Slower Week
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
Hello everyone!!! It is late here in Ethiopia when I am writing this. I had a busy day, however, just like Duolingo I am on a streak, and I have to keep my email streak alive!!!!! This week was pretty basic I am not going to lie. Let’s dive into this week.
June 9th
Today was a really good day! Our day was spent with a lot of finding. Towards the end of the day, we met with some members and had family home evening which was really nice. After this we met with a group of members at the same time to help and explain what ministering is. For those of you who don’t know what that is, in our church we are each assigned people to minister to. Ministering in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is defined as Christlike caring for others, focusing on serving individuals' spiritual and temporal needs out of love. It represents a personalized, often informal approach to watching over church members. In addition to this we also visited with them about reading the scriptures and gave them each reading charts so they can keep track of their Book of Mormon reading.
June 10th
We are teaching a man named Bayessa. He is progressing and we are hoping that he will soon be ready to have a baptism interview. We met with him today for a lesson. After we were done, we went out and did a lot of finding.
June 11
Welp I finished my first journal notebook on my mission! I wrote in it every single day and it is full of memories and lots of days, I wrote my testimony in the bag which I will share sometime in the future. The Cowley’s gave us all journals for Christmas so I will be starting journal number two. Other than that, it was a pretty slow day! I spent a lot of time calling and setting things up for tomorrow. As zone leaders we also had some big issues in the zone that we were trying to solve. I won’t dwell too much on that, except to say that I am learning a lot on how to mediate personality problems and realizing that sometimes if I just give people space and time, things tend to work themselves out. Because my companion and I are Zone leaders people call us a lot with problems and it has taught me a lot about how to listen to others and solve problems. In addition, we worked a lot on our zone conference training for next week.
June 12
Again, a slower day, we were supposed to have an exchange yesterday and today but because someone was sick, we had to hold off for a little bit. However, we had another lesson with Bayessa again! I love him lots! He is the first person that I have found myself and been able to follow his progress. It has honestly been so nice. Because of all my transfers in the beginning it has been hard to do this. I have felt blessed to experience a transformation with him.
June 13
Bayessa!!! We met with him again and finished up his lessons. He is ready and wants to be baptized. So today we spent a lot of time getting him ready for his baptism interview, which will be tomorrow. In addition, we also had an institute class (Weekday religious class for university students and older adults usually held during the week) Two young men joined us for the lesson. Paulos and Dagim who will hopefully be future missionaries!
June 14
BAYESSA HAD HIS INTERVIEW and is set to be baptized next week by our member Paulos! They talked a lot after church, and they were getting to know each other. On another interesting note some of the people I was teaching in Gambella (My last area on the Sudan Border) got baptized today. One of the members named Reik baptized him and his wife, child and niece, it was very nice to see! I am just so sad that I could not be there and that there are no missionaries there currently. We are not sure when the church will allow us to return to that area. The members are doing a good job of trying to keep the work going. I am hoping for the conflicts in the area to stop and it to be safe for us to return. I was grateful that they sent me the pictures. I am sharing them with you. On Sunday evenings, we have what is called the "Miracle Call". The entire mission will get on a zoom call (That is the blessing of being in a small mission of less than 60 missionaries), and we get to share our "miracles" of the week with each other. I love it! (See picture below)
June 15
Welp! It was a good P-Day, slow, I really just slept and worked out and cleaned our apartment over here in Burayu. Not lots to do! But it’s chill! On another note, my Amharic is coming along so well! I have worked super hard at the language and spent all my extra time working on words I do not know and trying to become 100% fluent. I realize every day that I can speak and understand without a lot of effort. It is flowing and I LOVE IT! This has come from hard work and effort. I was telling my mom that if I had studied this hard in High School, I would have had perfect grades and a 36 on the ACT! One thing the mission has really taught me is how to be dedicated and study. I need to bring this home with me and keep this up when I get back. I am grateful every day for the gift of study and how it has helped me with the language.
It is funny how things have changed. After the first part of my mission had so many crazy things happen it makes missionary life now seem basic. Maybe God has more excitement planned. Maybe not, but I am so grateful to be here.
Love you all! Have an amazing week and I will see you next week (via email)
Don't do stupid things
Elder Frasier
