Dear Julia,
Thanks for your emails. I will answer your questions.
Missionaries have to follow the mission rules! We didn't want them going home at midnight when there might be people out drinking and celebrating and they might get hurt or something. We have some good missionaries here who always try to obey the rules.
We are busy getting a new apartment ready for some missionaries to move into. We have to arrange to have guards there for them and buy pots and pans, dishes, beds, and a lot of other things. It is a lot of work. The Zone leaders will move in there and then the sister missionaries will move into their place. Always things to do.
It is kind of rainy today but that is good. They need rain here. It is rainy season but the rains are late in coming. The crops (corn maize) needs it. Sometimes it rains very hard but it doesn't last too long.
We are meeting some good people here and they need help to know how to run the church. Most of them have only been members for a short time. The church has only been in Malawi for less than 20 years and some areas it has been much less than that. There are some good people getting baptized but they have to learn many things and that is what we are here to help with. The people here are the pioneers of the Church in Malawi.
I am helping a young many from Stima Village get his mission application ready to send in. He will be the 2nd missionary to go from that Village. The Church helps pay for his passport and police clearance and will also need to pay for him to get some missionary clothes because they don't have any money for those kinds of things. After he serves a mission though he will be able to go back to the Village and really help the Church to grow there and he will know a lot about how to run the programs of the Church. We will give him some white shirts and ties that were sent to us from your Stake.
We took some of the shirts and ties to them in that Group (they aren't big enough to be a Branch or a Ward yet). Most of the men there do not have white shirts and especially not ties. They were so pleased and they all looked so good. When someone looks nice here they say that they look "smart". We didn't take enough with us though and will take some more next time. That Group is in Liwonde (pronounced: Le won day) and they are 2 hours drive away from where we stay in Blantyre. We need to take a picture of them next time too to send home. The Group in Liwonde meet in a school room - but it is not like your nice school rooms. It is a brick building with two rooms per building and no windows - just a bunch of round holes in the wall for air circulation. The walls are very dirty and there is a cement floor. It might not be very nice but we can feel the Spirit there.
We have two men who have been attending are want us to come and teach them the missionary lessons so that they can be baptized. We want to teach their families too but they don't speak English very good. We will get someone to translate for us. They were just walking by and saw the sign we put out on Sundays and came to learn more.
I must get back to my office work.
Love you, Grandma
On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 5:02 PM, Brad & Nicole Bullock <bnbullock@shaw.ca> wrote:
Hi Grandma and Grandpa,
Thanks for the birthday e-mails!! I really enjoyed reading them!! What are you doing in Malawi? I don't know what I am going to do today but tonight we have some friends coming over to celebrate my birthday and New Year's EveJ I can't wait for you to come home! Why are the missionaries not allowed to stay up till mid-night?
Love you too!!!
TTYL (Talk To You Later)
Love,
JuliaJ
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