Week 3!!

Another awesome week over here in Angola! It´s almost summer so the weather is starting to warm up... The weather really hasn´t been bad at all yet, it actually gets kinda chilly at night. haha. But from what the other elders have told me is to prepare for extreme heat here in the next few months. I´m good with it though, I still need to lose a few pounds that I put on at the MTC. :) And either way that shouldnt be a problem because of how much we walk. I wish I had a pedometer so I could tell how many miles we walk a day. Fun stuff!!

 

So let me talk about my week a little bit. First off, it was way fast! It feels like I was sitting here emailing 2 days ago. This week Elder Hobbs and I had some really cool experiences. I made my first contact all by myself. Let me tell ya about it. So we were sitting on a taxi, Elder Hobbs was on the bench behind me and I was on the one in front of him next to the window. This man got in and sat next to me and I noticed that he was reading some book about the Bible so I knew I should probably talk to him. But I wanted to see if I could get him to talk to me first. haha. So I pulled out a Restoration pamphlet and just started flipping through it and kept noticing that he was glancing over at it. So eventually I just sat it on my lap and after about his 5th glance at it, I felt prompted to nudge him and ask him how he was. (in Portuguese). Then he answered me and after a sec asked if I spoke English and I very hapilly responded YES! It´s pretty rare to get an English speaker here, so I was pretty stoked. Haha. We talked for a bit and then I gave him the pamphlet and exchanged numbers. Who knows if it´ll go anywhere but I was proud of myself for doing a contact alone:) So that was cool.

 

The other day on Friday we were riding another taxi out to an appointment and met this guy named Gabriel on the taxi. He´s a super cool guy. He´s part of like the Angolan SWAT team. Pretty legit. He´ll be a good guy to know, haha. They ride around on motorcycles with big guns. Gnarly. We talked to him the whole ride and then gave him a pamphlet and our number. Before the day was even over he had already texted us wanting to meet. This guy is Golden! We ended up meeting with him last night and probably had one of the best lessons yet since I have been out on the mish. Not only because the spirit was so strong but also cause I was able to speak fairly well. The language is comin´! I´ve just need to be patient. And realize that I´ve been here for 3 weeks.

 

We taught an awesome lesson to a man named Carlos. He´s a really cool Angolan guy that actually speaks English as well, he learned it in S. Africa. But his girlfriend was there so we did most of the lesson in Portuguese. We committed both of them to be baptized on the 22 of next month, and they both agreed and were excited! He is so sincere and really does have a desire to follow Christ, he just says that everything he does he puts his all into it, so he just wants to make sure that he wont be dissapointed 2 years down the road. We obviously assured him that he wouldn´t be and all was well. I´ll keep you updated on him. We had another women named Ida set to be baptized this next Saturday but we had to move it back a bit cause she was given an ultimatum by her boyfriend that she needs to pick him or the church. ugh.... We have faith that she´ll make the right decision.:)

 

So our house is absolutely awesome like I´ve mentioned:) One thing I hvent mentioned though is all of the blessed cockroaches...They´re everywhere haha. I have one that I find every night by my toothbrush. I always kill it but I guess his friends are just hiding waiting to fill the next slot. It´s all good though I´m totally used to it. And don´t get the wrong idea, I know I´m in Africa so you´re probably thinking that theyre like the size of my fist, but theyre actually pretty small little buggers. They keep it fun:)

 

We had 111 people at church yesterday! The room that we meet in was packed! I sat on the stairs cause there weren´t enough seats for everyone. That´s definitely a good problem to have!

 

The kids. They are absolutely awesome! No matter where we are, without fail, when we walk by kids they always yell "Amigo!", and flash a thumbs up to you. Most of the time they run up and want a high five too, which I am more than happy to give. Ah... I love it here. The work is hard, but the results heavily outweigh how tired I am or how stressed I am. These people are ready for this Gospel in their lives. We´ve just gotta give it to them! And that we´ll do!

 

I love you all so much! Enjoy your last few weeks of summer and live it up! Thanks for all of the emails and support!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hyde

 

LUKE congrats on making weight my man! You´re going to kill it this season. Just make sure your makin´good decisions so you can go out and score all them touchdowns!