Week 9: Family Home Evening in Mozambique

So this week has been absolutely AWESOME! Before I forget, let me just mention all that I really want to talk about that Happened this week; Family Night with an investigating family, going to Trevo, my trials on Wednesday, going to Fumento, eating with investigators (that was scary), and STAKE CONFERENCE!!!

Okay! So first, Family Night! So Monday night, we sat down with a family that has been progressing investigators for a while! Helder and Marcia and their 3 kids; Patrick, Solange, and Junior!!! They are an awesome family! Patrick is 17, Solange is 14, and Junior is 9! They are so cool! But for family home evening, we brought a glass bottle and a box of matches to play a game! Everyone starts with 10 matches and you take turns stacking matches onto the open top of the bottle, if any matches fall off, you take them and the goal of the game is to get rid of all of your matches! It was super fun, and the family absolutely loved it! We compared the game to our testimonies! That we must build them on a sure foundation so that they can be strong! So it was a super good lesson! I feel at home with this family! They remind me of my family, just the bond that they have, they are a super strong family! Plus the kids are all geniuses! They LOVE reading the scriptures and keeping commitments and going to church, and they love talking to the missionaries!

Next is Trevo! Trevo is a part of our area that is Super Far away! It is about a 2 hour walk from our house, or a 30 minute choppa ride, so missionaries hardly ever go out there! But we finally did! And it was awesome! Trevo is where a whole lot of less active families live in our ward and we are working on getting a list of them, so we can go to Trevo, and work in Trevo a lot to strengthen that area and reactivate a lot of families!

I'm running out of time, so I apologize, but we also went to Fumento!
Another area that is kind of far to get to, and I love Fumento!!! It is so humble and I just love it! The first day we went there we didn't have any luck! No one was home and we felt like we wasted our time!

But a few days later we were inspired to go back! This time, we went deeper into the neighborhoods and found an awesome family that has been prepared by the Lord! We started talking to a guy at his gate, and he said, "Wait, I'll be right back!" He went into his house and came out carrying a paperback copy of the Book of Mormon!!!! We asked him if he had been reading it, and he said, "Of course! All books are good!" So I have a super good feeling about him! We're definitely going back to talk with him and his family this next week!
I don't have time to talk about eating with the investigators, just know that I haven't gotten sick from eating with them... yet...

STAKE CONFERENCE!!! This was the first Stake Conference EVER in Mozambique! The entire stake was organized, people were called to stake callings, A STAKE PATRIARCH WAS CALLED!!! (Patriarch Mateus) And it was just awesome!!! President and Sister Koch spoke, along with some other speakers from the stake! Surprisingly, I could understand about 75-80% of it, and it was all in Portuguese!!! I give all credit to this last Fast Sunday! I fasted that I'd have an increased understanding with the language, and I'd call it a miracle! Since that fast, I've been able to understand just about everything that people say! So that has been a huge testimony builder for me!

Also, just real quick! People here are just numb to pornography, it is just everywhere, practically; on posters, flyers, billboards, they even have TRADING CARDS with women dressed rather inappropriately!

Kids play with these cards all the time, and they don't think it's bad! But this week, we saw some kids playing with them, and we payed them 20 Met to burn them!!! 20 Met is like 50 cents, and they buy the cards for 15 met! So we had some kids go get some oil, and some matches, and we had a little fun! I took a video of it (don't worry, you can't see anything... The cards were all turned upside down)! So that was fun! We did that in Fumento!

Anyway! I wish I had more time, but I'll set aside more time next week, I promise! Sorry if I haven't written any of you back yet. We're only allotted 2 hours, and you would not believe how quickly it flies by!!!

But I love you all! I'll answer more questions next week!

I love this work! I hope everything is going well at home!

Com Amor,
Elder Rash

***It takes about an hour and a half to walk from the top of our area to the bottom, and about 2 hours to walk the length of it. Our area is in the shape of an L or a V and I sent a picture of it on drop box, so you guys can look at it, but our area is huge! We’re constantly discovering areas that we've never been before! I love it!***