Villages & Baptisms
This week was so lit! Once again I don't have much time due to busy weekends but I'll try to put everything inside the email!
Last p day was lit! We all went and bought some chicken sausages… aka hotdogs and went to the beach and crossed the river in a canoe to a small island and roasted some hotdogs and put on bread with some ketchup. We enjoyed it, many random boys were there and we all had a great time together dancing and eating some nice dogs!
Wednesday we had a fun day! Elder and Sister Taggart came over to Matru and they wanted to go around with us and visit inactive members. We planned the visits with president munda our branch president that Sunday before and he wanted to go visit many people! We were very excited for Wednesday! As Wednesday came we all met at the church and divided into two teams and left. We got lucky and went with Elder Taggart and President Munda to a far village to a very solid member who comes every week! This member is an old pa and he walks a very long distance every sunday! He is always the first or second man there. After seeing what he does it made me think of how blessed we are to have a bike and live so close to the church. The first village we went and stopped at was President Munda's home village, Korgumahun, everyone just lived in mud huts and there were maybe 1 or 2 places where you could buy stuff from. Everywhere you looked there were big 55 gallon drums sitting on top of big fires so they can make this stuff called palm oil, which they love to cook with here. The second village was called Mogboda. This was where the member stayed. It was a little bigger than the first village but not much. The village was so beautiful and nice right next to the river. It always impresses me that people live there, first we were driving through the jungle and then randomly you find houses made out of mud. It was definitely a dream come true to me! I have been telling Hatch I wanna go see the villages but that's exactly what they told us not to do just because we want to establish the church better before we spread but luckily we got to go visit some members in their own villages 😜
Thursday had an exchange with Hatch. I think that might be our last one… this week is transfers and we don't know who will go but we know 2 of us will go so it's scary! We had a good time on the exchange, we went and did some of his baptism interviews. I got to interview the candidates what was pretty fun. We also had some good lessons with some of their investigators, one lesson really stood out to me the most. We arrived at the man's house and Elder Hatch asked how many wives he had, don't really know how that started but it did lol, and the guy told us he has 5 wives 🤣🙃 he told us here in Africa if you have a lot of money you can have as many wives as you want! So we continued the lesson and taught the ten commandments and at the end of the lessin he said he feels he needs some repenting to do lol
Saturday we had baptisms!! I love baptism Saturdays! I swear they are the best Saturdays ever! The baptism was one of the smoothest baptisms I have ever had on my mission! It was just such a dream come true! We arrived at the church and filled the font with water, all of our baptism candidates came at 9 and were sitting down in their whites before 10, and MANY members AND investigators came and witnessed the baptism with us! It was sure an answer to my prayer and I have felt so much joy in baptisms just because of how stressful they can be! The following Sunday we confirmed all the candidates and now we can say they are the newest members here in Mattru Jong. The opening Hymn we sung at the baptism was hymn #2 The Spirit of God, wow after that song I was so filled with the spirit. I have been reading a book called Saints, inside saints it talks a lot about how the church was started and a lot of Joseph Smith. One chapter in there even talks about this hymn. They sang the hymn at the Kirtland Temple dedication and man I felt like I was there after singing it for the baptism! The Spirit is so amazing! The church is true!!
Okay im almost done I promise 😅
Sunday fundayyy! Church was amazing on Sunday! When all 4 of us arrived here in Mattru Jong almost 12 weeks ago I noticed as the young men would pass the sacrament we would barely finish 2 trays of water. Thus last Sunday we finished ALL 3 trays of water and they even went back for more! I sure have seen the church grow here in mattru jong and I am so blessed to be a part of it! Elder Mpofu and I set a goal of 30 people coming to church, persisting of people who were baptized in the last year and investigators. We missed our goal by 3 people 🥲 (27/30) as sad as I was I was also filled with an overload of joy because of how many old members who were inactive came! Nothing is more sweeter than when you see investigators, recent converts, and old converts who went inactive all at church the same Sunday!
Now for one more silly experience I forgot to mention within the email. As you all knowwww ;)) Saturday was Salones independence day! The whole city has a big activity which they can call “sporte” where everyone within the city can go to one big open field and run races, play tug of war, and other small activities. Well after the baptism me and Elder Odonokwu decided we needed to go check this out because none of the people were home. We went there and they began the final race where the women will relay about 4 laps and then eventually lead into the men. The teams are divided into the section where you live within the town and you are given a color. Well as the black team was leading the race a person supporting the yellow team tripped the black team's runner… everyone blew up and started to fight each other! Many people even started to run by their runner to protect them from anyone trying to delay them in the race. After maybe 2 minutes everyone was fighting and running away! All the kids were grabbing my arms and trying to pull me saying “Bradshaw run they will hurt you!” But me and Elder Odonokwu stood strong and just walked around watching many people fight. We even watched people throw stones 😬 at the end of the night a lot of the people were getting shipped of on a motorbike with a police man hehe. All was well and we returned back to the apartment safe and sound.
Sure hope yall enjoy the email!! Sure miss and love yall! I hope everyone is doing great! Lmk if ya need anything! Go b e ponda way:)
Elder Bradshaw 🇸🇱
Pics
- me n Odonokwu at sports 🎭
- the baptism candidates and the missionaires;)🥼
- Mattru Jong Branch ❤️
- me n Hatch 🛖
- us at the beautiful village next to the river 🏞
- a pumwi with the pikin den 🥰🥰🥰🥰😘
