Colby in Kampala: A visit to Portuguese Bridge and Debre Zeit

Hey Everyone!

We had a good week and a lot of fun. Ethiopia is a really fun place. I am enjoying it a lot here and adjusting well. Right now I feel like I have everything figured out finally and I am settled in good. Yeah, Ethiopia is beautiful. It is really green right now. That little girl is our District Presidents daughter. She is Ethiopian! Thats how light they are.

We found quite a bit of success and even had a few miracles. I am really happy with how the week went. All is well here. Not a ton happened. We did exchanges in Debre Zeit, that was fun and I learned a lot. On P-Day today we went to Portuguese Bridge. It was a really scenic place with animals like Baboons and stuff going around. Cool place! My companion and I are doing well. He is Elder Munsey from San Diego. Imagine Ryan, my cousin, as a missionary. They are the same exact person. We are getting along well. He doesn't really know the language and so we struggle with Amharic together but he knows enough. I am learning slowly but surely. Its a fun language and culture.

Anyways, this week some cool things happened. Addis is a really cool city because it is decently developed and almost feels like a state side city sometimes. Minus the terrible traffic laws, bad roads, human feces on the sidewalk and Amharic written everywhere. Haha. This week a cool event that took place was some International (maybe continent wide) road biking race. They blocked off all of the roads and we were able to see teams from the whole continent flying through the streets of Addis. It was fun to watch. I am not sure what the race was but maybe you could look in to it!

We got some nice foods. We were fed by a recent convert some delicious food almost to the point of throwing up! Hahah. Also, the Moores, an Embassy family, gave us a ton of pasta and stuff from the US. Trader Joes actually. It was delicious. We still have quite a bit. So good!

We found some really nice investigators this week. A few seem very promising. It is good to get some investigators because before this week we had zero. We are still doing a lot of less active work but we had a few people come to us. The first is named Tesfaye. He is a Pastor for the Red Cross Church in Saris. We were walking past his work one day and he approached us with some fire. He actually wanted to confound us a little but we just calmly answered. We set a time to meet with him and later that week he came through to the church. As we met he quickly changed his attitude and the lesson was incredibly spiritual. Long story short by the end of the lesson he was jumping up and down in his chair and telling us he knew he had been wrong. He literally bore his testimony on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and thanked God in his prayer that Christ's apostles restored the Priesthood to Joseph Smith. It was soooo awesome! He couldn't thank us enough. He is a great guy. The other is a family of 4. The parents are Abul and Weynshet. They have a 13 year old and 8 year old, both boys, and are pregnant with a 3rd. Their lesson was extremely spiritual. They found a pass along card a long time back and just decided to call the other day. When we talked about eternal families it led in to the Plan of Salvation. As we explained that the Fall of Adam and Eve was not a curse but a part of Gods plan, Weynshet told us that she completely agreed and now the Plan made so much more sense. They loved the lesson and love the church. We are praying for all of them right now and hope they can avoid outer influence and come unto Christ.

Right now things are going great. Satan is working hard against us in a way. We have had a few intense scares over the last week but we have come together as a district and are fasting and praying to over come it. And we are. I am doing a lot better every day and am liking the work a lot more. Thanks for the email this week dad. I am glad all is well at home. Have a great week.

Love you so much!

Elder McLain