Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Week 11: Mozambiquen Food



Well Heidi Ho family and friends! This week has absolutely flown by! It has been jam packed with fun, spiritual, and emotional experiences! I'll just try to cram all of the experiences into this letter! But before I forget, I need to tell you about eating at investigators houses! So the mission rule is that we're not allowed to eat at other people's houses for a couple of reasons; everyone is just so poor that we don't want to become a financial burden on anyone, and with the means that they have to cook and prepare food on... it isn't the most sanitary of places to make meals... So missionaries typically get sick when they eat with natives. But we were meeting with this investigator around dinner time, and people typically eat and we teach them during dinner, and it typically isn't a big deal. But this investigator had made a meal specifically for us. We tried to deny, but he insisted. He said that is was super important to him because he was accepting us as his Blood Brothers, as he put it. So we reluctantly sat down at his dinner table, while his wife served us a heaping portion of Chima and Feijao. Chima looks like mashed potatoes, but it is made out of corn flour and water, and you just boil it and whip it and stir it until it is the consistency of really thick mashed potatoes. So we ate this Chima with Feijao, which is a bean/beef/cabbage mixture that is SUPER delicious! Luckily, the investigator had bought us Dragon's to drink. Dragon is a super good energy drink, like a Monster. Now, you might be thinking, "Elder Rash! You're a missionary! Why are you drinking Energy drinks?!" Well, energy drinks are terrible for you, yes, but they kill most of the bacteria that we may have consumed by eating with these natives, so we're allowed to and encouraged to drink them on rare occasions. Anyway, we eat this delicious Mozambican dish, drink this Dragon, teach a little lesson, he gives us hugs and we left! We ended up dropping him because he wasn't keeping commitments and wouldn't come to church, but it was my first time eating with a native, and I thought I was going to die!!!! But yeah, Mozambican food is delicious! I'm gonna learn how to make Chima, just because it is super good!

Our daily schedule goes like this;
Wake up at 6:30
Get ready, eat breakfast and we are out the door by 8 or 9 to do some contacting/tracting/visits
We get home at 10 or 11 and do studies/lunch
Then we leave at 16 for our lessons!
We stay out the rest of the day until 21! We typically don't eat dinner just because it takes up time, so we just eat a big lunch! But yeah! that is the typical day!

The baptismal dates are as follows;

Lidia (a 17 year old young woman that we're teaching)- Sept. 24

Joanna (an 11 year old young woman that we're teaching; she lives with her aunt and uncle that are members)- Sept. 5, but may be pushed back to Sept. 12

Rita ( a 25ish year old woman that is the neighbor of some really awesome investigator family that we have)- Oct. 10

Gina ( a 38 year old woman, single mom, 4 kids, two of which are baptismal age as well)- Oct. 10

Francisco and Louisa (a really young family with one newborn daughter, Louisa is 18, and Francisco is 21)- Oct. 10

Bento and Edilta (a suuuuuper awesome family that comes to church every week, keeps commitments, are super nice, and give us references! they are the family that brought Rita to church and gave her to us as a reference! Edilta is 18, and Bento is 21! they have a 9 month old son named Belview and he is super cute! Bento's younger brother lives with them, he is 13ish, and they all come to church every week!)- Oct. 17

Helder and Marcia (They're in there mid 40's and they are SO awesome! They have 3 kids- Patrick (17) Solange (14) Junior (10). These kids are absolute geniuses! We just stopped by to say hello, and Junior started asking me questions about the book of mormon, and he started quoting Enos!!! Like, he had memorized the story of Enos and was quoting a few verses! I even pulled out my BoM and checked him, and he was almost perfect!)- Oct. 24

Ernesto and Carlotta (A part member family, he was one of the first members to be baptized when the missionaries first came to mozambique, and she isn't a member, they have 3 kids, one of them is 9, but this family isn't progressing a whole lot...) Oct. 24

Silva and Vitoria (He is 33, she is 28, they have 2 cute daughters both under the age of 8, He is muslim, she is christian, but they seem to be progressing quite a bit. They are a super cute couple and I can picture them in temple clothes being sealed as a family!) They don't have a date yet...
Euzebio and Gilda (they are a young family as well with 4 young kids, 1 of which is older than 8. they don't have a date yet, but we want to give them the date of Oct. 31)

So those are all of our Progressing investigators. we have Probably 15 other actual investigators, but we haven't had much time to meet with them!

My favorite Investigators are Bento and Edilta, and Helder and Marcia and their families! Helder and Marcia and their kids remind me of home. They just have a really close relationship and we had Family Night with them a few weeks ago and it was just really nice and fun! Bento and Edilta are like our best friends and they are super willing to follow christ!

Our typical P-day;

From 8 Until 18 we go and do Internet for 2 hours, go shopping at ShopRite (Which is the equivalent of Mozambican Walmart) for an hour or so, we clean the house, have lunch, do studies, and just relax. here in a couple weeks though, a store called GAME will be coming to Matola. GAME is owned by the same people who own Walmart, so that will be super cool! But from 18 on, we go to lessons and meetings, and it is just like any other day.

But I absolutely love the kids here! Every little kid knows our names and we taught them to chant our names, so every time they see us coming they just start screaming our names! And they don't stop! We'll be 100 yards away and they'll still be screaming our names! So we're pretty famous! Dad, you'll be proud to hear that your magic trick with your ring has become famous here! We do it all the time for the kids here, and it just blows their minds! Well, darn, I'm out of time... I'll try to get more in next week! I'm super sorry! Tchau! I love you all! 

Elder Ryland Rash

Church on Sunday

Matola Zone Lunch

Matola Zone Lunch with President and Sister Koch


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