Eight Baptisms

My email got hacked today. The hacker said I was in Mexico and needed money. Too bad he didn’t make his guess a little more wild an say Africa, then he may have escaped with a few dollars or two.

I spent the majority of the morning using the wifi and the church to sort out the problem. I finished right before it was time to give my relief society lesson during third hour. My lesson was chapter 13, Blessings of the Temple. While it sounds like an easy topic, it is actually quite difficult to speak about in Africa where most members only dream of attending the temple one day. Temples are just so far and expensive for people to travel to. The closest to Malawi is in Johannesburg South Africa, a 60-80 hour round trip journey depending on how many breakdowns the bus has. The trip costs around $100, which is 1/6 of the average income here.  
I just checked yesterday, and Malawi was ranked the poorest country in the world in 2014. I am astounded each and every day that Andrew and I get to be here and learn from some of the world’s most humble people.

We left the church late again, around 4:00pm after spending several hours watching eight new members get baptized, talking with the members, and updating our blog from the previous week. We are starting to really learn the African lifestyle, leave for church at 7:00am and arrive home at 5:00pm (with an hour walk on either in).

Today was our first experience with having no dinner. George and flossy’s daughter Lusungu left for South Africa yesterday and so now there is no one around to encourage the maid to cook. So…. It looks like Tomorrow we will go to the market! I am actually very excited to start cooking again.

(Below: Andrew’s post)

This morning was filled with more excitement than I would’ve liked for a Sunday morning! After a very peaceful and fun walk to church this morning, we opened Kylie’s email to find that her email account had been hacked and several messages were sent to her contacts requesting money from them. 

What followed was about an hour of password changing, worrying, and family contacting. Not exactly the easiest day to feel the spirit, but at least we were able to get everything fixed and back in working order. 

That was a huge relief. 

Thankfully, after church there was a baptismal service for 8 people who were joining the church today! That made for ah exciting turnaround and made a once stressful morning, into a great, spirit filled one. 

An even better surprise was the fact that Mike, the CBF driver, decided to come see what was going on at church and joined us for the baptismal service. Afterwards, chatting with him he shared that he felt great and wanted to learn a little more about what we believe and why it helps us be happy. 

Following church Kylie and I walked home, many hours after the time we set out for the church building. At home we shared a simple meal if peanut butter, bananas, bread and oranges since we need to stock up on supplies tomorrow. 

All things considered it went from being a roller coaster of a morning to a great Sunday evening.