Colby in Kampala: Ethiopia is cold!

Hey everyone!

Hello again from freezing Ethiopia. I want to start this week's letter by encouraging every living thing to do some real research on Ethiopia and learn what it is really like here! At least for me and what I can remember, when we would talk about Ethiopia back home we would talk like it is the most stereotypical African country with black people and a hot sun and no food. WELL...I was super wrong! This place is far from that! Ethiopia is developing well, there is good food AND it is freezing cold! This week it hailed a few times and I haven't gone outside without a sweater or jacket in two weeks!

Hmmmm this week was pretty normal. Sadly we didn't get to spend a lot of time in our area for a few reasons. Monday we just finished emailing and went to Branch President's house to meet his family. He is a great guy named President Desta. He works for the Police here and is pretty high up. He can be a bit straight forward and harsh sometimes but he does a great job. His family is so awesome and loving. His wife made us a great meal of Injera and shiro. They have two kids who are so nice as well. I love their family. Tuesday we saw a few investigators. We have a few right now but to be honest we dont really have any strong investigators progressing right now. We met with Ayu. He is very heavily orthodox. He told us he doesn't want to join our church but he wants to meet with us every now and then to keep him "spiritually in touch"... Hmmm. Anyways, we are still just meeting him and sharing mostly from the Book of Mormon in hopes he gains a testimony of it. He is a nice guy. The other investigator we saw is named Nardos. She is a younger lady. Super polite and speaks very good English. We had a great lesson with her filled with the Spirit. I can promise she felt the Spirit and loved it. Later that night she texted us and simply said she is content with Orthodox and doesn't want to meet anymore... Bummer. So that is honestly all for right now. Wednesday-Friday were spent in Meganagna area with Finding and District Meetings. I fell sick on Saturday. I got a pretty decent cold/flu thing and had a bad sore throat. That kept us in most of Saturday and even Sunday we weren't able to attend church. That was a bummer. Especially when you are serving in a branch that literally relies on the missionaries. We play an active role in the branch and missing church is hard for them. I think all went well though. We had no investigators at church and attendance was 30 with about 12 native Ethiopians and the rest American Embassy families.

Ethiopia is doing okay. It is improving from last year. Last year the country had something like 11 or so baptisms. This year there are for sure more but along with that many are falling less active. We are just working to reactivate everyone right now.

On Wednesday night i was invited to the Francom's house for dinner. They are an Embassy family. Let me tell you how cool it was. First, they live in the nicest house I have seen in my life. 6 story mansion outside of Addis Ababa. They cooked for us mexican food. It was my first time seeing food like this in a year. On top of that, all the food is imported from the US so I ATE TOSTIDOS HINT OF LIME CHIPS!!! That was insane. SOOOO awesome! Another cool thing that happened there. They invited a returned missionary named Omat. He served in Manchester England. I talked with him for a while and found out that he knows my uncle!! He served under the Liptrott's brother in an area near them but he said for sure he knows Daniel and met him! He is the one in the picture I uploaded to Google Drive.

As of now we are just doing a lot of street contacting. There are two difficulties in street contacting though. About 90% of the people you contact do not speak any English. Ethiopians are funny with culture. They see accepting English as forsaking culture so people quite literally try not to learn the language. So 1, most everyone only speaks Amharic. And 2, people here are very honest and straight forward. They do not mind one bit ignoring you or sticking a hand in your face to say they are not interested. Now, the one upside of that is when people actually stop, they will be genuine investigators, not fake investigators. You can usually go about 2 hours of street contacting and talk to maybe 5 people. We don't really knock doors. Missionaries for years have seen no success with that and also it can be a bit dangerous when you generally are not wanted in a country. The other day we entered in to a member's house to visit and a man came out with a megaphone and was literally trying to cast us out as if we were evil spirits. So entering in to compounds or houses is not the best thing.

The Ethiopian culture is extremely touchy. Most everyone hugs on greeting or shakes hands followed with a should and cheek touch. It can be sort of weird as a missionary pretty much kissing girls on the cheek all the time but I love the culture and it can be fun. ha!

The Harlines are our senior couple. They are fun people. They live about an hour from us. It's not that far but this is a crazy city so it takes a while to go short distances. They are working in the office. Elder Harline is a really outgoing guy and is good to serve under. Sister Harline is so nice. They take care of us very well here. The Elder they mentioned is Elder Chandler. He has an amazing story! There are currently 4 native Ethiopians who have been reassigned to serve here. Right now my companion was raised far from Addis Ababa but President told him he could one day go visit his family. Amazing is right!

Well, I hope my letter is good. I am still getting caught in frequent rain and hail storms. Its cold! Right now I am also on an exchange in Debre Zeit, the town where Aunt Julie and Sam were! That's a crazy thought. It is a great place with a beautiful chapel. Maybe try to google Debre Zeit LDS Chapel. You might find some crazy false doctrine in the process. Well, all is well here. Just adjusting fine and working to be better.

Have a good week everyone!

Love,

Elder McLain