Colby in Kampala: 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