers and chocolates. If there
was a holiday which had to do with a man and a
woman being together, they will celebrate it.
They are very for that kind of stuff it seems.

The weeks been good. A lot of teaching and such like
usual. There were some highlights though. We’ve
continued to work with A’s family lately but the only
thing is she wants to be baptized so
much but can’t, because her and her ‘husband’ have been
living together for over 22 years not legally married.
At the very least we will get her 4 children baptized.
She even came to the church on Saturday to help clean
and she’s not even a member!

We have another guy named B who is really smart and just
the right age to go on mission in a year. He’s 18 and
really loves the Book of Mormon. He has two siblings who
are actually members who moved away.
We took a little trip this last week to see his 86 year
old, former Anglican Preacher, father to see if it would
be ok for him to be baptized. His father was soooo happy
to see us and gave his blessing for B to join the church.
We gave them a few copies of the Book of Mormon and he
said he would read it. I don’t think missionaries have
ever been to where we were on Saturday haha. The town B
was from was really nice though and they should get
missionaries there asap!
The town had all nicely paved roads, no garbage anywhere,
and it was quiet. Much different than anywhere missionaries
are now in Uganda.

Sunday wasn’t too bad. Church attendance wasn’t like last
week and we didn’t have quite as many investigators there
because of some personal incidents I guess. We did have 7
there though and it was good to see
them. The literacy class we started last week is going
great and the women that we have in there are powerful.
These mothers of these families are very legit women and
gives some nice age to this previously YSA ward. We even
saw J and D later that night
and they fed us which was an answer to my prayer because
I didn’t have any food at the apartment and I prayed that
we would get fed that night. Thank goodness! Haha.
We also gave J and D a Book
of Mormon stories book and they love it. They are almost
done with it and understand the Book of Mormon so much
better because of it. What a genius thing. It’s only 1000
shillings here too which is a little less
than 50 cents.

Today we’re going to the American Recreation Area and it
should be a good time. I think we’re going to play basketball
and other stuff there possibly? I don’t really know what to
expect. Well that’s been the week. This next week isn’t going
to be much work but we will at
least be safe. I hope things don’t get too crazy here but the
‘President’ here has been ruling for 30 years just like the
Egyptian President. The roads and stuff were actually cleaner
and nicer back when
Idi Amin was around. Kind of sad….

I know the work is so true. This last
week our Mission President trained us on the story of the
sowers in the New Testament. The parable of the seed being
sown by the sower onto 4 different types of ground. We’ve
been trying to read it with our investigators lately and
it’s a great story to help motivate them
into being the last good seed, which is the one that endures
to the end. I encourage you all to read it and ask yourselves
which seed you are really being, and which kind of fruit you
are bringing forth, whether 30, 60, or 100. It’s in Mark 4
and in the other gospels in other places. Read it and apply it.
It will motivate you to be a
better member of the church.
Love,

Elder Welch