Hello my loved ones!

This week was very interesting, but ended great with Gibson’s baptism on Saturday! He is very powerful and is excited to be part of the church and learn more! He even brought his girlfriend to church yesterday, so we are excited to meet with her this week.

It was very rainy during the week and we are on day 8 without electricity. It could be up to months without it, but I’m hoping for the best! They hooked up a generator on Thursday, which didn’t do much because all it could really power were the lights, but it broke on Friday haha. We might have to move to another house until the power comes back, but we will see what happens!

It is the beginning of a new transfer and me and my trainer are staying in both of our areas still attending our 2 wards! It is sad with Sister Chivasa going home, but we are excited to have the new missionary that Sister Bergen will be training!

I love 3 Nephi 12:16 that says “Therefore let your light so shine before this people, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” I also love what President Monson tells us: “Opportunities to shine surround us each day.” How true that is! There are so many opportunities for each of us to “shine” and to be examples to those around us! Be happy and serve others! You never know whose day you might make or whose life you might change.

I love sharing the gospel every day! What an amazing opportunity is has given me to shine!

I love you all! Have a great week and take every opportunity to shine.

Sister Burt

Hello everyone, it’s me again!

It was another great week here in Zimbabwe!

On Tuesday we had a zone meeting in which I gave the spiritual thought on Ether 2:25 where the Lord is preparing the Brother of Jared to cross the waters in the vessels: “And behold, I prepare you against these things; for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come.” I related it to life and how we can’t get through life and all the challenges we face without God. He will prepare us for whatever is coming our way and He has a plan for each and every one of us. This is His plan, and He has a Way. Then I also had to bare my testimony at the end since it was my first one. But it was great to be with the zone and it’s fun to get to know everyone better! They are great. After zone meeting, my comp and I went to an area we had never been before to try and find some new people to teach. We contacted like crazy that day!! On Wednesday during my personal study, I was reading a conference talk from Jeffrey R Holland from April 2015 and he says “Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, suffered, died, and rose from death in order that He could… grasp us as we fall, hold us with His might, and through our obedience to His commandments, lift us to eternal life.” It is an amazing talk. I highly suggest that you go read it! I love studying and learning more about the Atonement. I have a very strong testimony about the Atonement and know that through it we can be cleansed from our sins and live with our loving God and Saviour forever and that we are strengthened through Him. We can do things that would be mortally impossible without the Atonement. I also love Elder Holland’s testimony, especially about the Atonement. You can feel the power when he speaks about it.

We did have some sad incidences this past week. We went to visit Mai Lisa this week and her father-in-law told us we were wasting our time and all this stuff, and she told us that she couldn’t join the church. So we talked to her and just bore our testimonies and let her know that we love her and are always there for her. It has been hard to find and keep progressing investigators… It can be discouraging sometimes, but we can’t stay down about it forever! There are people out there somewhere just waiting for us!! If you watch The Errand of Angels and watch the scene where they are sitting on the steps in the rain with their umbrellas after a hard day of being rejected, that’s exactly how it feels sometimes haha. Me and my comp had a few exchanges exactly like that on Thursday. But we found another investigator named Gibson who says he is very interested and wants to be baptized, so we are praying for the best with him!

Brother Madondo is doing well though! His wife and her family agreed to letting them stay together and get married, he just has to pay lebola… $300. But he’s getting the money and they’ll start announcing it in church hopefully this week so he’ll be able baptized in 3 weeks!

Things are going well! We had a fun activity this morning with the zone, we went golfing and had pizza and cake with a couple of members here who teach golf! We have fun 🙂

I love you all and love hearing from everyone! Missionary work is great!
Have a wonderful week

Sister Burt

(email dated March 7, 2016)

Hello! Another week has come and gone by so fast!

So my name has changed from Sister Burt to Sister But here… for some reason R’s are silent here sometimes, so when people read my name, all the little kids laugh haha. They get it a little better after I say it. I think it’s funny
This week it rained a LOT! So it was hard to contact and stuff because it’s pouring and muddy and people go inside, but it was ok! Another exciting thing this week was electricity…. we didn’t have any for 3 days straight then it came back off and on, but it has been more likely not to have power than to have any haha thank goodness for my super flashlight! I’ve never been more grateful for a flashlight haha. This week was great though and I have been thoroughly enjoying personal and companionship study! It is so fun to search the scriptures for answers to questions!! I have learned a lot and noticed a lot of things I never noticed before about the scriptures! It is so much fun!!

There were a few baptisms this weekend which ended up being pretty interesting… out of the 6 people who got baptized, the only ones who didn’t have to go down more than once and ended up literally in tears, were the last 2 guys who were so late that we had already done the closing things after the baptisms. So it was interesting! But good.

Brother Madondo is doing well and wants to be baptized asap, so hopefully things can get worked out with his wife!! And Mia Lisa told us yesterday and told us that her husband doesn’t want her to join the church because he doesn’t like it, so we’ll visit her again this week and see what’s going on. Other than that, we’re continuing to try and find people who want to learn, which has been hard, but they are out there somewhere!

Thanks for all of your examples and kind words! I love you all!

Sister Burt

Hello everyone! (Email dated Monday, February 29, 2016)

This week was a good one! I’m adjusting to Zimbabwe life more and more every day!

It rained this week and one day when we got home, it looked like we had just gone swimming! And my scriptures suffered from it too, but they’ve dried out and I can still read them!

I was fed a lot of sadsa this week… One too many times in a day on Friday… It seems like the more I eat it, the more I don’t like it, but I’m sure that will change soon as I’ll be fed much more in the future! And they eat everything with their hands here so that’s a fun change haha. I ate madora for the first time! And for those of you who don’t know what that is… they are caterpillars! Not bad actually! I even ate more than one.

Our branch got split into two and now one of our areas is in one branch and the other is in the other branch, so we get to have 6 hour church every Sunday! What better way to keep the Sabbath Day holy? 🙂 But we had 2 powerful investigators come to church this week, Brother Madondo and Mai Lisa (one in each ward) so that was super exciting! We’ve been having a hard time finding people who aren’t jokers and who are ready to accept the gospel, so we’re praying for these investigators a lot!

We had some awesome lessons this week with Lina, a member from the area. She is working on her mission papers right now! It’s cool to have her in lessons with us because she is able to explain things that they don’t understand in Shona so they can understand it better.

Everything else is great here in Kuwadzana!

Thanks for your wonderful examples 🙂 I love you all

Sister Burt

PICTURED: Magan (Sister Burt) in the background and members of the newly formed branch in Zimbabwe. (The tall one that looks like she could be from Idaho.)

On Magan’s first Sunday in Zimbabwe, the Branch she was assigned to was split. The LDS Newsroom Reported on the “The Harare Zimbabwe Marimba Park Stake is growing. On 21 February a new branch was created, the eighth unit in the stake. It is called the Kuwadzana Third Branch. The creation of this branch brings relief to members who were walking long distances to come to the chapel.” READ ARTICLE HERE.

Hello all! I am in Zimbabwe and slowly adjusting to the culture and missionary life! The flight was good, but it was hard to say goodbye to everyone. 

The first 2 days of being here, we got pulled over because of the white people haha. I;m the only white person anywhere so everyone whistles and talks to me and tells me they love me and even take pictures of and with me. I live in a nice house with lots of mosquitoes and the water situation is rough, but I’m surviving! Me and my comp, Sister Kapinga, take a Kombi to the area every day. I’ve already learned how to greet people and invite them to church in Shona! They think it’s great that I can speak it. 

As far as missionary work, everyone here will listen to what we have to say and they’ll tell us that they’ll go to church, but they aren’t serious about it. We have one investigator who has a baptismal date, he just has to get legally married! So hopefully things will get worked out quickly there! We have another investigator, Properly, who reads the pamphlets we give him, but when I say read, I mean READ. He reads every word and underlines every little word or phrase that he doesn’t understand and he asks questions about every little thing there is to ask a question about! It’s fun, but challenging to teach him and we all learn a lot from each other so it is good! 

I’m learning to love it over here! I love missionary work and I just want to tell everyone I see about the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ! It is so wonderful. 

I love you all

Sister Burt

  Magan arrived in Harare, Zimbabwe Tuesday, February 16 where she was met by President and Sister Mkhabela. She was assigned to serve with Sister Kapinga in the Kuwadzana area of Harare.

Kuwadzana is located on the south western end of Harare the capital city. It lies just south of the Bulawayo road highway. The location is about 11 Kilometres from the Central Business District of Harare.

Magan answered a few questions that helped us fill in the blanks from her awesome emails.

Did you sleep well last night? 

Slept great last night!! My companion, Sister Ndhlovu has a cold so it forced everyone to not wake up at 5 am! So it was good 🙂

How is your day broken up?

It’s crazy. Basically breakfast at 7, class and teach “investigator” until lunch at 12:30, study time then sport and shower time until dinner, then more class and teach other “investigator until snack time at 9 then get ready for bed! 

Do you go to a ward with members in Johannesburg or is your MTC group a branch?

We just have church here with all 26 of us missionaries and President and Sister Ashton! Last Sunday was so cool. It was the most powerful fast and testimony meeting I have ever been in.

Where are the missionaries going to serve that you work with in the MTC and where are they from?

There are 11 going to Zim. I think and there are 6 african sisters here total, some going to Kenya and are from Kenya, and 4 American sisters. Other than that I think everyone is from South Africa or Zimbabwe or Kenya.

If you have any questions for Sister Burt, click on this post and write them in the Comments section.

 The MTC has been so great. Like I wouldn’t mind staying longer! Fast and Testimony meeting here was powerful. There are only 26 missionaries total, so we have all made great friends. It’s great to have such a good relationship with President and Sister Anderson as well. They are like our Grandparents.

 

During sport time I go out and play volleyball with the elders and a couple sisters come too but I actually do good! haha all of them want me to be on their team and they all call my name to whole time which I love to hear them say in their accents. It’s like British and Austrailian mixed kind of.

I just love it here so much!! The people are so wonderful and I love them all!!! It’s been so fun for me to make new friends. (WHAT? Magan having fun and actually making lots of friends?? I know) I’ve made so many great friendships with everyone. Not sure what it is, but I’ve been way more outgoing than I have ever been and it’s made me progress and have such a great time.