Hey,
This week has gone by really fast it seems like. The branch is doing
ok. It’s a little harder finding people to teach in the city, but the
people we teach are some really good people. Munhava was hard to say
goodbye too. I really got to know the people there pretty well. I really want to go back now though, because it seems like the branch was doing super well. Way good. I would have liked to have been there to see that, but it seems like people are in the right callings and learning and growing and all that jazz, yet I would have liked to have been there to see that, but it’s still gratifying to see them grow. Beira 1 is a challenge. The Brother of Chico Mapenda (Branch President I worked with in Munhava) is the 1st Councilor in Beira 1. His name
is Gimo Mapenda and so that is kind of cool. I introduced myself last
Sunday and he said that his brother had already mentioned that I was
coming over to work with him, so it was kind of fun to make a connection. The situation right now in the branch is that we have zero leadership. The Branch President is traveling and hasn’t been at church for about a month and could be gone at least another month or so and so Gimo Mapenda is holding things down right now. The Elders Quorum President traveled too, and so the 1st councilor there is holding things down. The branch just called a professor to the E.Q. and so its just those two trying to do stuff. Then our Branch Mission Leader, who is a returned missionary, is moving out of our branch and into Munhava and so Munhava is getting a lot stronger and Beira is losing the little leadership we have. So we’ll see. The thing I don’t understand is that one of our two strong priesthood leaders is in the High Council (which doesn’t do anything here). We don’t really have a functioning presidency in any organization and they’re pulling needed guys to be high councilors. We’ll see what happens. There are not any missionaries in the Branch Presidency either, which I think is a mistake, because right now Gimo Mapenda doesn’t have any support. He’s doing literally everything without support. So we’ll see what president ends up doing. Interesting side note on The Mapenda brothers though. Elder Briggs has the Church Almanac and it has a little part about Mozambique on it. Apparently the Church was brought to Mozambique when Chico Mapenda (B.P. in Munhava) brought it over from Germany where he’d been studying. He came home, shared it with his family and then He and Gimo Mapenda (1st Councilor in Beira 1) preached the gospel and set up congregations and acted as traveling ministers until some missionaries came over and set up the Beira district. Pretty crazy. I had no idea about President Mapenda when I was working with him but it was pretty cool to find out his history. So ya, I was working with the man who brought the church to Mozambique. The District Leader thing is going fine. I’ll be doing my first division this week so we’ll see how that goes. I’ll walk with Elder Jensen Wed. and so that ought to be fun. We were together in Munhava when I first came in. I also knew him a little from the MTC. So it ought to be fun. Elder Briggs is doing super well. I like the kid a lot. We get a long great and so it’s super nice being alone in a house when you like your comp. I’ll probably get a new comp next transfer so we’ll see how that goes... But things are going well.
Elder Okazaki.