Hal and Janis

    Elder Aidukaitus, of the Seventy, and his wife, Louiza traveled the mission with President Moyo, 21-25 November 2022. They held Zone Conferences in Lilongwe, Malawi; Ndola, Zambia; and in Lusaka, Zambia. In each Zone he targeted a different area of focus. According to the AP's he was very inspired! To those in Malawi he focused on invited new friends through the people they are already baptizing. To those in the Copperbelt he focused on the doctrine of obedience; requirements needed to strengthen testimonies and the blessings that can come by doing so. To the Lusaka Zone he emphasized that we are not teaching enough and we are not taking advantage of those coming to us through social media! Only 27 of the 7000 who clicked on Come Unto Christ in Lusaka facebook adds were baptized.     Aren't these two beautiful? Sister Houston and Sister Daud. Role playing and receiving amazing guidance by Elder Aidukiatus. He made it look SO easy to teach gospel principles in sim...

  We filled the house to over flowing but so grateful for this group of missionaries!!  An invitation to our African missionaries: The last Thursday of November is an American holiday: Thanksgiving. Please join us tomorrow evening at 1900hrs for a feast with some of our mission family as we give thanks for our many blessings! Someone will come and pick you up! Sixteen missionaries plus Hal and I!  I wasn't sure how to make Thanksgiving dinner memorable without traditional food but we did our best. The only turkeys we have seen here were a couple of live ones running around. So it was chicken again! Always chicken!! Elder Juhasz cooked a roast...too pink for me...and he was sick the next day so I was glad I didn't try it! It was his generosity though that counted!!  At the grocery store, I asked a clerk about yams and received a very blank look! Then I said, "sweet potatoes," and he showed these to me. The sign actually said, "Red potatoes." They looked kind ...

The missionaries have been instructed to "lead out with the Book of Mormon." If they sense a genuine interest in people they give them a Book of Mormon instead of a pamphlet.  Generally, Elder Phelps and I do not have a lot of contact with other people other than vendors so we are giving books to some of them. The pharmacist, the airline ticket agent, the guards, the caterer, the clerk at the Bed Shop. When we were with a couple of Sister missionaries the other day, they made a contact with a lady standing in line at Hungry Lion! Elder Phelps is giving a pamphlet not a Book of Mormon to Chipo. He has done a little work for us. The mission ran out of Books of Mormon!!!   Five thousand copies of the Book of Mormon have been on order for quite awhile! At least six weeks! That is a long time! Kind of challenging to "lead out with the Book of Mormon" when there are not any books around! We scrambled and search all of the apartments. We shared! At first we were told there...

  It's official! The rainey season has begun!  What we have observed so far is simply a gentle rain; no down pours so heavy that you can't see if you are driving. On the other hand, when it rains, it doesn't stop. One night I heard it rain ALL night long! It has rained ALL day long too! The temperatures cooled down nicely too!! And the thunder!! It rumbles constantly!!      Only the more affluent have umbrellas like these fortunate few.  Most simply walk in the rain! It sure didn't take long for the sides of the roads to become muddy messes. This definitely has it's disadvantages because now where do the people walk?! Maybe I have become accustomed to all the garbage in the ditches along side the roads, but the rain seems to make it all more visible! Some of the Elder's told me their gutters were completely full of water and garbage and spilling out onto the road. I haven't seen that personally, but I can believe it, for sure!    As soon as it sta...

We said good-by to 3 awesome Elders and welcomed 11 new missionaries on the 5th and 9th of November 2022. One of our fearless AP's ( Elder Kakaire) left for home one day before the others (8 Nov 2022). His flight took him to Johannesburg where he had about a twelve hour layover. Arrangements had been made for him to sleep at a place in the airport, but he couldn't find it. He called us at about 10:30 PM. I called the South African Travel Agent and she was adamant that he was NOT to leave the airport even though he had been told that the place on his ticket indicated otherwise. Long story short, his place to stay had been booked incorrectly; the place IN the airport was closed; he didn't have any money to buy food (our mistake); it was cold and so we were sure he had a very uncomfortable night!! However, there was an angel there in the airport and allowed him to use their phone (that is how he called us) and Hal was able to send that person some money via Airtel money and he...