ሀገሬ ታመራለች

Hello beautiful people!!!! If you are wondering what this title means, it translates to my country is beautiful 😍 Ethiopia is amazing, and I love it here! Overall amazing! This week was honestly a blur, and I didn’t know a week could fly by that fast lol. Despite the underlying knowledge that we are on the brink of civil war. Things are relatively calm here in the capital city.  We are grateful for this, and it seems that the people here are going about business as usual, trying to keep a good spirit about things. Our mission president is at the church’s African conference for African Mission Leaders in Kenya right now, and we were teasing that it is a front for him evacuating before us.  But in all honesty, thank you for your prayers and for remembering Ethiopia in your fast. We will continue to work on delivering the message of Jesus Christ and try to keep that at the forefront of our thoughts and actions.  Let’s jump into the week!

Oct 6th

We had a lesson with our friend Tesfahun, and he is getting closer to baptism. After we met with him, we went out “finding” and ended the day with Family Home Evening at our member Abdi's house.

Oct 7th

MLC!!!! (Mission Leaders Conference) I always love MLC; this is actually my 10th MLC since being here on my mission.  I feel very blessed to have been able to serve in leadership for so long while on my mission.  I love being in the mission office and learning from President and Sister Tando.  We spent a lot of time in MLC discussing how we can help our mission grow, get our members to come back to church, and how to bring new members at the same time. After MLC, Elder Van and I left the office and started an exchange with the Adama Elders. 

Oct 8th 

Today I was with my goat elder Thayne! If any of you remember, we were in the same house twice so far on our mission. So, it was nice to catch up and work with him! Thayne is good at opening his mouth and not caring what people think when it comes to teaching or talking to people. In a good way.  He just says things in a way that I have often felt a little self-conscious saying.  He is a good example for me, and I want to be more like him.  After the exchange, we went back down to our area and had to be inside by 6 pm due to safety concerns because of the conflict. 

Oct 9th

Today was a busy day in the office. We had a lot to figure out in the office for this coming month.  When I came out on my mission, there were 26 missionaries with me.  That is a very big group for Ethiopia.  Remember, my mission right now is approx. 50 elders and sisters. Our visas in Ethiopia are only good for one year.  This has been an issue the last few months due to political issues and unrest, and we have seen a lot of Elders and Sisters not get their visas renewed.  Not only that, but we all must physically go to immigration to fill out the paperwork.  Because my group is so big, you can imagine the logistics we have to organize to get all these Elders and Sisters to the immigration office.  In the US, this would not be a bump in the road, but here it takes a lot of planning.  We hope that with this group we can all get renewed and no one has to be transferred to another country.  As I mentioned in my last email, we had to transfer 5 missionaries to other African countries last week due to not being able to get their visas renewed.  My group from MTC, all 26 of us, need to get our visas renewed. This is a process because we are all spread out throughout the mission. But overall, it was chill, and then we met with

Tesfahun again and had a great lesson.  After this, we had our movie night because we must be in our apartments every night by 6!

Oct 10th

Not a whole lot today; we had to help with the primary program. I will be the piano player 🫪🫪🫪 , which is crazy because I don’t feel like I am the best piano player, but the lord is bringing back my skills when I need it, so it’s good!  I am the only one who plays the piano in our branch, so it is me or nothing.  Plus, I think it is good for the primary children to have an actual piano player instead of the audio version.  I have been practicing a lot.  The program will be a week from Sunday, and I am excited to hear all the Primary children. 

Oct 11th 

A normal Sunday, we watched General Conference because the session we downloaded was translated into Amharic! Which was awesome!  We helped the office elders with some work they needed, then went home because some of the 26 elders came up to stay with us in our apartment since they have to go to immigration tomorrow. 

Oct 12

Normal day, study, write, workout, play some frisbee, and then we have a FHE later tonight. Lowkey fireeeeee! I’m also getting a new suit 🤪. I’ve lost a lot of weight, and I need to look good.  So that is a reason to hope we do not get evacuated, as I was fit for it today, and it will be a week or two until he has it ready.  I am swimming in my old suit.

Eshi (which means ok in Amharic), that’s all from me this week! Not much really going on, but hopefully we are chilling and this week will be a good one! 

That’s all, folks.  Love from the Beautiful land of Ethiopia!

- Elder Frasier