This week was great. We had exchanges in Kwekwe this week which was fun. And bonus, we got first class seats on the bus 😉

Gracious and Vimbai were baptized on Saturday!! It was so great. They were so excited they could hardly talk!

This week Malven took us to see Pauls Mashingaidze. The other day he just walked up to Malven and told him that he was going to come to church! So we went to visit him, and wow that baba is powerful. He is basically Joseph Smith. So confused about all the different churches and all the prophets everywhere and really just wants to know which one is the right church! We were so happy when we saw him walk into church. We saw him after and he loved church! He can’t wait to get his own copy of the Book of Mormon. It is so great how much he wants to learn and how open and ready his heart is!

I’ve been reading in 2 Nephi chapter 9 this week and I love verse 18: “But, behold, the righteous, the saints of the Holy One of Israel, they who have believed in the Holy One of Israel, they who have endured the crosses of the world, and despised the shame of it, they shall inherit the kingdom of God, which was prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and their joy shall be full forever.” How amazing! His path is narrow, but it is straight and it is the only one that leads to the kingdom of God prepared for us!

Sorry no pics today 😦 Bad internet cafe.. Will send extra next week!

Love you all!

Sister Burt

This week was great! We stayed busy, preparing people for baptism and what not.

We have been visiting Gracious and Vimbai, sisters who have been coming to church for over 6 months and have just been waiting to be baptized! I have never taught someone with such a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and of the living prophet already before! They are so amazing. And Vimbai, who just turned 19, wants nothing else but to be a missionary!! We have just grown to love those 2 so much and are so excited for their baptism!!

Sister Jones, Malven, and me, with Gracious and Vimbai!:

Panichi and Hilda’s baptism was so great. Chipo was even baptized too! She was baptized back in 2001 but her records got lost, so she ended up having to be re-baptized. Everyone was confirmed on Sunday and they gave Panichi the Aaronic Priesthood after church!

We had a cool experience this week. One of the days, Malven was in town so we were alone for the day and had to find a member’s house to see their non-member daughter. We had only been to their house once on the very first day we were in Mkoba, so we had no idea where the house was, but we decided to just walk around and see if we could find it. We felt like Nephi in 1 Nephi 4:6. We walked for a while in places that we had never even seen before, but before we knew it, we had found the house! There is no doubt that it was the spirit leading us to their house and telling us which way to turn on each road.

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

Sister Burt

Pics:

We got all of allotment in $2 bond notes. Powerful.

Cake and the gospel… daily visits

This week was good. Although we were kind of sad we had to leave our area for a few days to go to Harare for exchanges, we had a good time and learned a lot. We had to stay an extra day last minute, so we ended up getting to spend the night with Sister Bergen and Sister Erickson and we made brownies and had a party. It was so much fun.

At church, they made last minute plan changes and Hilda and Panichi (Punish) were married yesterday afternoon! It was so great though. Next step, baptism!!

We visited a referral we got from a member, their maid, Patty, who has been coming to church with them for many months! She enjoys church and wants to be baptized! The challenge that we face with Patty is that she is deaf. She doesn’t know sign language, so the only way she can understand people is by reading their lips in Shona, or by reading. She is the sweetest thing though and, even though it might be challenging, is willing to learn!

I love this work so much and especially how much of it there is to do here. It is so wonderful to watch people grow closer to Christ as they learn more and understand about His gospel! There is truly no greater joy than that which comes from missionary work!!

Love you all.

Sister Burt

Surprise!! We got transferred Monday night, we got a call from the Zone Leaders saying that we would be working in Mkoba for the rest of the transfer. Whitewashing twice in one transfer! So on Wednesday they took us to our new area. But can I just say that I LOVE Mkoba!!! It has been quite some time that they have gone in Mkoba 5th branch without missionaries before us, and it has always been an elders area, and we are loving it!! I have LOVED being back in a more ghetto area, taking kombis every day, all the fruit trees, being offered coke or mazoe in EVERY house, roasted maize being sold on the sides of the streets, and there are donkeys everywhere here haha!

This is what it feels like being a missionary in Zimbabwe 🙂 There is SO much work to do in this branch! It is amazing!! We have a powerful senior companion, a member named Malven, who is 25 years old and is about to send in his mission papers!! So cool. He is the branch clerk and the branch mission leader and is so great. He knows the area and all the members, non-members, less-actives, and investigators! There are so many people here ready for baptism and who have been coming to church, they have just been waiting for us! The members are so happy and have given us the warmest welcome. There hasn’t been a single day in the area since we have gotten to Mkoba that we have come home empty handed haha. Day 1 we got TONS of grapes and pomegranates aka chibage chi varungu (white people maize haha), Day 2 we got a huge bag of mangoes and a WHOLE CHICKEN from Sister Sibanda… I LOVE that woman haha she is hilarious and just powerful.

Day 3 Sister Jones got a picture from one of our investigators they had hanging in their home! And day 4 we got more mangoes!!! The branch president is great too. President Magaya! We visited him and his family the other night and we ate popcorn while he told us crazy mission stories from his mission in Johannesburg haha! I’m also super happy because there is a keyboard in the chapel we attend, so I get to play in sacrament meeting!

There are so many people here just waiting to be baptized! There has been so many people to see that we haven’t even been able to see nearly all of them! One powerful couple I am so happy and excited for is Punnish and Hilda! They stay with a member and Hilda has been coming to church for a little over a month and wants to be baptized! We started teaching the two of them but we do have to have someone to translate because they don’t understand english much at all. Before either of them are baptized, they have to have a marriage license and when we brought it up, they accpeted it just like that!!! They are just so ready and excited to be baptized! So now we have their marriage and baptism lined up for the 21 of January!! We are so excited for them!! 🙂 The love I have for the people here in Mkoba 5 already is crazy. We have seen so many miracles in such a few amount of days. Some other investigators we have are the Zhwawu’s! Elizabeth and Priscilla.

They live right across from the chapel and Elizabeth is in a wheelchair so we told them we would come pick them up for church on Sunday. We got there early and they sent the son or someone our to tell us they would meet us there. When things like that happen, that usually means, they won’t be coming. So we went to church a bit disappointed, but oh well. Then, before sacrament meeting started, while we were talking to President Magaya, they came saying a lady needed help getting in with a wheelchair because the door was jammed shut and they couldn’t fit it in the one door. So we went out with them and there they were!! We were SO happy!!! They were able to get her inside thankfully and when we visited them after church they said the loved it!! They were super excited about it and even came home with a nice stack of books the branch gave them! So powerful. We were sad to find out the Priscilla stays in SA tho and won’t be here for long 😦 it’s ok tho! she will go back home and be taught with her husband and be baptized some day 🙂

We saw a guy named Glorious who just stays by our apartment and wanted us to visit him.. he wouldn’t tell us which church he goes to… but turns out we are pretty positive he is some kind of prophet hahaha we went to teach him and he started opening the bible basically trying to prove the restoration wrong then he ended up prophesying about our lives and it was weird. When he started prophesying about me, he said it was the first time in his life ever getting something wrong about someone! lol I guess I just have hard vibes to read. He told us about how the day he saw us, God told him to talk to us because there was something he had to learn from us and something we had to learn from him…. but he promised that next time we come, he would be quiet and let us teach him hahahaha.

Also we have pets in the house now! Haha shhhh…. They are HUGE cockroaches, like nothing you’ve ever seen before that like to chill around our house. We have Steven, Henry, Bertha and Joy. Steven is dead… he got killed be the washing buckets and the ants took him away. Also we have a lizard named Randall.

This week has been an answer to prayers. I have a testimony of this gospel and have seen so many amazing miracles happen because of it!! And there is nothing that brings me more joy than to see God’s children find the gospel!

I love you all!

Sister Burt

This week was a pretty adventurous week.

First of all… Sunday afternoon will probably go down in history lol. Somehow after church, we ended up with lunch/dinner appointments for the rest of the day!! I’ve never eaten so much in one day in my life. We went to 3 different houses, one right after the other, each with LOTS of NICE nice food AND dessert. YOH! I still don’t know how I made it the whole night without getting sick. I probably gained around 5 kg though haha.

On Saturday, we had just left the apartment to go to an appointment about a 30- 40 minute walk away, when it started to POUR rain! It was only a matter of seconds before there were huge orange rivers splashing down the sides of the roads! I was excited for the adventure and an adventure is was! We had walked through many ankle-high rivers and had dripping dresses and hair by the time we finally got out of it. It was a great adventure.

We finally got to see George again! He has been busy moving his family to Gweru and stuff. When we were with him, he was like hey do you want to talk to Dube? And he just called his uncle and we got to talk to Elder Dube! Haha pretty cool!

This week we found the Steven family! Brother Steven is a super spiritual man and was even kicked out of his house at the age of 17 for “following Jesus Christ.” He is pretty skeptical about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and was asking about scriptures from the bible about the coming forth of Joseph Smith, but at the same time he seems to have a very willing heart and open mind. We have been teaching about the Book of Mormon a lot and will continue to use it as our main tool to help him receive an answer to his  prayers! He is very interested tho and has lots of questions but wants to be sure for himself, through prayer, that our message is true. It might take some time, but I see the Steven family entering the waters of baptism!!

I love Alma 37:44-47 that talks about giving heed to the word of Christ. And if we do so, just like Lehi and his family followed the Liahona, we will be lead to wonderful places!!  All we have to do is look to God and live!! Let’s look to God and live through this new year and never get distracted because of the easiness of the path!

I love you all!! Happy New Year!!

Sister Burt

Pic: At the Govere’s house for lunch! The beginning of a long and endless food journey…