Masaka.....I feel like it couldn't get anything better!

As we lose ourselves in the service of others we discover our own lives and our own happiness.  
Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Hey Everyone!

Wow, it has been an amazing change this week. I am sooo happy to be in my new area. Masaka really is amazing. I have never seen a more prepared area in our mission. I am blown away! Man, I just love my new area and companion! I feel like it couldn't get anything better!

My area is super great. We live close to the town and work pretty close to our home as well. Just a really humble area. It was nice to come here for the prices too! Everything is cheaper in the village. Like a lot. They don't have all the stuff like Kampala. They only have one real grocery store. So most purchases are just little shops. But its CHEAP! And I love that. Our house is fun. We live in a gated compound and it has two houses in it. My comp and I stay in one and Elder Randall and Elder Adu-Mensah from Ghana stay in the other. We spend a lot of time together as a 4some and I enjoy it a lot. My house is older and has been owned by the church for a long time. Missionaries have been destroying it for years haha. Even back in 2011 and all. Missionaries names are written on the wall. I take bucket baths like in Queen of Katwe. Its a big change from Ntinda! But super fun and I honestly just love it! 

Well, I got to the area on Wednesday night and just settled in. Thursday was our first day proselyting. My companion, Elder Kubheka, is from Durban, South Africa. He is on his 3rd transfer and is super powerful. He is a convert of a few years and is just a really calm and hard working missionary. We get along super duper well. I am actually grateful to have another african companion. I look forward to our time together.

Masaka is pretty village. It has a town and it can be pretty populated but we mostly proselyte in the outskirts. We need a truck just because the areas are far from the house. My companion and I actually work closer to our place. We work in Kijjabwemi and Kimaanya. They are really fruitful areas and we have a full teaching pool. Every day so far we have gone lesson to lesson and knocked out a full day without really stopping. Sunday was the best though. Most areas in Uganda have an attendance around 80 people. Masaka hit 143 this Sunday. We meet in an old office building in town near Ambiance Club. You could probably find it on google map. When I got to Sacrament, the building was mostly full. We had a large turn out. They even have a man called just to assign people seats because it gets so packed. I was just amazed. Even to now I really dont know how to describe it. This area is so amazing! It is quite obvious that it is Presidents favorite area in the mission and most missionaries too! My companion and I had 6 investigators at church! There are 8 missionaries in Masaka and between the 8 of us we had 26 investigators yesterday. Can you imagine!??! Branch business took about 20 minutes because they had so many callings to assign and confirmations to do. Sunday was so powerful.

My area is great. So great actually. We have 5 solid investigators ready for baptism. 3 are some younger kids of a member ranging from 9 to 15. The next is Timothy. He is 16 and just so humble. I never really take younger kids seriously but he is for sure different. He is amazing. The next is a woman named Gorette. Her brother is serving a mission and is a member. She loves the church. I actually called her out of the area book and she accepted us, fed us and came to church! She has accepted a baptism date too next month. All in all I can only expect miracles this transfer. My companion and I are hungry for the work. Sadly, Elder Kubhekas trainer was a pretty mean guy. He caused a lot of members and investigators grief... So on the upside when I came and was just a little friendly they were so accepting and love us now! 

Well, next week I will know the area and our investigators better and should give a better report. This is all I have so far. I just love this place to absolute death! I cant get over it. The mission is THE BEST! 

I really cant think of much more. Let me know if you have questions or concerns and I will answer them. Expect big miracles this transfer! We are gonna do WORK!!!!

I hope you have a good week! Do something fun to spice it up. Eat a good burger for me! 

Love you all!

Love,

Elder McLain

Life in Ntinda

Odong Sam and Odoch Christopher.
Both from the north. Both black as black paint. Sam is a recent convert of mine.
Hasn't missed church or institute once since he was baptized.
Love these guys!

 My shawarma plate

 My new scripture bag

Some members in Ntinda

Chillin with Elder Denison

Blessed Are The Poor

Hey everyone!

This week was great. It was my last week in the area of Ntinda. I am leaving the city and heading to the West! My new area is Masaka!!! It is right on the equator and seems like a great place. The branch is on fire with missionary work. I can't wait to work hard with Elder Kubheka!

Well, not a whole lot happened this week to report on. We did have one really fun experience I can talk about really quick. On Saturday we did a Mormon Helping Hands project! We went to Froebel Pre-School in Bukoto. It was a pretty basic project. It consisted of a lot of cleaning, weeding, fixing playground equipment and much more. It was so cool because it is in a more poor area and so a lot of slum kids were running up during the project and were so happy. The best part was that we had planned to cook some rice and beans for all the members that helped but then so many poor little kids were around we just rationed our servings and fed like 30 little kids. They just inhaled the food like little vacuums. It was so cool to see! I have a lot of pictures from the project I need to upload. I will be doing it next Monday though.. Sorry!

It was hinted early in the week that I would be transferred. I didn't know where but I knew I would. That was on my mind a lot of the week. I don't know if it was the same for you in your mission but transfers are exciting here and everyone anticipates them... So, that's one thing I remember. On Saturday morning I got the call that I would be serving in Masaka! That is about 3 hours west of Kampala and on the equator... Cool place and I cant wait! I will be with Elder Kubheka from South Africa... He is a great guy. Young on the mission so I will be the senior companion and district leader there. I look forward to it! 

I am sad to leave Ntinda. I have loved this place and the members so much! I have also learned so much here about loving your fellow man. Honestly, my love for those I am serving is out the roof right now. I can't really explain it. Just know that the U.S. is nothing like Uganda. It's not just anywhere that you can go up to a literal stranger rushing somewhere, stop them and carry a 10 minute conversation on how much they love God! Then you can even finish the conversation with a hug or something and be on your way. The people here are genuine and loving. I am in good hands.

I love you all. Congratulations to all of my friends who are graduating and getting mission calls. I am so proud of you guys. Stay strong and keep God's commandments.

God Speed,

Elder McLain

Handling persecution with patience and being blessed

We sure love our missionary. Even his short letters are great! 

Hey Everyone!

It was really great to call home yesterday. Its a good mark in my mission and gives me an added boost and enthusiasm. Thanks to my dad for putting in the work to make it happen!

There has been no electricity in town all day and I have very little time now. I hope that is okay seeing that I was able to talk to call home yesterday.

Well, as you know from yesterday, the work is going. I think I will stay in Ntinda again for another month and a half leaving me here 6 months. I will keep pluggin away here and doing the work! Its going well! 

I gave an update on the work sort of but I can give another fast one. First thing to note is our former Branch President went less-active due to him not being "upgraded" to Bishop when the branch became a ward. He was released and took his membership with him. It has been 11 weeks since he has come to church or even sniffed the Book of Mormon. We visit him on Saturday and just said hello. Yesterday I was in Sacrament and turned around to count the congregation and saw Brother Pariyo!!! He came to church! He quickly left after sacrament. I would like to think its because he was embarrassed more than anything. We will probably visit him tonight and say hello. We were happy with that! His inactivity issue is known around the stake and mission because of how crazy it is so that is a BIG accomplishment to get him to church! Aside from Brother Pariyo, we had 6 other less-active members come to church! With those we received 3 great referrals to teach! So this week we will capitalize on these opportunities and I will update you on them! 

Yesterday we were walking to church and this massive Westerner was walking down the road towards us. He was yelling and you could tell he was on something that made him feel like the man. He got to us and just said "Pretty Boy" and sent a huge mouthful of spit over me and my companion. Unfortunately the majority hit my companion... We kept walking and both wiped off our glasses... We walked next by a couple going to church and they turned to us and asked "Why didn't you beat him?" We both laughed a little and just continued. I was really grateful we handled it the way we did. There were 4 elders and plenty of man power to knock this crazy over and give him a beating. As I was in church I was reading some scripture and came across D&C 98 (or 99) and it talks about handling persecution with patience and being blessed. I thought about it and was happy that we set that example to that couple and to the countless other people who saw us get spit on. They noticed how we handled it and thats what matters. It makes me think that maybe we were given that opportunity to see what we would do or to show other people who we are and what we stand for. It turned into a great experience!

Again, it was so great to call home yesterday. I really enjoyed comparing our missions (with Dad and Tab) and seeing how they were actually so similar! 

That's about it for this week. I learned some good things this week even though 3 full days were spent inside on the couch due to being sick. I am better now and up on my medications. I am glad you are all doing well and I look forward to calling at Christmas. Just know that I am even better than I might have shown. I am the best I've ever been! 

Love you all!

Elder McLain

Helping Hands Service Day

My Mukwano

 Elder Denison

 Me and Elder Denison

 

Church

 Merry go round fun

Bakwano bange

 Me and Elder Denison walking the streets

 Our apartment

Uganda, My Home for Now

 Poolside

 The District

 Odongo Sam, one of my converts, showing us how to lift

 Sam in front of his house. He is from Kitgum. 

Known for some of the darkest people in the world!

 Me jumping some ditch

 Me jumping another ditch

Visiting a less active member named Mary. She was actually so excited!

We saw the blessings of hard work

Hey friends and family,

The weeks are getting too fast these days. I really feel like we don't have enough time in the week to do what we want to. It is both great but frustrating. It is hard to believe I have passed 7 months. I feel like I just got here.

My time in Ntinda is great. I have been here in the area for 4 months and believe I will be staying for 2 more. So with that plan in my head I am really thinking of what I need to do to survive here. The work needs to move forward! This week was super duper uper buper fast. Too fast.... We got a lot of great work done though. We even saw the results and blessings of the hard work with our attendance at church on Sunday!

So a little bit about the LESS ACTIVES. That is all that we have been doing these last few days. We were looking through some paper work as we have sort of adopted the responsibility of Ward Clerk do to our brother being less-active and came across some stats. Ntinda ward has 440 baptized members! That would be super cool except our sacrament attendance is usually around 80 to 90. So over 300 less-actives of some sort on our hands! When we found this out, we got approvals to focus our efforts only on them. This led to a lot of work! But the work has been amazing! So far, these last two weeks have probably been my favorite for my whole mission! We have started by getting active members in the area who have either helped missionaries before or know members in the area well. Let me remind you our area goes east out to Mbuya and Banda. North to the towns about 10 minutes of Gayaza. West to Bukoto and south to Nagulu area. So it is big... A lot of ground to cover but we have been doing well! We take our members out in the morning and they can usually show us 1 or 2 before lunch. After lunch we will go see more less active houses until about 6 then we will go teach our investigators from 6 to 9. 6 to 9 are golden hours. No work and yes time for missionaries.

Now for the investigators... Wowza, what a week for us. First things first, we have officially dropped Esther. :( That was a sad day. Esther was rekindled about 2 weeks ago and accepted a baptismal date of May 7th.. Yesterday. Last week she failed to come to church after a visit on Saturday and a verbal commitment. We meet with her maybe 3 times a week and she always accepts. Then when church comes around she never shows.. I don't know how well you know Progress Records but they are the records we use to track investigators progress. They have all the lessons missionaries can teach. This week we literally marked the last ones. Thats like 20 lessons! We contacted her in February and she still hasn't been baptized. So we decided yesterday after she didn't show for 3 weeks that we are dropping her until she comes to us again. That was a sad day! We also teach a brother named David. He is an older lad from Mutungo that works in our area. He is progressing well and has come to church ever since we started to teach. We tag teach him with Mutungo elders too. David is great and will be baptized in 2 weeks! Our last neat investigator is Patience and her FAMILY!!!!!! So an Elder here named Elder Le Cheminant has a friend serving in Germany. That friend is teaching a man who gave him a referral for someone in Uganda! What a coincidence! Elder Chem figured out she lives in Gayaza, our area. So we met them the other day and they are so great! We didn't teach them but we met them and will soon!

We met a lot of new less-active and inactive members this week. Man, it was so fun! I learned a lot of new area to cover as well. One of my favorites was Sister Mary. She is married and baptized in the church. There transition into the church was very hard for them. Her husband actually lost his good job because his boss hates Mormons. How a man can hate such a happy and helpful group of saints doesn't make much sense to me... but he does. So now her husband is out in the village and digging for income. They are great people but have had some struggles. They came to church on Sunday though! It was so great! We even had 4 other less-active people come to church! Our hard work paid off for sure.

As most of you have seen, hymns have become a big favorite for me on my mission. I find myself jut reading the hymn book a lot in my free time. This week I was thinking about Joseph Smith and his moments in Carthage Jail. I know some of the final things heard among them were the words to A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. I read the words to the song this week and they are so great. I will attach them below. All verses included because all verses are great:

1. 1. A poor, wayfaring Man of grief
   Hath often crossed me on my way,
   Who sued so humbly for relief
   That I could never answer nay.
   I had not pow'r to ask his name,
   Whereto he went, or whence he came;
   Yet there was something in his eye
   That won my love; I knew not why.
2. 2. Once, when my scanty meal was spread,
   He entered; not a word he spake,
   Just perishing for want of bread.
   I gave him all; he blessed it, brake,
   And ate, but gave me part again.
   Mine was an angel's portion then,
   For while I fed with eager haste,
   The crust was manna to my taste.
3. 3. I spied him where a fountain burst
   Clear from the rock; his strength was gone.
   The heedless water mocked his thirst;
   He heard it, saw it hurrying on.
   I ran and raised the suff'rer up;
   Thrice from the stream he drained my cup,
   Dipped and returned it running o'er;
   I drank and never thirsted more.
4. 4. 'Twas night; the floods were out; it blew
   A winter hurricane aloof.
   I heard his voice abroad and flew
   To bid him welcome to my roof.
   I warmed and clothed and cheered my guest
   And laid him on my couch to rest,
   Then made the earth my bed and seemed
   In Eden's garden while I dreamed.
5. 5. Stript, wounded, beaten nigh to death,
   I found him by the highway side.
   I roused his pulse, brought back his breath,
   Revived his spirit, and supplied
   Wine, oil, refreshment--he was healed.
   I had myself a wound concealed,
   But from that hour forgot the smart,
   And peace bound up my broken heart.
6. 6. In pris'n I saw him next, condemned
   To meet a traitor's doom at morn.
   The tide of lying tongues I stemmed,
   And honored him 'mid shame and scorn.
   My friendship's utmost zeal to try,
   He asked if I for him would die.
   The flesh was weak; my blood ran chill,
   But my free spirit cried, "I will!"
7. 7. Then in a moment to my view
   The stranger started from disguise.
   The tokens in his hands I knew;
   The Savior stood before mine eyes.
   He spake, and my poor name he named,
   "Of me thou hast not been ashamed.
   These deeds shall thy memorial be;
   Fear not, thou didst them unto me.
8. Man, powerful lyrics. Verse 7 wraps it all up well. Let us all imagine our friends and neighbors as this person did. We can all help and change someones life. Remember, in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me! 
9. Have a great week everyone. Read the Book of Mormon and pray as a family!
10. I love you all.

Love,

Elder McLain

First time in the real bush!

Hello!

Well, this week was great! It was a very normal and fun week. I dunno it was most certainly the fastest week of my mission so far. To be honest when I look back on it I don't even feel like this week happened and can hardly remember any of it. I will do my best to go back and remember. 

This week was just full of a ton of member visiting. We are focusing more on members and their relationships with missionaries so we spent most of our time moving from member to member visiting them. It was super fun and a lot of good came from it. We found out many important things for the work as well as a lot of less actives and some few investigators. We had one fun morning on Saturday. We met our ward mission leader at the church for a meeting and then after found bishop. He gave us a ride to his place just north east of Gayaza. That is far. We were in Kabbubu. Man it was my first time to be in the real bush and it was cool! There we just ate lunch at the bishops because his family was all away and we kept him company. He took us to see a few members around and then we headed back. That was the full day and it was way fun.

Well, I don't have a ton of time this week as well and need to write more. So I am gonna wrap up. Sorry it's short. I will prepare a better one for next week. 

Love you all!

Elder McLain