Found my friend again!

Hey guys!

Yew it was a fast week. And a blur of a week. I don't remember much but I can remember that the week was productive and good! I will update you on the stuff I can remember!

Thanksgiving was awesome! First things, on the way to the Francom's I ran in to a friend I made when I first came. It is a kid named Eyob (Amharic for Job). I made friends with him a little while back. No intentions to share the gospel at first. I just like making friends a lot. He is awesome. I lost his number a while ago and went months without seeing him. Then on the way to the Francom's I just heard a kid yelling from far. I realized it was Eyob. I was super excited to see him! We talked for a minute. I hope soon I can ease him into the gospel. We will see! We found a few new investigators this week. Mostly we just worked on all the investigators we found last week. We received two referrals from people in Utah area through the church website. We talked to them both over the phone and will meet them this week. It is cool how the church works, small world! Weynshet, our investigator, and her son Eyob are still doing great. Eyob works on Sundays sadly. We were told by our mission president that if he can attend at least once a month then we can baptize him. He said he should be able to. Weynshet is super great. She loved our lessons this week. I will be honest, almost everyone I have taught and baptized on my mission are young YSA's. So I am so happy to see someone older. She is about 60 probably. Shock of the week was seeing her at church. The Great Ethiopian Race was this Sunday. It is a 10k that runs all through Beklobet area. Thousands of runners fill the streets so they close off all roads. It was hard for us to get to church and we live a 3 minute walk via back roads. She lives AN HOUR taxi to church. There were no taxis or transportation to church that day and she still came. We honestly don't know how. She is just incredibly dedicated already. Another great surprise was seeing a girl named Wintana come to church too. We found her just as I was coming to Ethiopia. She was great but fell out of contact pretty fast. At church she said she fell sick and is now ready to learn and be baptized! Yes! That is it for the week mostly. Things are going well with English classes too.

Church attendance was 12 this week and church was an hour long.

This week I got a front row seat to some degrading Ethiopian WWE. It was quite sad but pretty crazy to see in person. Long story short we were walking home through the outskirts of Bole and saw two girls fist fighting and puling hair. The fight included some knocked over desks, mannequins, and drinks. After a few punches one girl broke lose and headed straight at a guy walking down the road. She yelled some choice words at him in Amharic. He turned around and she ran into him straight. He picked her up and put her over his shoulder then out of nowhere just through her, along with his shoulder straight int the cement. She landed on her back and head with a loud thud. He then began to throw fists at her and smack her up good. Us along with the help of some others pulled him off and gave him some mean faces so he knew what he did was wrong. Jeeeez it was crazy! Some guys here just don't have a ton of respect for women. The funny thing about it is I often treat women overly kind with like a bow upon greeting or picking up their dishes or something and they just lose it cause they have never ever been treated that way. Haha it is funny.

Yep, that is my fast and crazy week. It was a good one. Now I am ready for another. Happy late Thanksgiving to you all and hello December! Have a great week. Love you guys.

Love,
ElderMcLain

Another great week

Hey guys,

Finally, finally a really great week! We got a lot of missionary work done. A build up of all those weeks not being able to proselyte was let loose this week. We saw some good success with investigators and other things.

So we found 5 new investigators this week. Some better than others but all good. We can really thank the members on this one. We have been pushing the members to be more active in the missionary work. Investigators are much more powerful coming from members. A recent convert from Meganagna branch moved to Shiro Meda in our area. He has been teaching his mom the discussions without telling the missionaries and the other day he brought her and a friend to us. We taught them and they loved it. Happily accepted a baptismal date of December 3rd as well! It is awesome. The next investigators are named Betty and Atseda. They are helpers of Sister Weynshet, the blind lady in our branch. We didn't teach them at first though they sat through some discussions with Emiyu. They have been coming to church the last two weeks and so this week we started teaching them. They are great. Just progressing them slowly. Some others are a Jehovahs Witness investigator we found street contacting. His intentions are more to prove our church wrong than join it. We still give him a chance lucky for him.. Hahaha. We had a great week for investigators. Woo!

I have made a pretty good relationship with the US Embassy families living in our branch boundaries. It has some real good perks with it. First, both the Moores and the Francoms are just soooo awesome. Really fun families. I ate dinner at the Francoms on Tuesday. They made us enchiladas and some other few things. All of it was tasty. On Saturday we saw the Moores while proselyting in Kera. They picked us up and took us to a Korean restaurant. Ohhhhh my word! It was super duper expensive first and second the best dang food ever. I miss nutrients in food. Injera and other local foods just aren't good for you and it is making me skinny and weak again. Hahaha. So when we get real food with real meat its just a shot to the veins and wakes us up again. On Thursday we are going to the Francoms for Thanksgiving. Cant wait!

That is about it for the week. Oh by the way I have strep throat right now... .ahhh. It is okay. We hiked a little mountain to overlook Addis for the day. It was really fun. Some creepy worshipers at the top. Hahaha. 

Have a good week guys. Love you all!

Love,

Elder McLain

 Saying goodbye to the Harline's

They will be missed!

 View from above of Addis Ababa

Goofing around

 The office

  

 Homemade beds

Our awesome meal!

This Place Is My Holy Land

This kid NEVER meets a stranger! And you can bet if they have a skateboard they are his new best friend. 

Hey guys,

A ton has happened in the last two weeks. Pretty much all good things too. I didn't get to email last week. Ethiopia is up to some suspicious junk. They have one internet/phone service to provide for the whole country that is run by the government/China. Right now they are heavily monitoring international communication. So last week we got caught and our internet was cut... Booo. Anyways, this week we are good to email!

First off I FINALLY got my work permit and residence ID. I can now legally work! It was a 3 month battle trying to fill my days and head with good things. I didn't say much but that was probably the biggest challenge of my mission. Spending 3 months just visiting the same 10 people and not being able to tell anyone I was a missionary! Manamen manamen.... 

A cool thing that happened last week, a former investigator of the church from 7 years ago contacted us. He said when he was investigating the church he knew no English. He got a lot of help from the Elders teaching him basic English and helping him read and write. He just wanted to thank us and the church for planting a seed. He told us 7 years later he is teaching English for his profession and he truly speaks some of the best English I have heard from an Ethiopian. He asked us for our help in some classes the other week. We attended a few hours of English class where we simply chatted with over 100 different people over 3 hours. After taking to each person we got to give them our phone number and tell them we were free to meet any time to speak English or share with them. We have now gone to several classes, given our phone number to 100+ people and had many call us to meet. We have busy days now! And I love it! Even when we aren't preaching the gospel I feel so much happiness in just being Christ-like and serving the people here. I have learned in Ethiopia that missionary work isn't all about teaching and baptizing. It is about planting a seed of love and service to the community so that the missionaries that follow will be in a good light and the people will be prepared to listen to them!

A funny side story, not necessarily interesting to all is that I made some friends! The other day Elder Tesch and I were sitting at Meskel Square. I think I have mentioned the place before. I sent a picture home of it last week. It is the place Mom referred to as train tracks. Those are actually path outlines. If you look it slowly elevates up by row. If you run each row starting from the bottom it is a full marathon! So we were sitting there and I saw far in the distance a kid on a skateboard. I flipped out and grabbed my companion. We went and talked to the kid. His name is Eyob. He let me skate with him for a minute. It was so fun! He gave me his number and I called him another day. We met the kids and found a skatepark!!! There is a nice skatepark here and it was so nice to have a bit of reminiscing for the week. Eyob and I are good friends now. I have just made some of the best friends on my mission and a lot aren't even people I teach. 

Today we celebrated Elder and Sister Harline's going home by watching The Blind Side and eating popcorn. Good movie. I loved it. It has been a great week. Lots of trial and trouble through the week but it has all been smothered with the fun and blessings that are happening here. Ethiopia is the greatest place to me. Like Rastafarians I find this place to be my holy land. I never wanna leave!!!!

That's it for the week. Love you all. Have a good weeeeeeeeeeeek.

Love,

Elder McLain

My new friend Eyob 

Meskel Square

 Me and Elder Tesch

 Doing work!

 My new tracting shoes!

Chillin

Found my car in Ethiopia