9 Baptisms

 There were 9 baptisms in our building yesterday!  Six of them are in our branch, so they were all confirmed today in church. 

The baptismal confirmations were followed by our monthly “testimony meeting” where members have a chance to share their feelings on the Savior and His gospel.  The testimonies shared were beautiful simple testimonies of the gospel, all from converts to the gospel.  Most of them joined the church less than five years ago.  Recently, some of them, including our branch president and his wife, had the chance to go to the temple for their first time (to the Johannesburg, South Africa, which is our nearest temple).  It was wonderful to feel the spirit as they talked about their feelings of the temple and how their testimonies were strengthened even more by going.  They encouraged everyone in the branch to do what they could to save money so they could go too.  It is definitely an expensive trip, so I admire them even more for the sacrifices they will have to make to get there.

Thomas and Rhea also bore their testimonies, in English, with Briant translating into Portuguese, followed by Bri giving his own.  This was the kids’ first time ever sharing their testimonies.  I think my girls have looked to Thomas to work up the courage to do it, but Thomas is a little shy and afraid of being in front of a large group of people, so it has taken him a while to work up the courage.  But he told us when we lived in Virginia that he wanted to bear his testimony in Angola.  One of the last things he said today was, “I know that Heavenly Father will help me learn Portuguese while I’m here in Angola.”  I have to say that I believe that is true.  While our girls seem to do well with languages, Thomas has always seemed to struggle more with having it “stick” in his brain or even to be able to pronounce words correctly—to a frustrating degree for him and to those of us trying to teach him.  :) Over the last month, he has really shown an increased interest in learning Portuguese and amazingly it is not the frustrating experience it has been.  We’re not expecting fluent Portuguese from our children by the end of our time here, but we certainly would love for them to understand more of the language and feel more comfortable speaking it—for their benefit.

We love being able to be a small part of the missionary efforts here.  The kids and I made bookmarks out of felt with stitching that spelled “Elder” on them to let them know we love them.

 Briant continues to enjoy working with the Elders and having their weekly correlation meeting and dinner.  These particular Elders we have had in our area for a while, so sadly we’re anticipating some sort of change this next month.

This last week, we had the missionaries over for correlation, along with Augosto from the branch presidency, and Illario our Elders Quorum president.  Illario also brought his wife, a native Namibian who only speaks English, and their adorable baby.  Seriously, his eyes and lips are amazing!  I told Briant that I think we continue to get other members of the branch here because they’ve heard about his cooking!  Surprisingly though, the Angolans and Mozambiqian Elders are not fans of American brownies!  Elder Cook, the only American missionary, was loving his life that night as he got to eat all of their brownies.  :)