This is the year anniversary of Michaela's double jaw surgery. At last the swelling has gone down! |
On Alinafe's baptism day. |
Alinafe is so happy to be baptized. |
Michaela wears her great grandmother's necklace every time she has a baptism. |
Well, first of all I want to say that
tomorrow marks a year since I got jaw surgery which is insane. The time
has gone fast. I am including some pictures to commemorate the fact
that my jaw works and my face is no longer cartoonish (hopefully...). I
can now eat all things. I don't have to blend my cinnamon rolls anymore!
The human body is a miracle. A year ago I had a broken jaw and now it's
completely normal.
This week I began learning
how to drive the vehicle I will be assigned to drive once it is fixed.
We drive giant, diesel Izuzu trucks here to get through all the crazy
dirt roads. I have to say I am sort of at a disadvantage because 1. I've
never driven stick 2. we drive on the left instead of the right here 3.
the driver's side is on the right instead of the left and 4. I have
never driven a truck or a car near this large before. And to add upon
that African drivers are INSANE. So keep me in your prayers. Elder
Reynolds (senior couple) says I am learning fast. He said I must have
been a good driver before my mission. I give all the credit to my
darling father for teaching me. Dad, do you remember telling me that an
LA driver is born every 8 minutes? Well I think an African driver was
born every 2 minutes. Just saying.
We faced a
lot of rejection this week so we did a lot of laughing to make up for
the potential tears that could have come. President has re-emphasized
teaching ALL men and not just the poor ones that are easy to find so we
went knocking gates in the richer part of our area. These people have
big houses and cars and travel a lot and are for the most part pretty
hard-hearted. BUT we saw a white guy walking his dog and I decided to
get the courage to talk to him (white people are so scary, guys) and he
ended up being from Germany! It was so cool to tell him how my Dad
served his mission there and now I am here proclaiming the gospel. We
had a long, deep conversation with him and gave him the Book of Mormon.
It seems like he feels a bit purposeless so hopefully he acts on the
promise I gave him and reads the book. How cool would it be to baptize a
white guy in Malawi?
Rainy season has slowly
come and it is the best. When it is deathly hot then the rain comes and
cools everything off. It is so nice. With the change of season comes a
change in life.
We are rededicating ourselves
to helping this branch get more established. This week we took the
Relief Society president and counselor to visit some less-active sisters
and those sisters came to church! It was so exciting. Any time a
less-active comes to church you do a small victory dance. We are also
really praying and searching for prepared families that can help
establish the church. Young single adults are great but they won't
establish the church until they are bit older and get married. We need
to teach people that are prepared to be branch presidents and relief
society president tomorrow. One day we were just walking and then I had a
feeling we needed to turn. We turned and there was a family sitting on
their porch. Perfect orchestration. We sat down and taught them a lesson
all together. It was the coolest thing ever. Miracles happen. I can't
wait to follow up with them.Â
We had MLC
(mission leadership council) this week over skype and I got to see my
darling Sister Orr. Today she flies to Lusaka and tomorrow she goes
home. I can't believe my dear friend and trainer is going home. This
morning I realized that we had a referral for my old area in Lilongwe so
I had a perfect excuse to call her. I miss her so much. She's a gem.
We
also had a zone meeting. My zone leaders are so powerful--Elder Mwangi
and Elder Barnard. Elder Mwangi is from Kenya and we are good buddies.
He was my ZL in Lilongwe too and he was transferred down here with me.
So he's been with me my whole mission. Elder Barnard is from
Idaho--classic farmer. The theme of our meeting was, "We invite, they
commit, we follow up." Elder Barnard compared the way we commit people
as missionaries as how Christ prepared us for our time on earth. He
invited us to follow His plan, we committed to come to earth and follow
the plan He had for us, and one day He will do a grand follow up. How
will we feel on that follow up day? Think deeply on that one.
The
happiest part of the week was our baptism of Alinafe aka Moroni. He was
just glowing the whole time. After he was baptized he bore his
testimony about how he's been taught by three sets of sisters and how he
truly salutes our faith. He said how much he knew that the Book of
Mormon was true and the church was true. It wasn't like your standard
recitation but was sincere and so sweet. I am so happy for him.
Love you all! Have a great week!
Sister Michaela Proctor
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