Eight of us guys just floating out here entrusted to carry the work

Hey everyone,

I hope everyone is having a good week and the weekend was great. My week was really good. A lot went on this week that kept us fairly busy. PS I dont have spell check on this computer and my spelling and grammer is just low quality these days so I apologize for any mistakes through the email.

So because of Zone Conference the Elders in Hawassa came to stay with us in Beklobet. They got here on Friday and helped us with some lessons. It is Elder Cooper and Elder Neff. Both are born Ethiopians adopted to the US and are back here for mission. Elder Cooper came on mission with me and is one of my good buddies since the MTC so it was awesome to spend the time with him. He caught back on to Amharic very fast and can translate lessons so he helped me teach some new investigators we haven't been able to teach due to language barrier. That was a huge blessing. It is also cool to hear Amharic with an American accent. It helps me to know better what I can say. We got to meet with Eskeder. She was the referral from a woman in Utah. The woman in Utah has been sponsering Eskeder through school and into College. Finally she felt like it was time to introduce her to the church. So Eskeder came to church yesterday and we were able to teach her the Restoration. It was a pretty great lesson but also hard to teach. Mainly because I would teach in English, Elder Cooper would translate. Then he would teach in Amharic and I would just listen my best to know what he said and hope I could start up in the right spot when it was my turn again. Hope that makes sense. My descriptive English is garbage these days... Haha. 

Zone Conference was great. President focused his thoughts on Constant Finding and Exact Obedience. He showed us a lot of statistical charts from the church that show our missions monthly progress up next to the South East Africa Area progress. It was cool to see that our mission is above the rest of the area in almost all statisitics. Not that numbers matter but success of course is important. Some things we need to work harder on is making sure our New Investigators are baptized. Our mission struggles more so with new investigator to baptized convert ratio. I believe it is 11:1. Our Investigator with a Baptismal date to Baptized Investigators is 3:1 and our Investigators to Attend Church to Baptized Investigators is 2:1. I think that is cool. We ech set a baptismal goal with our companion for the rest of the year. We decided on 3. So he then explained if we are going for 3, that requires roughly 33 new investigators, 9 with a baptismal date and 6 coming to church. With those numbers we could achieve 3 baptisms before 2018 in Beklobet. It was neat to see the statistical side of missionary work. Again, it is not a number race but not setting goals is not having hope and "trying" our faith as you (Dad) explained in your spiritual thought to me.

President Collings was in Ethiopia from Friday to today. He left this morning. He doesn't travel with his Assistants. The main reason is visa problems. It is hard to travel international without preparation. That is why you usually find out about 3 weeks early if you are leaving your assigned country. So the Elders went from 6 to 8 here. And even next transfer it is possible we go to 10! He wants to put 2 more Elders in Hawassa. That would be cool. We are progressing! Honestly the work in the country is going a lot smoother and better right now.

I do also think I have grown an inch on my mission. I think I am at 6'3" now. Don't count me on it but I seem to be taller than those that say they are 6'2". Cool! I was also telling mom that my weight is all over out here. I came on mission at 135 lbs. In Masaka I peaked at 160 lbs. Now I am down to about 140 lbs. The reason is simply that the food is just not nutritional. Not much comes out of eating injera every day and walking everywhere. So, I hope I don't get much skinner. Next stop is some adult weight, still need to get some of that. 

On Friday I went to Debre Zeit to perform a Baptismal Interview. It was a wild ride there. We couldn't find any transportation there and it conflicted with out office work so we got a personal taxi to Debre Zeit and it was expensiiiivvvveee. The church covered it of course but I felt bad cause taxis here are sooo expensive. It was an hour ride out to Debre Zeit to a 15 minute interview and an hour and a half ride back. I love the ride to Debre Zeit so much. It looks a lot like the typical Africa you think of. Grass lands and those flat trees and wild animals. You should look up Bishoftu and see the rural areas out there. Another really cool place in Ethiopia is called Wendo Genet. It is sweeeeet there... After the interview we went in to the office to do some work. I finished before my companion so I got on and watched my previous skypes home and Christmas 2016 and Mothers Day 2017. Wow, not much to say but that my first call home was super goondie. I was a weirdo back then hahaha. Anyways, I look forward to calling home in a few weeks! I think I am a little more normal now so look forward to seeing me!

The times can be tough here in Ethiopia. I often forget I am a part of the Uganda Kampala Mission. We are so secluded from the main group and it causes us to be out of the loop with everything. Right now it is the 8 of us missionaries to the entire country of Ethiopia. There are about 100 or so in Uganda and probably 20 in Rwanda. Here in Ethiopia we havwe little to no communication with the other countries accept for emailing on Mondays. Our network is too poor to call or text and right now there is no senior couple with us in Ethiopia. So the 8 of us guys are just floating out here entrusted to carry the work. It can be tough out here!! But I like it at the same time. Ha!

Well everyone, have a good week. If you are bored, feel free to send me an email. Sometimes it can be nice to hear from friends. Love you guys!

Love,
Elder McLain

Me with a load of birr 

 Rodeo Addis for lunch

 Standing in our new van

Elder Coopers cool Ethiopia sweater. Rasta mother land allo

Sunday Lunch. 

Don't really know, some minced meat and fries....

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

Some CrAzY things happen in Ethiopia....

Hey guys,

My mission is kind of weird right now. It is still really fun and I love Ethiopia more than any place on earth. I am enjoying everything a lot. I am now about 4 or 5 weeks on no resident's ID or working permit and so I am still not legally allowed to proselyte.... Yeah. Right now we visit all the members we can and then just sit and try to figure out what else to do. This week we found a cheater tactic that is kind of working. We are going to try it more this week. We found a really public place in the city called Meskel Square. It is a cool place you should google it. We go and sit at Meskel Square with a soda or something and just chat or read as a companionship. It draws a lot of attention to see two white guys just sitting there talking and so occasionally we get someone come up to us and see what we are doing. That is about it for us right now. Ha!

Honestly my update for missionary work is really short. We were able to see Emiyu get baptized this week! That was great. She asked me to baptize her. The water in the font was FREEZING and they ran out of water and so it was only up to my knees. So I had to really bend down to get her all the way under. It was a challenge but worked first try! Woo! Another surprise was Getachew, the first member in Ethiopia, came back to church. He was really sick for a while and finally recovered enough. It was great to finally see him at church and he was so happy to be there.. That is as much of an update as I can give for the week. Sorry it was another slow one!

We had some funny and crazy things happen to us this week. We witnessed some interesting stuff! I will just list em off...

1. On the way to an appointment we saw a man cover his mouth and begin vomiting like no ones business. After he finished he just collapsed to the ground with a bang. With others helping we carried him to the shade and got him some water. We had to go shortly after though.

2. I kid you not this one took place 5 minutes after the first incident. We were  still walking to our appointment and saw a young boy with a bag on his head (typical African thing). Out of nowhere he just fell face first and smacked on the cement. He flipped over after and had a seizure and foamed from the mouth. It lasted about 30 seconds. After getting him to shade too we didn't know what to do. There were many to help so we continued walking again...

3. Later that night this FLAMBOYANT lady wearing the most makeup I have ever seen just sat next to me on the train and would not stop staring at me. It was really weird. She looked like Boy George and she was just super make up crazy....

4. On the same train ride we watched 3 police man pile a guy on to the the train and sit him down. Long story short the police were using the public train to arrest a man. Haha...

5. The next day this man was sitting across from me on the train. I noticed a little stick in his head and pointed it out to my companion. Later the man just grabbed the stick and started rubbing his teeth with it like a toothbrush. They use sticks here as a toothbrush. This man stored his in his hair!

6. THIS ONE WAS SO FUNNY.... Again, on the train. 9pm on the train is a weird time. This guy sat by us. He kept looking at me. After about 5 minutes he opened his mouth and in the most american voice says, "Yo you want some weed?" Hahahah. I just laughed and said what??? He went on to tell me he can get me anything I want for cheap... I asked where he was from and he said he was raised in Seattle and that he was deported for drug trafficking and was sent back here.... It was a long conversation with lots of drug talk and swear words and me just trying not to laugh.

7. Some white people came to our church on Sunday. One was a Doctor and the other a Dentist. I literally could not summon the courage to talk to them. I am so so bad at talking to Americans now it is terrible. If you aren't a missionary or an Embassy member I just can't do it. My social skills with white people are at rock bottom right now. Ha!

Oh, we ate dinner at the Moore's yesterday. They fed us BIG.. The husband is from Mission Viejo, CA and the wife is from Osaka Japan. They are so cool. They fed us Korean Ramen with the egg and then brownies and fruit for dessert. THEN things got cool. While dessert was cooking we went downstairs and played Ping Pong. YOo! It was so fun... Then Ayako the mom came with a cardboard box and said to follow her. We went into a storage room and she said, "fill it with whatever you want." Okay so imagine heaven...... American foods of all kind there. We filled a box and it was soooooo nice!!!

Soooo you got to meet Elder Haines!!! That makes me so happy. I can't remember what I sent home with him. Either way I love that guy so much. He is an energy ball! He is a good talker and fun to converse with. I will see him soon in Provo! Can't wait!! Awesome awesome awesome!

That is it for the week. Sorry it was sort of a lame one. Guess you need one of those every now and then.

Love you guys!

Love,

Elder McLain 

Tryna fit in!

 Having our own little Halloween party

I lost!

Emiyu was finally baptized! 

 Pepsi. Ehh......it'll do for now

 Found a kitty

 Church in Ethiopia

Some strange something out there in the bush.....

7 Bird Daydream

Sometimes the simplest parable can have a great meaning. I miss my little bird but he is flying high and doing good. Can't wait for him to rejoin us!

Hey friends and family,

This week was pretty nice. I have had my thoughts kind of be all over the place over the last 7 days. It has been good on me and bad on me. I learned a lot about myself though and it has helped me a lot. So to begin I am still not legal for proselyting. I still don't have a work permit and so I am now just visiting members and less-actives. Here is the problem. The branch has 15 active members out of 395 baptized. So 15 out of 395 come to church. Of those 15, 4 speak English. So we have 4 active members to visit. Of the other 380 my guess would be, of those that answer the phone, 30 speak English. Of those 30 maybe 5 are willing to meet us. So that leaves us with roughly 10 people we can visit a week. Soooooo we are often left with nothing to do.  We meet with people when they can and when we have no one to see we usually just call through our list and if there is no one then we sit somewhere like the church or a cafe and drink some pop and read some stuff. We have printed off some conference talks and sometimes my comp and I sit at the church and read a talk at the same time and talk about it as we go. That is what we got going for us right now. With patience I will soon be legal and will get some real work done! One plus is that this break has made me incredibly hungry to do missionary work so when I get that working permit I am going to explode.

We had some good things happen this week...  and some bad. We were about to baptize Emiyu  and had her interviewed and taught. She was completely ready and then Saturday morning we got a call that she was having some medical issues that would last the weekend and then she would be back on her feet. So we postponed the baptism until this coming Sunday. That is okay. There is no rush there and she is really solid so it will work out great! As for Ermiyas... Eizo to that man. He left Addis for a little while and came back Saturday. We texted him and he didn't respond. After we saw he wasn't coming to church on Sunday we texted him to check up. He sent back a novel length text on how our church is from Satan and does not go hand and hand with the Bible. He explained that the church believes blacks are inferior because of the curse put upon the Lamanites and that blacks didn't get the priesthood for a while. He also said many other rude things and told us to leave Ethiopia before we are damned.... Yeah so that is a good taste of missionary work in Ethiopia. We taught this man everything. He was so great. He knew everything was true and loved the church. Then Satan slapped him around a little and he woke up never the same. Hmmm. Well, we are just going to move on! That is life.

I had a funny thing happen this week. You all might think it is a little lame but there are some little things in life when you are in a 3rd world country on the other side of the world that make it a little easier. One day I was at my house at about 5 in the afternoon. We had an appointment at 6 and nothing until then (remember I am legally not aloud to do anything when we don't have appointments).  I was laying in my compound and was using a flat soccer ball as a pillow and just looking up at the sky with some Vocal Point playing. I got pretty trunky just laying there. I had two thoughts running through my head. The first was "What on earth am I doing right now laying in the middle of Addis on a flat soccer ball" and the other "You should stop being trunky and just accept that this is your life for a little." I started praying and asking God to help me situate myself and understand why things are going the way they are. After I prayed I just stared at the sky and let my thoughts run. This is where things get cheesy. I noticed in the sky that there were 7 birds flying in unison. They just flew around above me for a good 5 minutes. It was some good entertainment so I watched them. After a little I noticed one bird just took a hard left and flew far from the other 6 birds and began spiraling and looping and going nuts for a good 5 minutes. It just branched off by itself for a good while and enjoyed its time. After it was finished it smoothly joined back up with the 6 and they kept flying together. So I thought, there are 7 people in my family and I think we all fly pretty smooth together. Now for a good while I am branching from the family and doing flips and tricks out here in Ethiopia while my family is still smooth sailing back home. And one year from now I will slide right back in with the 7 of them and my life will be back to normal. Ha, its a funny story but I just felt a good comfort from the situation and it made me realize everything is going to work out the way it should. 

Well, other than that things were great this week. There was this riot in Stadium from a soccer game going on. Elder Tesch and I had to walk through it to get to an appointment. There were hundreds of bodies rushing down the road while police were just caning and beating people seriously. But that is kinda normal here to get beaten by police. In fact the police are so uncivilized and broken here they were using tree limbs to beat because that is all they have. Then Elder Tesch and I were just swimming upstream through this running riot super confident and waving at everyone with smiles as they ran in terror from tear gas and police. It might sound  crazier than it was. Trust me, if it were dangerous we would not have walked through it. But we felt so safe and normal and knew that if we kept pushing with heads up that we could get to our appointment just fine. And we did. That is just a funny side note for the week. Ethiopia is crazy!

So that is my week. Just a good and normal one with some funny experiences. I am about to go eat some raw sheep after this so that is cool. It's good. Yep, thanks everyone for being great back home and being civilized and loving. You are the best!

Love,

Elder McLain

 My first date with a banana tree

  Wrestling Sollan and trying to get him to eat a spider I caught.

 LDS.org in Amharic!

Me and Sister Mulu. She is inactive but we are working on her.

 Another picture of Homey's poofy hair (on the bottom left). And yes Mom it is real!

A wedding celebration

 Mansion house we taught in. All their kids are in the US at school.

I am Illegal

Hey everyone,

I don't have a lot of time so I will just write something short. I had another good week. Beklobet is a fun area and Elder Tesch and I are doing really well. Right now, as mentioned last week, I am not legal to proselyte or do any missionary work besides visiting members. I should be getting my visa stuff figured out this week and soon I will be able to do real work again. I can't wait for that. Only member visits in a branch of 15 active members is not easy and definitely doesn't give us much to do!

Well this week was pretty slow because of all of that but we had some fun things happen. We tried to re-activate a returned missionary that has gone less active by visiting her a lot and being nice to her. Things were going really well for about a week and she realized that she was doing wrong and needed to improve. On Friday we made a little chocolate pie and took it to her house at 6 (the time she asked us to come) and no one was there. We didn't know what to do with the pie because we couldn't take it home on the train and so we just lightly tossed it over her compound wall and it landed okay on the ground. That was all we could think to do. Ha. Well she called us the next morning and said it made her neighbors really angry that we tossed the pie over and stayed around the compound too long (10 min.) and so she was also frustrated with us. She hasn't come to church in a while and I guess making her a pie and giving it over the fence was a bad idea. We learned that the hard way.

Another thing that was fun was we took a long walk with the little school girls. I was on exchanges with Elder Richardson and we got off a bus in Sidist Kilo to walk up to Shiro Meda to see Sister Weynshet. When we got off some little girls came up and started talking to us in Amharic. We responded to what we could and walked with them the 30 minute walk to Shiro Meda. On the way I found a little popsicle stand and we bought some for ourselves and the little girls. It was fun. I would have given them something to give to their parents but again I am not legally aloud and would rather not spend years in Ethiopian prison.

A little history of missionary work that is quite surprising.....The gospel has been here for a LONG time. Longer than Uganda and Rwanda. It was the first country after Kenya to get the gospel I believe back in the 80s... I could be wrong. Things blew up fast and they had like 10 wards and branches all with over 100 attendance, 30 missionaries and 5 senior couples. That lasted for a while and is now just on an extreme decline... Right now there are actually 8 missionaries in the country. It has been reduced from 12 to 8 just since my time on mission. It is now a district, barely, and has 4 branches. Things are just not too well here right now. And with every companionship having one elder with legal visa issues, there is no work being done besides member work. Its rough! We do need more missionaries. I would hope that each branch could get two sets of Elders soon. Maybe as office Elder I can sway President Collings that direction. Haha. But we are all high in spirits and I still love this place more than any other place I have ever been. Possibly even more than home. President said he has great missionaries serving here right now. That is a compliment.

Ermiyas left Addis for a week and doesn't get back until this Saturday. He told us he is with his Book of Mormon and Bible and studying them every morning still! That was nice to hear. He is great. He is reading things online though. He asked us over the phone this week how Nephi was baptized and if he had the priesthood, as well what Christ's name is in the Old Testament. We just explained that we would tell him when he gets back. Emiyu is doing really well. She is just progressing along perfectly and accepting everything great. She should be baptized this Sunday or next! Baptisms in Ethiopia are a big deal! There were 11 last year in Ethiopia.

I got to watch a portion of General Conference this week. There were some great talks given. We watched it at Brother Conner's house. He works for the Army and is stationed here. He bought us Root Beer and we ordered a pizza. Yeah... pizza, root beer, and conference on a laptop. Spoiled rotten missionaries here!

That is it for me. Sorry it is short. Hopefully more things will happen when I am aloud to proselyte. Also watch out, I get a truck again soon! Have a good week my friends and family. Love you guys!

Love,

Elder McLain

Esther's Family

 Choo Choo

 Me and Galilah

My favorite little human in Ethiopia

 On the train

General Conference, pizza, and rootbeer.......

HEAVEN!