African Joy

August 10, 2015

One of the Besa girls, Yvette, and me.

Cooking outside because what else can you do with no electricity every day all day?

Eating from the oven.

Our missing mirror. It's a good thing you taught me to look in the blind spot, Dad. It's coming in handy without a mirror. 

Darling Family,

Sister Quaye and I are basically like Sherlock Holmes tracking down all of these less actives in our ward. It's such a good time. We are finding people that haven't been contacted in years and some and very happy to be found. The best less active visit this week was going to a family to do service. We were just doing their dishes and all of a sudden they brought out the biggest basket of laundry I have ever seen. I actually felt quite honored because most Zambians refuse our service so we washed their clothes by hand in their backyard for 3 hours with their daughter. So fun!

We also taught the Besa girls (who gave us that fish that one time). Their parents are less active so the only solid teaching they get is from us and they just eat it up. After the lesson they taught us the Zambia national anthem and I couldn't stop laughing--I don't think they know the words exactly. They sang something like, "Stand and sing for Zambia proud and free. Land African joy in unity." Please say that aloud to yourselves. This is the land of freakin' joy, my friends. Oh, Zambia. 

Sister Quaye and I are doing super well. I love that girl so much. I think the process to get to where we are has been challenging but we are both so free and happy and we are helping each other to realize our talents and develop them. I know we are together for a reason.

Whilst planning one night, she was going through the phone asking about random names and then without asking she called a girl called Annet. This is an investigator I dropped with Sister Frimpong right before she was transferred so my eyes got big as she said, "Hi, is this Annet?" We dropped her for a good reason. But God's ways are higher than our ways so we trusted that an appointment was set for a reason. The lesson we had was so full of the Spirit. I haven't felt the Spirit that strong in a long time. Our mouths were opened to ask the exact right questions and essentially she loves everything about the Church but some of the people have hurt her. We talked her through it and suddenly the Spirit said, "Invite her to be baptized." We JUST dropped her. But I followed the prompting and invited her to prepare herself for baptism and she said yes. The bishop told us yesterday that she reached out to him so I think she is ready to slowly come back to church. We just need to help her figure out where to live--she lives with her boyfriend.

Can I just bear my testimony of fellowshipping. Fellowshipping is SO IMPORTANT. All you people at home, please look outside yourselves and friendship a less active or an investigator. Coming to a place with new people is scary. Our investigator called Amon has been sort of going down hill in interest and we were concerned he wouldn't come to church on Sunday. But when he actually did come, all of these people reached out to him to be his friend and one guy even offered him a ride home. When we went to teach him later in the day he was glowing. It was adorable. Love casteth out all fear.

Something I've studied and pondered this week is the question, "Where is your treasure?" Where your treasure is there shall your heart be also. I have a lot of good treasures--following the Spirit, serving others, reading the scriptures, etc.--but I also have bad treasures I want to root out of my heart. Maybe I treasure what other people think of me. Maybe I fear man more than God at times. Ask yourself this week, "Where is my treasure?"

In other news:

-We contacted a guy who claimed to be the CEO of Microsoft in Washington D.C. He was sort of crazy. I played along and asked if he had a 202 number and he didn't know what to say. There are a million little stories from contacting crazies I could share. Good times.

-We have a new investigator who is Zambian but spent 15 years in Boston. He has the funniest accent you could ever imagine. 

-We came out of the bishop's house after coordination and our side mirror on the car had been stolen. Yep.

-The lights went out mid-cooking so I pulled a chair up to the oven and prayed for my meat to cook with the remaining heat. 15 minutes later I opened the door and it had cooked! Miracles! I ate it right there from the oven.

Love you!

Sister Proctor