"No Soliciting!"

 Jambo!

Last week I was horrible at taking pictures so I'm hoping this week to make up for that.

It's week 2 of not having ANY English work because we dropped the English ward completely, and are solely focusing on the Swahili lessons. It has been so stressful for language study, but honestly this was the push that I needed to really figure out how to speak Swahili. I have many basic gospel topics down, and am pretty comfortable teaching them. The 3-5 Swahili lessons a day makes me get a lot of practice.

Here's a funny door sign that we saw while we were knocking doors the other day. usually people just have no soliciting signs and since were not soliciting we knock anyways, but this door had it all covered  

There was one time when we almost got kicked out of our favorite apartment complex area because we met the manager there, and she was like "It's actually illegal to solicit on my property!" But apparently this happens quite a bit, so my incredible companion explained that we're literally not soliciting, and we have paperwork to prove it.   So yeah. That was exciting.

This is a fun random hand soap container that a family had in their bathroom. It's really interesting to see the inside of people's houses, because they usually always have a lot of African cloth on the walls and windows, then they have random American trinkets or wall signs that are like the Utah "Live Laugh Love" font. 

I just think it's a kind of funny combination.

This is me and Sister Millard during our insane reporting/voice messaging people Saturday night. So So So many people who we messaged. Usually we report and do phone contacts in the car right after we get home from our last lesson, but that day we decided to make it cozy by getting into PJs and eat dinner, then report while pacing back and forth in the backyard like crazy people. 

We messaged about 35 people (all in Swahili btw) about going to church. We just do voice messages for all of our friends, because probably 60 percent of the adults we teach aren't able to read.

Anyways. If you see missionaries on the street, please be kind, cause so much blood sweat and tears, and messaging people nonstop from 8-10:30pm, goes into their job.

One last picture.

So our district (the group of missionaries working in our area) likes to leave pass-along cards on each other's cars with a note.  This was one that we got on our car with the first note, then we put it on the French trio's car, and then they put it back on our car, with each set of missionaries adding to the card in their language. 

It translates as:  Jesus loves them/ and you too/ goodbye!

It's because we all go to the same apartment complexes and so when we see each other's cars just randomly very often.

Spiritual thought:

"Now it is better that a man should be judged of God than of man, for the judgments of God are always just, but the judgments of man are not always just." (Mosiah 29:12)

As a missionary, it's stressful 'cause it's kind of like "It's YOUR job to get EVERYONE baptized and if you don't get even one person baptized, then they won't receive the full blessings in heaven". 

But I don't think that's right. If I mess up in a lesson, and the person never sees the missionaries again, God's not gonna hold that against the person, or me. 

God is just, and obviously missionary work is important to help people in their lives in earth, but it's definitely not gonna be eternal damnation for the people who don't get baptized, which I am so happy about.