Settling back into life here in Uganda

Hey Everyone!

Another pretty good week here. Again, a classic week as a missionary. We just went about our business and got some good work done. I have for sure settled back into my life here in Uganda so things are going well.

Hmmm, I don't have much to report this week. My mind is just seriously blank right now and I don't have anything to add. Today we drove out to Masaka to visit some crocodiles. It was pretty cool! And that is about it for unique stuff this week.  

Sadly, I have to run because we have an appointment in about 20 minutes... We are getting REFERRALS like crazy. We are asking though and working hard for them. This morning a member called us and set us up to teach someone tonight at 6:30... Sweet! We also found a new family! They are really powerful and actually know our Bishop so they can be fellowshipped well now. They aren't married legally so we might need to work on that. Wedding soon??! Everyone else is still progressing well and things are going good for us. Sorry the update is so short. 

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder McLain

Some kids....somewhere

baby croc. 

They wouldn't let me hold the big one...

 Everyone fell asleep on the bus.

 I enjoyed the ride

 Bickin back

A comp pic (Elder Barnum)

Slow Days Fast Weeks

Hello!

Eish the weeks are going fast now. I am in that classic "slow days, fast weeks" feeling right now. It is quite funny because in a way it's nice and in a way I just can get exhausted and really burnt out before the day is over. Maybe an effect of working out harder in the mornings. I dunno. By the way, I bought some protein (vanilla whey) and take it morning and night with some morning work out. Obviously it is too soon to see a difference but the nice thing is there is an elder in my district that lifted and all that jazz back home. He is giving me good advice on how to effectively lift and use the protein. Maybe it'll help me put a little meat on my bones - haha.

Anyways, the week was good. We found some promising people. First is a family of 6! The Alfred family. So Alfred is from the east. He has a farm in Mbale, Uganda and is preparing for harvest so he is back and forth all the time. He has a wife living in Jinja and 6ish kids. A lot or all are of baptismal age. He has heard about the church in the past and wants to know more. We have shared with them twice and they came to church on Sunday! It was great for them. They said they even have more kids coming back from Jinja this weekend to teach. We are going to set a baptismal date for the family this week. They have one small problem, they want to be baptized in fresh water, not tap water because Christ was baptized in fresh water. To make things easier on them, we will probably just go to Lake Victoria and have a member perform the baptisms there. It will be powerful! 

Second is Flavia, or Faith. She is also from those ends of Mbale/Palissa. She is a super smart, educated, well mannered and cool girl. She is 22 and has a bachelors degree in something medical and is already working and very independent. This week we taught her a lesson which could have been my most spirit felt lesson in a long time. We tried to begin with a lesson on the Restoration. She politely declined saying she wanted to skip the "basics" and go straight to the word of God. We kept telling her that it wasn't "basics" but something she should learn before we began. Then she dropped the child of record card and said she would struggle to learn from us knowing that both of us were born into our church and not converted. She was being super duper difficult. So I calmed everything down and just testified of the uniqueness of our message and that if she took 15 minutes to listen, we would share with her things she had never heard. She finally decided to listen and we went on teaching her a most powerful Restoration lesson. We had a returned missionary member with us who helped teach and it went so well. She was incredibly attentive and then pieced so many things together that we didn't even teach. For instance, she realized that all of the talk in the Bible about a restitution and restoration of all things is answered according to our doctrine. So to wrap up about her, she is super duper uper luper powerful and we are excited for her. She will easily be a future leader in the church.

Next is David. He is a younger guy, probably around my age. He is Catholic but was taken by the Book of Mormon. He loves the messages and is so interested in the new doctrine he is learning. We picked him up in town this week and walked with him to church. He enjoyed it a lot. Another promising investigator.

We also have a lot of Muslim investigators right now. Like 4 to be exact. I think I talked a little bit about Helen last week. She is fun to teach because she knows nothing about Christianity, the role of Christ, the Bible and so forth. So we are teaching her absolutely from scratch. Mostly about the Godhead and the Atonement. It is really fun and new to me. She is great and is progressing well!

That is my update on the work here. Everything is going good!

I hope you have a good week! Love you all!

Love,

Elder McLain

Meeting my MTC Brothers. 

First time seeing Elder Mbuli and Elder Mokoena since we left the MTC

Also Elder Gooch

Made some Ethiopian food for the district

This is my normal

Hey! 

It was a good day yesterday and great to talk to everyone! A good call home!  A bit odd actually. It didn't feel as "special" as the other ones. Not in a bad way but it felt really normal almost like it is something I do frequently, hah. I wish the audio would have been a little bit better BUT beggars can't be choosers! The audio was a bit rough but all in all it worked out okay. I was spoiled the last time with good wifi at the Marriott soooo this time it was a bit worse. It's okay though! I was happy to have enough time not to feel rushed or anything at the end. Funny enough we literally ran out of stuff to talk about. That was a first! I enjoyed it a lot though. It sort of recharged me for my last few months before I come home. 

This week was good. The missionary work was very normal and we worked well. At this point in my mission everything seems very normal and not much stands out to me or gets me so excited. Not in a bad way, haha. I think you understand what I mean. Like if a monkey came and jumped on me... For me that is super normal but for you guys it is unique. I just don't think to write home about such things and soon forget they even happened. 

As far as work went this week we found a few new investigators. The first is the Congolese family I told you about over the call. We have an appointment with hem on Tuesday and I am excited for it. Another is named Aisha (goodness, another Aisha). She is a Muslim in a way. She was born Muslim but has never really practiced. When both of her parents died she just dropped it all together and has been without religion for a while. We picked her up Sunday morning and walked with her to church. She loved it and loved how friendly everyone was. So we are excited for her. Another is Joseph. I might have mentioned him earlier. He is from South Sudan and is really a smart guy. He is 28 and in the later years of his college. He is really interested in the church. Currently he is Jehovah's Witness but has found many flaws in that church. Right now he is pretty happy with what he has found in ours. Right now, that is the small update on our work this side. 

Well, I believe that is it for the week. Again, it was great to see your guys yesterday. Have a good week! I Love you all!!

Love,

Elder McLain

CRAZY CONNECTION OF THE DAY! Courage's current companion is Elder Cooper's older brother! Elder Cooper is the adopted Ethiopian that came on his mission with me. I met him at the airport and we have been pretty much best buds since we met. He is from Salem Utah and we will probably be good friends at home. And his older brother (not adopted) is Courage's companion! How awesome is that?!

Elder Tamakloe (Courage - on the right) with Elder Cooper 

I am too blessed!

Hey guys,

Well it was a pretty eventful week for me in Nsambya. I am still seriously adjusting to the life and culture of serving here in Uganda. I have easily been the most culture shocked on my return to Uganda than any other time in my life. I think it is because going to Ethiopia I hadn't really immersed myself into any culture and was still pretty much a typical American teenager. But now coming back to Uganda, even after knowing the culture before hand, I had fully immersed myself in the culture of Ethiopia and am really confused and whacked up on how to act/talk/travel here. All things I do I am pretty much noticed haha. My companions and the members can easily tell that I have not been in Uganda a long time. In fact, most of the Nsambya ward thinks that my companion is training me!  I just let them all think what they want, haah!

So first things first, I fell sick this week! Funny enough I started out on Tuesday with a bad cold. I had a fever, chills, sore throat, head aches, plugged ears and all that jazz. It lasted a good 3 days and kept me inside most of the time and out of the hot sun. On the third day I woke up with a paining eye. Wasn't sure what was wrong and so I just went about my day. By Saturday my eye was just super duper fat and in the most pain I have been in on my mission. Seriously it was so painful! I called Sister Collings and she had me go to the doctor to get it checked. I guess I got Staph in my eye....  or rather on my eye lid. It was one of the more painful things I have experienced in a long time. I really didn't think something so small could hurt so bad. Every single tiny movement just made my whole face ache. So I pretty much spent Friday - Sunday laying on the couch with an ice pack and a good book. It was an eventful weekend! I was able to go to church though. Can't miss that one! Right now it is all a bit better. I think by tomorrow i should be back to regular proselyting schedule. So that is my week for the most part!

Now I can tell you a little bit about my ward. Nsambya ward. As I said earlier in my serving here, I was trained in the neighboring area Makindye. While I served in Makindye I was ALWAYS jealous of Nsambya. It had a higher attendance, nicer and cleaner area, more active members, etc. You name it Nsambya had it. So I was thrilled beyond thrilled to find out I would serve here. And now, 18 months later it is still the best! Our ward is about 115 active members strong. Kind of funny that this ward alone has more active members than the entire country of Ethiopia! gulp.... Anyways, it is powerful here. We have about 12 ward missionaries assigned from the branch to help us and almost any of them can help at any time. And they do! We have members from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Congo, Kenya, Ghana and Liberia. So across the board we have members who can speak most any language found in West, Central and East Africa. And that helps us a lot. We can find people who will help us teach in Luganda, Swahili, French, Kiswahili, Kinyarwanda, Amharic, Tigrigna, and so on. So yeah, we got the hook ups. We have some seriously awesome members. Some of my favorites for the time are these: 

Castro: He is a Ugandan that was baptized a little less than a year ago. He is around our age and super energetic about the work. He can help us any time and is really fun to be around.

Patrick: Hahaha Patrick is a joker. He has been a member for years and is in his late 20's. He knows missionaries and the mission cultures really well and pretty much fits in perfectly as a missionary. He is a good friend.

Aisha: She is from Burundi. She speaks 1 million languages (not really of course) and was formerly Muslim. She is super willing to help us at any time. 

Bishop Omuya: He is a younger and energetic Bishop. He is a returned missionary and is powerful when it comes to helping the work here. I think that is why the work is so strong in this ward. If the Bishop or Branch President is active in the work, it will do well.

And there are a few other members but because of time I will just go forward. I will probably talk about them over time. So, the ward is doing really well!

As for investigators, we are a bit low right now. I came into a somewhat slow area. And then immediately fell sick and we haven't been able to do much work yet. So this week will be a critical week for us and we will be doing a lot of finding and teaching to progress the area we are in. Just a few investigators we have are these:

Joseph: He is a South Sudanese man who has been living in Uganda for some time. He is 28 and educated. He is super duper powerful. I can't imagine he would not be baptized in the coming weeks. He was found while walking home and "talking to everyone". 

Alfred and family: They were an old family that was learning for a while and dropped. They have now been contacted again and we are reteaching them. It is a family of 8, 6 are of age to be baptized. They progress slowly but could soon be baptized.

Aisha: She is from Western Uganda and is the niece of a recent convert. She is Muslim but loves church and is willing to learn more. She came to church this Sunday and we will start the lessons with her soon. She is 18 and has a 1 year old baby. Great girl.

And so that is my wrap up of the work and the ward I am in. I hope it's sufficient and you can get an idea of what work is going on here. It is all going pretty well. Side note, I live in a super nice and brand new apartment that is in the middle of the bush. Imagine that! It is sooooo sweet. Nice shower, kitchen and all that jazz. I am too blessed!

Have a great week everyone! 

Love,
Elder McLain

Classic Uganda

My Ethiopians friends here in Uganda. 

Keeping me up on my amharic!

 Alpha's birthday party

 Visiting Nylam's house

 Got a Staph infection in my eye. 

Looked like a goob for a couple days. Still do actually.

 At Nylam's again.

Not sure what I'm doing 

I met Jackson Long (formerly Elder Long) today!
 It was pretty cool to see an older missionary again. I miss those days!

My last meal in Ethiopia.

Yummy Tibbs Firfir

I'm a white guy in Uganda who speaks Amharic!

Hey group!

I am back in Uganda! It is pretty wild to be back actually. I honestly feel like I served some sort of inception mission and I have returned from my mission back to Uganda... It is pretty weird and funny. Right now my main focuses are getting used to the culture again and being able to understand people. I had no idea how weird I was until I came back and everyone is saying I act and talk weird. My manners are like specific to Ethiopia. I stand every time someone enters the room and always have a hand tucked behind my back as I pick and pass things. AND I TALK TO EVERYONE HAHAHAHA.

In Ethiopia NO ONE speaks English and so when you hear someone speaking English you get all excited and go contact them. Now I hear English everywhere and I just greet and talk to everyone! I am going off with missionary work here. I can't tell if my comp likes it or not but it usually makes him laugh so I will keep doing it. By the way, my companion is really great. He is from Vegas and loves cars so we talk a lot about em... we enjoy each other!

Nsambya is THE BEST area for a missionary coming from Ethiopia. Lemme tell you why. There are Ethiopians and Eritreans EVERYWHERE!!! There are like 10 Ethiopian restaurants in my area and sooooo many refugees everywhere. I speak Amharic all throughout the day. And it just shocks people when they meet a white guy in Uganda who can speak their language. In fact we were doing some finding the other day and found an Eritrean family. They invited us in then all of a sudden I started going in Amharic and they nearly died. It was probably my favorite appointment I have had my whole mission. We talked forever (in Amharic) so my comp just sat there shocked. The missionaries here don't believe me when I say I can speak the language well from up there and so when we meet Ethiopians and I carry out a legit conversation for a good hour it surprises them. Hahaha. But this lesson with the Eritrean family went a good - 1.5 hours and fully in Amharic. They loved me and the language so much but didn't care much for the message. They were of course Orthodox. But I did get fed some injera and messir wat which was amazing! I love the area!

Our work is kind of starting fresh. It seems like I always come in to areas that have no investigators and am told "pick it up or your area will close at the end of the transfer"..... So that is the case right now. We have just been doing finding and finding and finding. Ugandans are really nice and love to invite you in but are usually too afraid to say no to things. I am having to get used to everyone saying yes and not exactly being serious about it. Church was a bit of a disappointment when almost none of our new investigators showed. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say it rained in the morning. So, that is about how the work is going right now. Not much of an update on the investigators because we don't have really any... Hahaha. This week we will be looking though!

That is the current update. Things are as hot as ever back here in Uganda but I am so happy to be back! 

Love you guys. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder McLain

Headed back to Uganda......So excited to be a muzungu again!

Hey Everyone!

Fewf what a week it has been. A pretty insane one really. We had a lot of great things happen but also a few pretty wild upsets in the work. I'll have to be brief again this week due to a PACKED P-Day! I spent the full day in immigration getting ready to go and buying some last minute things to get my fill of Ethiopia!

Well, let me see. This week we had a few lessons with Tigist. She was close to being baptized either this week or the coming one and then out of no where in her lesson she just said she couldn't be baptized or join the church at all because she would receive too much persecution from friends and family so she would just continue to be Orthodox to keep her "culture". That was a kick in the face. She was doing so well! So we taught a really powerful lesson on persecution and sacrifice bringing forth blessings. I shared about Stephen from the book of Acts and what he went through in his last moments. It was a great lesson. We have left her to fast and pray about it. We also have been fasting for her. 

Another dinger lesson this week was with a family. The mother's name is Emebet and the father is Ephraim. They are struggling in their marriage and want to divorce. We have been helping them do otherwise by sharing. Emebet loved our message. She was even brought to tears in every lesson. Ephraim enjoyed it up to a point then he asked his friends and was filled with a ton of false doctrine. He called us last week and scheduled what ended up being the worst lesson I have had on my mission. We went to the house in the evening and entered the home. He kicked his wife and daughters out leaving only a new man, his false doctrine source. We began the lesson with a video on the Restoration which didn't help much. Then they just came guns loaded and blasted us left and right. To be honest things got pretty heated and it just went like that for almost 2 hours. They REFUSED to believe anything we said and kept showing us the things on the internet saying we can't hide what we believe. So, I learned on Wednesday that we have a Quran of our own written by Joseph Smith under the pen name Mormon, we worship Joseph Smith... I could go on but I'll just stop right there. Anyways, at the end of the lesson he just kicked us out of the house. Emebet pulled us back in to feed us and he just kept roasting her in Amharic and so I started roasting him in Amharic and he was surprised to hear that I could understand the horrible things he was saying to his wife. It left her in tears and left us 3 missionaries just pretty beat and sad. None of us talked for the rest of the walk home and then went to bed. ROUGH lesson... Hahahahaha but life goes on.

That is my update on the work. And now I am headed to Uganda tomorrow to teach such a great group of people again. I have heard great things about my area and my companion. I am in a compound with 8 missionaries!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And there are 12 total missionaries in the Nsambya ward! More than I have served around in almost a year just in my area! I cant wait! I am so excited to be a muzungu again and eat rolex! So I will update you on it next week.

That is it!

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder McLain

 Saying goodbye

I will miss this family!

My last week in Ethiopia

Hey!

It was another good week. Unfortunately the power went out a few hours back and we had to taxi to another area so I am just now able to email. And for that I only have 20 minutes! Ah! SO I will be mega brief.....

Things are going good. I actually go back to Uganda a week from tomorrow. SO one more week here... Its been cool here but I am soooo excited to go back to Uganda! My new area is MY DREAM area in the mission. It is in Kampala and called Nsambya! I cant wait. My new companion is named Elder Burnum... I don't know anything about him but that he is about 6 months on his mission. I cant wait!!

The work is going good here. I have seen both of my recent converts and they are doing great. In fact, Emiyu still travels 15 km distance to church blind when her helper can't take her. By herself.... She is amazing!

I am sad to be leaving behind my Amharic. I am just now getting really comfortable with it. I will continue to practice in Uganda too. Oh, and there is an Ethiopian restaurant in my new area! haha

I got my package finally! Thanks!!! The doritos made me laugh!! hahaha they were a bit crummy but delicious! Thanks again!

Anyways sorry i gotta run. I love you all so much! Talk to you next week!!!! 

Love,

Elder McLain

BY THE WAY I AM 128 LBS RIGHT NOW 

A great quote from the Quran:

"If God had willed, he could have made you a single community. But he desired to test you in what he has given you. So, compete with one another in good deeds. You will all return to God and he will inform you regarding the things wherein you used to disagree."

The Ethiopia Zone - 7 STRONG!