Elder Ryland Earl Rash: Week 26: HOT AS HADES in December

Here's my weekly email to everyone!

I am doing great! We had 1 family in church and 12 investigators, This last week was pretty good! We committed quite a few people to baptism before the end of the year. We will be having 2 or 3 baptisms on the 19th. We will be baptizing the daughters of a part member family. We've been working with Silva and Tereza to get them married, and the daughters have been wanting to be baptized for the past 4 years, but missionaries always said that they would baptize them as a family. Finally, Nora (the 16 year old daughter) asked in a lesson, "When are we going to be baptized?" We decided that there was no point in waiting any longer to baptize them. They've been coming to church as investigators for the past 4 years, already have testimonies, and we figured that the family will just receive more blessings by having more members in the family. So Nora asked me to baptize her, and Zuni (the 14 year old daughter) asked Elder Carvalho (The AP that initially taught this family) to baptize her. So their baptism will be on the 19th. We also have another young man that will hopefully be baptized on the 19th as well. Then we have the daughter and grandson of the Polygamist man that I told you about. They should hopefully be baptized on the 26th. But we'll see with all of these people if they are ready. But we will definitely be having a baptism on the 19th. Whoo Hoo!

The Maputo Stake had their Christmas party over the weekend. We were was supposed to be there, but it was so extremely inconvenient and a waste of our time, that we didn't go. It is a pain to get to that chapel, we wouldn't have been able to bring any investigators, and we would have wasted 6-8 hours of our day in transit and singing. But we will sing as a choir for the Christmas party that we'll be having as a Maputo/Matola Zone.

It is HOT AS HADES here! We were in an investigators home and he said, "I don't know what we did to make God mad, but He is burning us SO BAD! I think we all need to repent." I got a good kick out of it. But it is getting so hot here, and is only going to get hotter. I don't have a lot to write about today, so I'll just leave it at that! Merry Christmas! Have fun freezing. I can't remember what it feels like to not be sweating. Anyways, have a nice week, I've got to keep it short this week. Until next week!

Elder Rash