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! 

Some weeks are slow but that's okay

Hey Everybody!

It was a slow but good week this week. Sadly we hit a wall in our missionary work but its all okay! It wasn't a bad thing. I as well as a couple other missionaries are having some immigration issues so we currently don't have work permits or residence cards. Because of that we are not legally aloud to work. We are only aloud to visit members and less actives. It is all okay though. We kept in good contact with Ermiyas through text and he is great. Soon I hope we can figure this out and get back to work. 

So we spent a lot of time just figuring out the area. We went to the internet cafe and printed off a massive map of the whole area and labeled it with taxi routes, members houses, food and other things. It will be good for the area after we leave.

Funny news, the Harlines leave Ethiopia to go home in one month and I was told yesterday that I will be replacing them in the office. So I will be the financial and legal helper over Ethiopia. Hmmm. I don't know what to expect...... a car! Ha. I will let you know when i find out more. 

I don't have a lot for this week just due to the stop on missionary work. I hope by next week we will be good to work again. 

Thanks everyone for keeping in touch! Have a good week.

Love,

Elder McLain

Life in Ethiopia

Life in Ethiopia

 Esther's family

 Doing some service work for Sister Weynshet!
Building a storage shed with 2 hammers, one saw and wood.... 
Hahaha not easy!

 Me and my little friend

Long day at church

Orthodox church tour

This Place Is Running Through My Veins

Hey guys,

I am doing great! Too great actually. I don't know what has changed in me over the last few weeks but I am just a completely different dude up here in Ethiopia. This place has molded me to the exact person I want to be. I want to improve in a lot of things but right now I am on the right path that is for sure.

I am still in Beklobet AKA South Side Chicago of Ethiopia. It is too cool here. I love the area and feel like I fit in perfectly minus the white skin, white shirts and height. Either way this place is a part of me and I am a part of this place now. That is the way I want it to be. I have no doubt in my mind that I was called by God to be here. The reason I know is because I promise you there are maybe only 3 missionaries in the world that are happier than I am right now. 

The work is hard! I wish I could say it was easy but it is darn hard. Transfer week made things a bit on and off with the work. The first reason is that we weren't in our area until Wednesday morning and so that got us on a late start. The other reason is that the new Elders being transferred here were having visa problems and still don't get here until tomorrow so we were stuck in the other area with an Elder so he wasn't alone. But now we are full force in our area and doing A+ work. Both of us have a really positive vision for the work this transfer and have done a lot of pondering on what we are going to do to strengthen Beklobet. The truth is it is by far the most struggling branch in the mission and so we need to work hard. And we are! 

Our idea for the area is to teach 4 lessons a day. That is our mission standard of excellence. What we want to do is teach one investigator, one recent convert, one less active member and one strong member a day. We feel like focusing on all areas of the branch will just bring it the strength it needs. 

We still have the same great investigators. Ermiyas and Emiyu both came to church this week and loved it. They are doing great and are progressing to a baptism on the 15th of October! We have a few other investigators actually we found this week. One is awesome. His name is Zemen (meaning season in Amharic). We met him in a funny way. Being in a non-English speaking country we tend to talk in English out loud a lot without anyone understanding us. One day we crammed in to a taxi and we were darn frustrated about lunch. Ethiopia is annoying for a few cultural things. One is that the Orthodox church "fasts" every Wednesday and Friday. Their idea of fasting is no animal products for 24 hours. So no meat. We were riding in a taxi and had nothing to eat. We were talking about how the Orthodox are confused on what fasting is and that fasting means no food and no water... A guy piped up next to us and said we don't understand culture. We started talking back and then he said he agreed with us and that he was Lutheran! We set an appointment and met with him on Saturday. He is extremely powerful and speaks great English. We will see how he goes. Progression in Ethiopia is much slower than Uganda. Most investigators take a few months where as in Uganda they can take 2 to 3 weeks. 

It is as if this place is running through my veins. No matter what comes my way I am just too happy to let it hit me. Will some things actually hit me physically but mentally no way. Satan is a huge coward. Right now Satan is literally helping us find the elect. Who woulda thought? It seems like every time something is going good we get a crap shoot moment coming our way. The biggest example is with Emiyu. She is just so awesome and powerful. She lives in Shiromeda. It is on the top of a mountain a good distance from our house. Every time with out fail that we go there something bad happens. Wether it is weather or the people around us something fails. Last Friday we were on the way to her house. Keep in mind that Shiromeda's elevation is higher than Provo's so it can get really cold. It was about 6 in the evening when we hit Shiromeda and the rain started coming down. We were getting soaked and had no jackets or umbrellas. My companion and I just started getting angry at Satan and knew he was behind it. We were late as it was and couldn't let her down so we just kept our heads up and walked to her house. When we were almost there, head to toe soaked and freezing, we had some guys try to rough us up. We got around it and made it to her house. There we taught an amazing lesson that helped her know how much God loves her despite the amount of rejection and trial she has gone through in this life. It was so awesome. After leaving her house we just started getting wrecked (hit) by rocks left and right. I told my comp we just have to keep going because turning around would do absolutely nothing but cause a fight. We kept our heads up and walked with confidence while the rain soaked us and the rocks pelted us. Honestly I have learned a few things from these situations. One is that, as I said earlier, Satan just helps us to know when we are on to something good. And two, enduring trials is a huge blessing. I have gotten really good here at ignoring and moving on rather than confronting and getting angry. I think this will be a blessing throughout my life. Ethiopia is the best.

I am doing amazing here you guys. You are all missing out on this kind of happiness. Thanks for all the love. One year done in the Lord's service and another prosperous one to come. 

Love you guys!

Love,

Elder McLain

satan is a coward

 Me and Elder Tesch

dropped 40 birr on some milkshakes ($2ish dollars)

 A nice nice meal. 

Kitfo (raw cow) and cheese, Kay wat, and greens... yum

The street just by my house. 

Ethiopia pride!

I Feel Like This Is The Reason I Was Called To Serve Here. I Love With Everything I Am

Hello family and friends!

I want to begin by saying I was overwhelmed by all the emails and love I received for my birthday. You have no idea how much it meant to me! Thank you for making my 20th so great.

It was a really good week this week. I have started to love this place so much and the work here. I am happy to say that my transfer news is great! I am staying in Beklobet for another transfer and getting an awesome companion! His name is Elder Tesch from St. George. He is so awesome. We served in the same area in Ntinda and have been on exchanges many times so we get along extremely well. Plus he loves cars and all that so we have things to talk about! I am just really excited.

This week a lot happened this week in Beklobet. We are working hard and seeing great blessings. In the last week we had an amazing investigator come our way. His name is Ermiyas. He was told of the church by a non-member friend and was able to contact us. He came to church on Sunday and asked for a baptismal date. He loves the church and is so great. He speaks very good English as well. We have taught him twice now and he literally said he was tired of seeing all the traditions of men that all Ethiopians believe in. He wants to find the true church. We hope and pray he will progress to baptism! Another amazing miracle has been the progression of President Desta, our Branch President. When I came to the area I was told by many  that he is a strict and tough man. He is the Police Commander over all of Addis Ababa and has a hard time showing love. In the past he has really been hard on missionaries and the branch. I chose to start fresh with him and do my best to change that. He has changed incredibly. I have prayed and asked to know what I can do to help him and I have learned. I began showing incredible love to his wife and children. Before, missionaries only visited about once or twice a transfer. Right now we visit twice a week and hold Book of Mormon reading with them. Every time we see him he embraces us with a big hug and always says he loves us so much. He is an amazing man and far from the President Desta I have previously heard of. I really feel like this was the reason I was called to serve here. I love him and his family with everything I am. It has blessed my life to meet and serve them. 

There are a few members I have grown to love so darn much here. One of which is Desta's family. Another is a woman by the name of Sister Weynshet. This woman has to be the most faithful saint of all time. I am so impressed by her faith. When she was a child she was beat by her caretaker so badly that she went blind in both eyes. Since then she has made her way to Addis, graduated college, and now works as a caretaker and takes in other blind girls. She gets them through school and on to a better life. She is amazing. Right now she is taking care of 6 completely blind girls. As I said she is also fully blind. She cooks, cleans and raises each one on her own. Can you imagine? Blind?! We go visit her a lot. She lives far in a place called Shiro Meda (google it). It is up in the mountains and really cold. Every Sunday she taxis from Shiro Meda to Lancha for church. I want to help them out so bad. Right now a house of 7 girls including her self and it is just falling apart. There are leaks in the ceiling everywhere, walls torn down and much more. I wish we could help in any way. I think we are going to try and do a zone service at her house soon and just fix everything up. Recently we started teaching one of her blind girls named Emiyu. She is amazing! The first time we taught her it was a simple spiritual thought from Mark. The second time we taught about the Atonement. By the end of the second lesson she was frustrated that we weren't sharing more about our church! She came to church on Sunday. Sister Weynshet, blind, brought Emiyu, also blind, to church by a 45 minute taxi commute! She loved church. We are visiting her tomorrow and will talk about baptism. Like Weynshet, Emiyu was beat as a kid by her mother. She grew up in a village far from Addis and was extremely poor. When she was beat so bad that she became blind, her family disowned her as a child and made her their maid. She was a servant for her family for years and at 14 was brought to Sister Weynshet by her aunt for a better life. She is 16 now and in 3rd grade. Her heart is so strong. I love her! 

I ate some bad food this week! Ha! Twice we had just horrible meals fed to us by members. It was funny. I have gotten really good at just throwing things back and finishing them. This meal was gag worthy with every bite. It was stomach fir fir. Fir fir is when they take injera, break it up and soak it in a broth then you eat it with nonsoggy injera. Its not that great. But man, when they add sheep stomach and intestines it becomes a whole lot worse! It was just soaking in stomach juice and tasted awful! I finished it all though while my comp (who is from Africa) struggled to finish one bite.

Well I gotta go. Thanks for wishing me a happy birthday! I Love you all!

Love,

Elder McLain

Me and Galilah (President Desta's daughter)

My favorite human on earth. She speaks zero english 

Check out my little ponytail

 Galilah

Sister Weynshet cooked dinner for us!

Missionary Work Isn't Easy Because Salvation Isn't Easy. What Can I Do To Make A Difference

Hey guys,

First things first - I just want to take some time and write a real deal weekly email. I owe it and have really slacked lately. I can give you guys the full run down and all that jazz this week. It is my birthday this week! I turn 20 on Saturday! I will probably celebrate by going to a place called MKs Pizza for dinner and paying the extreme amount of about $7 on a Large Meat Lovers pizza. And I will get a coke too! ha.

To catch some people up, I am serving in Ethiopia now. About a month ago I took a plane up here to Addis Ababa and am now serving in a place called Beklobet. BKB is the slums or ghetto of Addis Ababa (not trying to scare you Mom) but it is a really great place. Addis is a lot more developed than anything I ever saw in Uganda. I am serving in a big city now! It is weird and entirely different from Uganda. I really do miss Uganda and especially Masaka. I loved that place to the grave and am so grateful to have served there.

The work in Beklobet is sort of slow right now. Actually to be honest it is incredibly slow. It has picked up a lot since I first got here. The church is struggling in a way here. Right now there are 5 branches. Each branch has about 30 people in attendance. To put it in perspective there are over 100 million people in this country and my home ward in Provo has more active members than this whole country. Ha! That is a crazy thought. Right now there are 10 missionaries in the country. The upside of that and something my Dad mentioned last week is that 100 million people and 10 missionaries leaves us with a bazillion people to talk to and a load of missionary work! The church is at a low here for many reasons. Government, religion, pride, unrest to name a few.

The Orthodox church has pretty much become the culture here. It is a large majority of the population and they have massive catholic style churches every where. It is one of those religions that heavily runs the lifestyle of the members. They dress weird, sort of like Muslims. They tattoo crosses on their face. Pretty much (and I mean no offense to anyone) a lot of their doctrine just heavily contradicts the Bible and our Saviors teachings.

When I first came to this country I felt like I just had a million enemies around me. It wasn't 5 minutes out the door on my first day that someone was screaming at me to leave the country. I was taken back by the amount of tribulations missionaries go through here. I was mad at first and had a horrible attitude. I had a thought the other day that has really changed me though. I was asking myself what I could do here that would be unique or new and make a difference as a missionary. I was frustrated and almost angry at God. I kept asking myself why it was so hard. Two things came to me. The first is I wanted to figure out how to get these people who are so set in their ways to change. I realized one thing and it is that though these people are set in a wrong way, they have faith. These people are so faithful to their church. Rain or shine, day or night, drunk or sober, healthy or sick, these people give everything to their church. I thought that the only way I could make a difference would be to be set in my ways as strong as these people are set in theirs. When I am as faithful, as serious and even as stubborn as these people, that is when they will see light and that is when they will want to change. The other thought that came to me was a talk given by Elder Holland titled Missionary Work and the Atonement. My companion and I were listening to this talk the other day and it really gave me some confidence. Elder Holland addressed the same question I was asking myself a few nights early. He answered it by saying that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not easy. That is the honest truth. It can't be easy to share the gospel because salvation is not easy. It takes work and takes digging deeper when things get a bit harder. So my attitude of the work and church has changed a lot in the last few weeks. I have started to love it here!

One downer this past week, we got roughed up (in other words mugged) the other day but we just complied and it all went well. Got my wallet taken and our phones. My area is a bit in the hood so it can be sketchy sometimes. Nothing too serious would ever happen though. As long as we cooperate people wont hurt us. Don't worry, I feel fine and safe and confident here!

Our investigators are doing okay. Our teaching pool changed around this week. We lost some investigators and gained some. One of my favorites, Tesfaye the Pastor, told us his wife and kids would kick him out if he joined our church so he politely declined. I was a bit sad but that's just the way it goes. Its okay. We had a recent convert named Slomon invite two friends to church on Sunday. They came for the last hour and that was awesome. Referrals don't happen very often here so we are grateful for that! As well we had a man we were trying to meet last week named Tefasse. He was a great guy but we couldn't find the time to meet. When we lost our phone we lost his contact. That was rough. We had no way of seeing him and he had no idea where the church was. On Sunday he magically found the church in Meganagna and attended! He told the missionaries there we forgot about him and he was angry! We were able to get his contact back and will start teaching him this week! As for most all of our other investigators they have stopped meeting with us. So that is our work for right now.

Well, that is my update for the week. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I am really grateful for it and will have a great birthday out here in Ethiopia. I hope everyone has a great week and celebrated my birthday on Saturday by drinking a soda or getting Chick Fil A. Have a great week! Love you all.

Love,

Elder McLain

P.S. Thanks for the abundance birthday wishes and emails. I felt VERY loved!