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

I am in Ethiopoia!

 Me and Omat

 My companion

 The streets of my area

Beautiful Ethiopia

Where am I ?

Hey everyone,

It was an insane week for me. I left Uganda and headed up to Ethiopia. It was a two hour flight. Hard to believe I can take a two hour flight over 3 countries and still be in the same mission. It might be the same mission but it doesn't feel like it!

Wow my life is crazy right now!!! I still feel like this is one giant dream and not at all real! I am living in Ethiopia!? It's a really crazy place and the missionary work is completely different here. I am honestly not even in an african country anymore. The people are light skin like Arabs. The language is crazy and sounds/looks like Arabic. The country is really cold! I have worn a sweater every day! Man, Its all just crazy. I have only been here since late Thursday so I don't know a ton.

The missionary work in Uganda was so fruitful. The people there are so prepared. I loved Masaka and the work there. Ethiopia is a little different.... The culture is overtaken by the Orthodox church. The Orthodox religion is about 65% of the population. You should read in to the religion. It is quite insane. The people here really have no desire to change and are so deeply rooted in the Orthodox church that growth for our church is really hard. Right now the church is struggling a lot in Ethiopia but especially Beklo Bet. Last week church attendance was 38 BUT over 20 were Americans. The perk for missionaries in the Beklo Bet branch is that it takes in all the American Embassy workers. Many are members. Without them, there were I believe 17 native Ethiopians at church. The church service is in Amharic and the English speakers (missionaries and embassy families) are translated to Amharic. The branch is at a low point right now. I arrived at church to find that the person giving a talk was not there. I filled in and gave a talk. I pretty much just bore my testimony as powerfully as I could summon that this was the true church and the members should not fear being here. I will explain later that issue. After that we went to the second hour where I was asked to fill in and teach Gospel Principles class. Not my first time to do that so I was fine with it. Yeah, that's church here. Not easy! But a great experience. 

My area is pretty much the ghetto of Addis Ababa. It is an outskirt town but still heavily taken in by the city. I live around sky scrapers. The city reminds me of a very dirty Seattle in a way. I really like it. I live in a place I am not sure of the address. The best way I can describe my address is if you take the main train that goes through Addis and get off at Temanja Yazh stop. We live on the left side of the road in a small little house. Its a good house but its a bit beat up cause missionaries have been in it for a while. The cool thing is we leave our gate and literally are on the main road. Its a good house. I have had worse on mission and better. I love my shower. I don't have to cup my hands and splash it on me like I have before and water stays warm for more than 3 minutes! The house is big and nice. I enjoy it. The downside is power has been out at our house for 3 days but I am used to that. No biggy...

We don't have a car here. We use taxis or the train that goes through Addis Ababa. I am sure you can google the train. 

The Language is nuts. I thought it would be sort of like Uganda where everyone speaks Luganda but also speaks English.... NOPE. Even the more educated people just don't speak any English. Most cant even respond to "How are you?".... I have to do language study every day. My companion picked it up fast because he lived here until he was 9 and then was adopted in to the US.. He can speak enough to get us around. I don't know much of anything. It sounds a lot like Arabic and even looks like it. All signs are in Amharic. All church material is in Amharic. Everything.... Amharic. 

Food! It is awesome. I am really lucky to grow up in a family where we ate a lot of odd foods. It has helped me transition a lot here. We eat a ton of the staple food. They don't have much variety here. They eat injera with everything. Its a sponge like round thing that you tear a piece off and use it to pick up sauces. Its made out of a fermented flour thing. Its sour and good. I will send pics of some things I have eaten. I love the food! Today we went out to lunch with a returned missionary. He is pretty wealthy and took us to the nicest restaurant around and we got real greek pizza. It was amazing!!!

My comp is great. Funny and nice guy. I have been lucky with good comps. 

That is about it. By next week I should be a little more comfortable in my new home. I would love some prayers on my behalf. It is a tough place here and it will take much effort and prayer to soften the hearts of these people. In return I will pray for everyone back home. I want to thank you all for loving me and making my mission the best. Stay great.

Love,

Elder McLain

Addis Ababa

The city!

My area

Me and Elder Haines

Me and Elder Smith

Saying goodbye to Kuhbeka : (

Pamplets in Amharic

Me and Gitachew.

Old man good man

Last dinner with Teddy 

Injera with Dulet. 

It's just raw meat with some feta cheese. So good!

Greek pizza at MK's Addis Ababa Pizza

One of the best meals I had on my mission!

Amharic coke!

I will miss you Masaka......Heading to ETHIOPIA!

Hello everybody,

It was a crazy week in Masaka! I  figured out this would be my last week in the area... and even the country : (  I am leaving Uganda and heading to Ethiopia! I am both sad and excited. It will be a crazy experience.... 

I spent most of the week prepping to go. There are a lot of minor things I had to take care of. I had to figure out a way to compress everything in to ONE large suit case and a tiny carry on. It wasn't so hard. Most of the things I have come with on mission have been left behind or given to someone. I spent most of today packing. 

I spent a lot of the week preparing my area to receive the new elder. My companion, Elder Kubheka is staying behind and training a new elder. So we have been really polishing the area and the area books to make sure the training can go smooth and fruitful. 

We did have 2 baptisms this Sunday! Unfortunately Mirembe had an emergency death in the village and had to leave for the week. She returns this Wednesday so she will likely be baptized the coming Sunday. That is nice though because the new elder will have a baptism right off the bat. That will be a good boost for him. Our area is doing great and is very prepared for at least 6 baptisms next transfer. We did manage to revive the area!

I don't know a whole lot about my next transfer. I do know that I am serving in an area called Bekulobet. It is an outskirt slum of Addis Ababa. I have heard the branch is struggling in a way there and it is one of the hardest areas. I am excited for it though and feel that my Masaka fire will come in handy as I am there. The church is small in Ethiopia. At a time a few years back it was doing really nice. There were something like 11 branches, a district and even they began to build actual chapels. After a while the orthodox and Islamic religions began to take control and steal away many members. Many branches closed and many missionaries were taken out. Currently there are 4 branches and 8 missionaries in the whole country! This week I will be one of them! I have heard that the Orthodox church is pretty dominant there. It has become more of a culture than a religion. On top of that they believe some bizarre things that can effect the entire country. For example they have a fasting season quite often where they all go vegan for a time. That causes all food prices to go up for some reason and its a real issue for those who dont participate. I have heard the Bekulobet branch has a few american families who work at the U.S. Embassy and they treat the missionaries well. I look forward to that. My companion is Elder Munsey. He is originally from Ethiopia but was adopted into an American family from California. He is an awesome guy and it will be a blast serving in Ethiopia with an Ethiopian. We will enjoy a lot!

Ethiopia is more developed than Uganda. At least in Addis Ababa, the city (where I will be). There are 4 areas for missionaries. 2 are in the city, one is about 2 hours away in Debre Zeit. The last is 5 hours from Addis in a place called Hawassa. That is said to be the most village area in the whole mission with zero english. For now I am in the city. I will have plenty of access to internet. I am actually replacing Elder Gooch in his area with his companion. There are only a few missionaries in the entire country! Crazy!

Dad you asked about the language.  Amharic.... All I have heard is that it is the national language. All signs are in Amharic. Church material is in Amharic. Its all Amharic. Little English is spoken at all. I will do 30 minutes of language study every day which will include trying to read the Book of Mormon. It will be crazy to me! The church services are held in Amharic but some branches translate. Cant wait! Personally for me Luganda has been pretty easy. For some crazy reason, even though it is a Bantu root language, I have seen similarities from learning Spanish that have helped me. At least grammatically. I can imagine Amharic will be harder to learn. Sadly I will forget my Luganda quickly I assume.

I am going to miss the amazing country of Uganda! I don't know if I will be called to serve here again. This place has changed my life. Especially the area of Masaka! This area has really helped me grow as a missionary and even a normal human. It has been a blessing to serve here and serve with Elder Kubheka. I love him. Great memories were made. I am off to a new land, new language, new race in a way, a new culture. I hope and pray that I will have an easy transition to the new missionary work. Things will be different. 

Well, I hope you all have a good week. Next time we speak I will be in a different country! Thanks for the support. Love you guys!

Love,

Elder McLain

P.S. It will be a big culture difference going to Ethiopia. Many Americans see it as the typical African country when in fact its not at all. You can see in pictures that the people look almost middle eastern. The language is a lot like Arabic. The culture is entirely middle eastern. The typical African countries would be more like Ghana or Mozambique. Ethiopia is found to be a stubborn country. They only allow single citizenship and forsake anyone who gets citizenship anywhere else. They don't really like foreigners much. It is as if I am leaving Africa and going to the middle east!

 Teddy teaching Mirembe

 Me jumping off a mountain

Going to a game park 

Found a zebra skull

The baptisms of Julius and Agnes 

Coming out of the waters of baptism

 FIFA 2019

 At a fancy cafe. Couldn't afford anything......

 Still happy

 Elder Kubs getting ready to clean the baptismal font

Our guard dog

Until we meet again Masaka!

I am leaving Uganda

Goodmorning everyone,

I hope the week was just swell for you wherever you were. For me it is still great. Masaka is still the best. The weather is still the best. The people are still the best. Everything is still the best.I am just getting my last work in before I leave the area. I am saying goodbye to a lot of people and preparing the area because my companion and I are pretty sure we are both leaving Masaka. 

I don't have much to talk about this week. The transfer is coming to a close. At the beginning of the transfer we came to the area with 0 investigators. Right now we have 3 people on track for baptism next Sunday and 3 others in the future. Masaka is so prepared. I will tell the story of one man that is special to me. Julius is a man I have mentioned before. He was sort of a street boy growing up. Many kids run away from their family at a young age and live on the street to avoid school, being beat, working etc. So Julius ran away at a younger age. He is pretty rough. All his clothes are ripped and old and smelly. He comes to church is old ripped pants and usually no shoes. He is extremely cross eyed and cant really read or see because of it. His english is small but he tries. We have been teaching him for a few weeks. This week we visit him to share one last lesson before prepping baptisms. I was also on an exchange with Elder Haines. We began teaching him about Tithing. He stopped us pretty early in the lesson and in broken English just said, "Brothers, I know what tithing is. I have been paying." He looked at us with a smile after and we just looked at him with a huge smile too! It was so awesome. He told us he actually didn't know where tithing went but he knew it needed to be paid. I can't imagine his contribution is much, but 10% is 10% to everyone and thats why we are commanded no more and no less. Julius is a powerful man. The church and especially tithing has blessed his life!

This week we got to go pretty far into the village to two places to visit some really dedicated members. The first was Kalisizo which is 26km from Masaka and the second is Kyotera (pronounced Chyotera). There we got to see a few members and had a great time. It is always cool to see parts of Uganda that no missionaries have every been. I could even say no white people have really ever been.... 

Well, thats it for the week. Stay tuned next week to find out where I am going for transfers... Hint hint I am leaving Uganda. Have a good week everyone!

Love,

Elder McLain

This is Hanifah. She was a muslim who got converted

Elder Kubheka and I 

Still loving Masaka!

 These smiles say it all. 

Playing with the kids! 

 More playing

Elder Kubheka with his plate of food

 Me with Tab's friend Figgs Hofheins who came to visit. 

He served in this mission a few years ago.

 This will go down in history.... 

We did all the official paperwork to split Masaka Branch into 2 branches!!

A plate full of glorious food!

Ugandan funerals......sad but fun

Hello from Masaka!

Well we had a really good week. It went by super duper fast but was really fun. There was a lot of work and a little bit of struggle but all went well. My companion and I are super happy with how everything is going. We spent a lot of our time locating and teaching these new investigators. At the same time we were unable to meet with a few due to some business on their part but that's okay. We actually met two people who came on Sunday and said that the church was mad and they never wanted to hear from us again. So we narrowed down and were able to meet with about 8. All in all it was a successful week.

Earlier this week we were at a members house. There is a guy here named Chris. He is less active but lives in Masaka. Chris is actually African American and fled here to hide from a gang he wanted to leave. He embraced the culture well and liked his life. On Saturday Chris was hit by a car and died. They held his burial on Sunday and we went briefly. Ugandans actually celebrate funerals a lot like weddings so it was fun! Sad but fun. 

I will tell you about the ones who are progressing well. First we have Julius. He is about 23 of so. He is a really great guy but somewhat quiet. We have taught him twice and he has a baptismal date of August 13th. He is fully prepared and working great. He was at church on Sunday. We also have Mirembe, meaning Peace. She is a villager who hasn't spent much time outside of the village. She knows very little English but we have been taking Teddy, our recent convert, to help translate and teach. Mirembe as well has a baptismal date on the 13th of August. She fell sick on Sunday and was not able to come. We hope to see her tomorrow. The next one we have is Godfrey. I mentioned him last week. We were finding and found him at a school. He was taught a long time back and is happy to meet again. He will also be potentially baptized on the 13th of August. The last is Agnes. She is living with the Branch President and is a teen aged girl. We taught her once last week. Like the others, August 13th is her baptismal date. So we have a lot of potential baptisms on that date and need to work hard. To comment on Teddy, she is doing amazing. We were able to get Teddy some reading materials like True to the Faith and Gospel Principles... She is just eating up the books. Yesterday President Robert told us that Teddy came to him at church and asked to start her mission papers. He told her to slow down a bit because she was only baptized a month ago. She is mostly finished with the Book of Mormon and is just insanely Powerful. She is a big help in teaching Mirembe. It is awesome!!

Yes Hafsaah... Sorry I forgot. Hafsaah did come to church last week but was a bit too busy this week to visit. She is having issues with her family and leaving them. She called President Robert and said not to forget about her and that she will pray and do her best to come. President Robert called us last night and said we need to work on seeing her this week. 

And yes I am totally over home sickness. I actually love to hear what you guys are doing. I am a little jealous of Top Golf but of course it will be there when I get  back. You can send me anything you want! I enjoy pictures of food too!!! haha

Tomorrow we are going to Kampala for some work permit things. I am going to get a custom suit made for 150,000shs. I think thats like $45 or something like that. I hope that's okay. It will be the one I wear home and it will have a cool Ugandan twist!

I don't have much more to write.. We had a really good week. It has been a great time in Masaka and I have grown a lot here. I love this place! Have a good week and safe travels. 

Love you all!

Love,

Elder McLain

Me and Kubheka eating sugar cane. 

Some monkeys were trying to steal it from us 

Feeding the pig to the kids now!

Feeding this kid to the pigs

 harvesting maize

Stubborn kids : )

Elder Christiansen 

(exactly like Reese Rasband hahaha)

 Masaka missionaries

some road out far in Kikukumbi

The District

A Week of Miracles!

Hey People,

We had a week of miracles in Masaka! It was amazing for us and we saw answers to our prayers. Elder Kubheka and I worked really hard and prayed for a lot of help. It was also one of my first times fully feeling the Spirit answer my prayers. Seriously I still can't comprehend the miracles that happened but they did happen and we feel super duper blessed!

Early in the week we sat down with our Zone Leaders and discussed what it's going to take to improve this area this very transfer. We felt that we needed serious goals that would stretch us to work hard. On that day we had 0 people that we knew could for sure be baptized this transfer. We also realized that week 2 (this last week) was the critical week for us to find people to progress them to baptism by the end of week 6 (the last week of the transfer). My companion and I decided to pray and ask for help to know what to do and what goals we set. We prayed and sat for an answer. After a few minutes we both felt very similar promptings. We decided we could find 3 people this week and set a goal for 3 baptisms this transfer. To add to it we agreed and felt prompted to be punctual in all things. Lastly we agreed that we couldn't do it on our own and we needed to pray hard and study hard to increase our faith in the Lord to lead us to these people. I spent a lot of my week studying how to recognize the promptings of the Spirit. Well, after doing multiple hours of door knocking every day we didn't find much success. We were just stumped and didn't really know what to do. We prayed hard and worked hard and only turned up with 4 decent investigators for the week. For the amount of finding we did that is not a lot at all. When we got to church on Sunday we expected only 2 investigators to be there. After sacrament we counted those 2 and continued through church. We began to talk to a few people around who were new faces and this is where the miracle began. I talked to a lady named Hafsaah. She was raised a Muslim her whole life and was a bit older. Maybe 50 (thats old here no offense haha). Hafsaah woke up Sunday morning and just felt that she needed to make a change. She got ready and walked 30 minutes from Kidda to Masaka town. She continued and passed countless churches and found herself, on time, to our church. She just felt prompted to attend. At the end of church she went by herself to Branch Presidents office and told him she had found the truth and that she wanted to be taught and baptized! That's only one. WE HAD 3 OTHER PEOPLE show up with no help, no fellowship and no prior contact. Our prayers were to help us find the elect and the elect to find us. Sunday was a huge day for us. To add to the miracle we had a member bring 3 different friends who all lived in our area as referrals and another member bring a friend. In total we expected 2 investigators at church and had 10!! I can't really believe it. We taught two of them. One is named Julius. He is a middle aged man who just showed up. We taught him about the Plan of Salvation and extended a baptismal date for the 13th of August which he happily accepted. The other is Agnes. She is the daughter of a member. We taught her the Restoration and gave her a baptismal date of the 6th of August. The rest are scheduled to meet this week. We have work to do!!!!

That's my good update for the week. I hope everyone has a good week and birthday wishes Tab and Rorie. Happy birthdays!! Love you guys.

Thanks for keeping up with me. 

Love,

Elder McLain