Cause This Is Africa!

This week was a special one for sure! Not only did the work progress but we got a little taste of Africa as well. Let me tell you about it.

So first off the important stuff. This week we had Flora´s baptism and it was awesome! She was so excited and ready. Mimi´s baptism we moved back a week so that her Dad will be able to attend it. It´s acutally a pretty intersting story with her dad. He was the first one of all of his family to start taking the lessons, but then after a little while he kind of took a little detour and got into drinking and all that not so good stuff. But since he started taking the lessons 5 people from his family have been baptized. But anyways, this week we started teaching him again and are trying help him find his way. We sat with him yesterday and he really opened up and expressed how he just kind of lost himself and that he does know how he is going to get out of the rut he´s in. We assured him that we have just the tool to get him out. He expressed how he has seen his family change as they´ve been going to church and as some of them have been baptized (Fulai and Salvador) and how he is kind of jealous. We are really looking forward to working with him and helping him get out of this rut. It´s pretty incredible how the Gospel truly can fix any problem that we face in this life. This Saturday his daughter Mimi should be baptized and then after that it is going to be all uphill for his family. It was great, as we left our lesson with him, his name is Mateus by the way, his daughters came up and thanked us, they hate the route that their dad has taken and they want a responsible father figure again. It was even greater that they realized that the Gospel is just what he needs. I am loving this area!

Now I´ll talk about the other less important stuff. We went on a safari today!!!! It was awesome! We went to a safari park about 2 hours outside of Luanda. About half of the mission went with President and Sister Merrill and Elder and Sister Lopes, one of the brazillian couples. I think the rest of the mission is going next week. But anyways.. It was so cool! As we drove into the park there were giraffes welcoming us, standing in the middle of the dirt rode. That got us pretty excited! It was about a 40 minute drive from the entrance of the park to where we would meet the truck that was going to be taking us on the safari. Once we got to the trucks they took us out and we started our journey! We first went back and saw the family of giraffs that had migrated a little bit more into the bush and they took us up real close to them. Way cool. Then from there we kept going and then we found an elephant up in the trees a ways of the trail. The truck driver had no fear, the second we saw it he started climbing the hill in the truck, driving over trees and what not. He got us right up close to the elephant. Beautiful. After that we kept going and found a group of wildabeasts and their friends the onix. The wildabeasts let us take pictures but the onix got out of there pretty quick when they saw us. It was so beautiful!! There is no way I can come close to explaining what it was like in this email. Sorry... Hopefully you can get some idea from the pictures. We unfortunately didn´t see any zebras or anything else, but we were all satisfied. It was nice to get out of the big city and into Africa. 

Well it was another great week! Thanks for all of your prayers and support! Have a good first week of school!

I love you all!

Elder Hyde

Howdy

Well, it was another great week! Let me tell you about some of it.

So a while back I mentioned something about one of our new investigators named Bela. I thought I would give a little update on her. Her and her family are probably some of the most prepared people that I have teached this far on my mission. So the family consists of Bela and her two kids, Isangela and Cicilia, Bela´s nephew Wilson, Bela´s brother Martins (he´s the one thats bed ridden), and Bela´s neice Luana. They are awesome. About a week ago we started reading the Book of Mormon with them just to give them a little push and now they are loving it. They read together nightly and actually understand! It is incredible, Cicilia and Luana are only 12 years old and are understanding the Book of Mormon better than I do. Unfortunately they haven´t been able to make it to church yet because of wedding and funerals but they´ll make it this week. We started teaching them the Plan of Salvation this past week and it has been so cool to see the light bulbs go off as we´ve taught. It is so easy to feel the spirit when we are there with them. It makes our job so much easier when they want  to feel and learn from the spirit. We plan on committing them to a baptismal date this week.

This week Elder Fontaine and I had the opportunity of helping with the districts big Helping Hands activity. This year they did a blood drive and a lot of people showed up to help. There is a huge lack of blood here in Angola and a huge need for it. It was cool to see the members so willing to help in a good cause. There was a clinic that came to do the blood work and it was a great opportunity for mission work. They were all given Book of Mormons and we explained a little about it to them. It was cool, I talked to the head doctor who is from Cuba for about 15 minutes, he spoke spanish and I suprisingly understood mostly everything. It was a super cool experience. There is nothing better than service!

This week Mimi and Flora are getting baptized. I don´t know if I have mentioned anything about Mimi yet but she is the neice and cousin of a few members in the branch. She is cousins with Fulai and Salvador that were baptized at the camping trip. They are both so excited for their baptisms! As am I! It has been super special to see them change over the past month. I´ll be sure to send pictures next week.

The work is going great and I am loving life as a missionary! Sorry this email is kind of lame... There is just no way to explain everything in a short email. 

I love you all and hope that you have a great week! 

Love,

Elder Hyde

Awesome Week

So this week I wanted to talk a little about one of our investigators that we have been working with for quite awhile now. Her name is Flora and she has known the church for a pretty long time. She has 5 or 6 cousins that are members of the church. She would come to church with them every once in a while but not always. About 3 weeks ago we started sitting with her (I'm not sure why the old missionaries never sat with her). She has been going through some pretty tough times lately, she doesn't have a super good relationship with her family and she has a 1 year old son. We started talking to her about the power that the Gospel can give us in our lives, especially in our times of difficulty and it really hit her. We taught her the principles of repentance and the role of baptism and it got her really excited knowing that she had a chance to start over. We invited her to baptism and she said that she would pray about it and then we came back a few days later and you should have seen the smile on this girls face. She was on cloud 9! So we sat down and asked her if she had any good news for us and she very happily asked us when she could get baptized. We were so excited! This is exactly what she is looking for and exactly what she needs. She will be baptized on the 24. It is incredible to see what the Gospel does to all of us! In the past 3 weeks I have seen such a change in her, as she has realized that she isn't in this battle alone. We're not in this battle alone. It is so incredible, the things that we can do, go through, tolerate, etc. because of the Atonement. I have gained such a testimony of grace as a missionary. There is no way that we could do all that we do without the little push that we receive because of the sacrifice of our Savior. His grace IS sufficient! 

I'm loving life! The work is going along great! And I couldn't be happier! 

Keep on keepin' on!

Love,

Elder Hyde

Great Week!

Another awesome week in the books! I'm sure you're getting tired of hearing that and are probably starting to think that I just say that every  week just to try and stay positive. But I'm not lying! Life is good and I'm happier than ever! Weeks are flying by so incredibly fast! It's pretty crazy... But let me tell you about the week!

 

So as usual we have been looking for families super hard and this week we started teaching two really solid ones! So let me tell you about one of them. About 3 weeks ago as we were walking down the street a lady stopped us and asked us if we would be able to come and talk to her brother who is bed ridden and doesn't get many visitors. We were more than thrilled to do so. Basically he has a disease that is slowly eating away his body, I don't know much about it yet but he has to be helped with just about everything, he can't walk or control his legs. He's a super humble and positive guy though, his name is Martins. He's about 45 years old. So this last week went to visit him and his whole family happened to be there, his older sister Bela and her children and his younger sister Mina who stay and takes care of him. Bela is the one who stopped us in the first place. She is the sweetest lady! She studied in New York and speaks english. But anyways we taught them all the Restoration and it hit them all pretty hard. Bela loved the importance of the Priesthood. I love seeing it click in investigators heads. "It all makes sense!" We are super excited about them! We've been struggling on finding families so it was nice to be blessed with this awesome family! We got another also who was a reference from a member in Portugal. There are some good things in the works!!

 

It's crazy that another transfer has gone by! It feels like I just got to this area and it has already been 6 weeks...

 

I hope that you are all taking advantage of your last few weeks of summer! Have the best week ever!

 

I love you all!

 

Elder Hyde