Missionary Work Through Soccer....Who Would Have Guessed!

Hello Family,

This time I will not be able to get photos up I left the camera card reader at home but I will try to remember next week if not I will send the SD card home in a letter!!  Anyway sounds like it has been a pretty crazy week at home!!!  The temple dedication sounds like it will be good and that the open house was good as well!!!!  Yes the work is progressing and going on!!  People are coming and going and they are doing pretty good!!  Anyway I am keeping the same Facebook and going from there!!  I will just be posting either pics of the mission or spiritual stuff every so often!!!  Other than that the heat is crazy and it just keeps getting hotter here!!!  Soccer here is pretty awesome and I am getting better surprisingly!!  I bought some cleats and they are pretty awesome I will get a pic of them home next week!!  The 80 US dollars that was taken out, should have been the cleats that I bought!!  To buy Mwambu's suit I pulled the cash off the ATM, so the money should have gone, but if it didn’t, I can’t explain as to why it is still there other than Heavenly Father is taking care of us missionaries!!!  The money that I pulled off should have depleted the amount on the card but it is still there so we will go with it!!  

The music thing, I have a DVD player that I use to play hymns and that sort of stuff so cd should work well!!!  It sounds like everyone is ready for school there and things will be falling into place!!!  I figured the boys wouldn’t want to start school yet, but I hope they will all enjoy it!!  Especially as sports start to begin!!!  Anyway the quotes that mom sends, yes I read them and yes I like them so if you would keep putting them on there!!  The one awesome story I have for this week is we got invited to go play soccer with the young men for an activity!!  It was pretty fun!!!  The young men thought it would be an easy win, to stick the white man from the U.S. and the big man from Tanzania with the other two elders who looked like they knew nothing about soccer to play against the young men!!!  Well ha-ha little did they know that all four of us elders could play soccer and could do something!!  They were pretty surprised when we won with 17 goals to 11!!!  I had 5 of them so it was awesome but the point I wanted to make is they had a lot of young men show up!!!  The awesome thing is the next morning on a Sunday every one of those young men were there and on time for church!!!  I have never seen so many of them in this branch since I got there!!!

I don’t have too much on that topic Dad, other than spirituality is best gained through humble prayer, the scripture that I use with this topic is D&C 112:10!!!  That is the best way I think there is to be able to gain spirituality and to be able to grow!!   This is because prayer brings us close to our Heavenly Father and when we get closer to our Heavenly Father we are enlightened and grow more than ever before!!  We only progress as fast as we gain knowledge so the faster we move towards Heavenly Father in being converted the more spirituality we gain along the journey!!!!  I told Kaden he could use my gun but pay attention to what I wrote on the reply to him it is funny!!  Tell everyone there I say Hi and I love all of you!!!  Have a great week!!!!

Elder Welling

Training Goes On...

Hey Family,

I hope everything is going ok and everything will start to slow down!!  Time rushes I can definitely see!!!  To start, yes I know the elder that mom has mentioned I saw him last pday he is cool not quite as tall as me but yes I saw him and he is doing well!!  Anyway my companion Elder Bakari is cool he is an awesome guy and loves the gospel!!!  His language is Swahili, something like that don’t kill me for spelling!!  He does not speak too good of English but he will learn.  I am in a flat with three Africans I am the only white guy there hahahha!!!  He has cooked and he cooks nice!!  The food here is good and now I am used to it, so it is ok!!!  Um I have not cooked too many things since he came, but I think the house that I am staying in, likes the cakes that I can make from scratch!!!  If you could give me a frosting recipe that would be awesome!!!

For the package um just the same brownies I really like the jerky and anything else you can think of!!  I also have a request for my birthday and Christmas!!  We play a lot of soccer down here and they have cleats that are really nice for only like $60 which is awesome so I was wondering if I could use some of that money for some cleats to play in, the bball shoes I brought are not helping!!  Anyway we had a recently baptized person get the Aaronic priesthood it was awesome to see!!  We are working on a lot of people right now but it is harder than usual because my companion only bears his testimony in English he can’t quite teach yet!!!  Other than this the work is going good!!!

Dad you talked about that group that has some church songs and some good music could maybe I get some of those songs in the next package you send me!!  That would be cool!!  Anyways I am going to just start uploading the photos onto Facebook it is easier and faster so if you can have someone get them off of there and put them on the blog that would be fun!!  I hope you all had fun school shopping and it kind of sucks that school is starting but right now I wish I was there because it is getting hotter here and there you will be heading into some cold weather!!!  I don’t know if I have answered all the questions but I hope I got most of them!!!  I don’t know why there hasn’t been money taken out that seems odd most of it should have when i bought the suit!!  That is cool that the younger guys get to play tackle I am sure Caleb looks funny!!  Tell them I say Hi!!!  Anyway I think that is all I have for this week guys have a great day and a great week!!  Love you all!!!

Elder Welling

Training New Companion...

Hi Family,

Well the week was great and all has been going good!!!  The new companion is good and he is shorter than usual and big!!  His name is Elder Bakari and I am training him!!!  He doesn’t speak English very well so they asked me to teach him and help him with English as well!!!!  He is a different character than Elder Mwambu!!!  I got Elder Mwambu his suit and it looks awesome!!  I was actually thinking on just switching him suits haha!!  It is a really nice suit, when I get the card reader working I will send pics!!  Brother Bongani has now been baptized and confirmed it was sweet!!  I didn’t do the confirmation but it was ok it was still cool!!  The work is pretty hard when you are training but I think I can manage!!  There are not really any crazy stories going on here but soccer is definitely high level down here so it is awesome to be able to play!!  The weather down here is pretty hot and getting hotter!!  We will see how things go as time goes on!!!  As of right now everyone that I know and have seen is getting transferred to Malawi!!  So it is getting hard with all these new faces!!!

I love the card board cut out haha it was weird seeing myself there but I wasn’t really there!!  All those pics are very funny and I wish I could have been there!!  It doesn’t make me homesick too bad; I will get over it, I am more homesick about what is coming in two months!!!  Everyone knows what that is!!  Anyway it looks like everybody had a fun time and I wish I could have been a part of the fish catching phenomenon that would have been awesome!!!  From what I can tell, Caleb put on a fish catching clinic and Kaden showed everyone up haha!!!  I say well done to the two little bros for their skills!!  I will give a little credit to the father baiting the fish and catching them as they come in!!!  hahaha  The pic with me and Jeff in the porta potty is not cool haha I don’t go to the bathroom with another man for that matter hahaha  I like the super hero one it is pretty awesome!!!  It isn’t the same seeing everyone there and I am not there!! 

Anyway, what all is happening there other than the reunion!!  haha I know that I shouldn’t ask, but when is the first elk meeting?  haha I am documenting this very carefully!!!  Tell everyone that I said hi and that I hope they are all doing well!!  I know I don’t write a lot and I am sorry but I try to get everything out in a short time!! Plus I am really lazy in writing things too!!  So I am sorry for that!!  To be honest about the pen it sounds very nice and I wish I could have you send it but Jay got me that nice pen before I left and i think I will finish with this one!!  So save it for me and I will use it when I get home!!  I will say my zone leader is from Idaho and loves the same things as me!!  Especially hunting we spent a whole pday talking about how we were going to miss the hunting seasons and stuff like that!!  Have a great week family and love you all, oh mom if you could send deodorant that would be nice here they just use the spray stuff in place of the deodorant and it is really weird thanks!!!  Love you all!!!!

Elder Welling

 Elder Welling, Elder Mwambu, Elder Packer (AP)

Purchasing New Beds with Elder Skidmore

Transfers this week...

Hey Mom and Dad,

I am doing well this week and I am getting back into the swing of things after the robbery!!  First of all there are two more elders with us and their names are Elder Mwaba and Elder Ouma,  Anyway I am going to be training a new Elder on Thursday and all those types of things!!! All I know is that he is Tanzanian and does not speak English very well.  Also I want to do something for my companion before he leaves I want you to put some money on the card, take it out of my savings please. I want to buy my companion a suit since the mission won’t reimburse him a suit.  I know that you won’t get to reply to this but that is what I am going to do so if you could put that on before tomorrow that would be great.

We had a baptism yesterday that I would love to send you some pics but this computer station is in the ghetto and sucks!!  His name is Brother Bongani Hakonze and is 19 years old and wants to serve a mission.

Elder Mwambu is being transferred to Malawi on Friday.  Yeah we are good and all is ready to go for the week!!!  If possible we are hoping for another baptism soon!!  Malawi is awesome or so I have heard!!  I am also going to start using Facebook just so you and mom are not alarmed so that I can start keeping track of the recent baptisms and companions there!!

Well I am glad you guys had a great week and all things went well!! I am going to miss the family reunion but you guys have fun!!!  Thank you and love you guys and have a great week!!!

Elder Welling

Dear, Sister Welling ,

 Am deeply grateful for your concern !! Jobs story in the bible was interesting to me to read but when all that I had was taken, this has been the hardest pill for me to swallow!! I surely believe job had great faith! Prophet Joseph Smith, for him to soldier on, it all required faith? I am just very far from these great examples of prophets! I still have much ,,much for me to work on my faith! No lies I am and will always be grateful for Elder Welling! He has been so kind, comforting  and loving to me! Our stay together has been memorable and will always be when I look back on my mission! He did help and teach me lot more than you would expect in a reserves case !! I got transferred to Malawi and I leave him in the area to train! Purchasing me a suit jacket here in Zambia is fine with me and I am thankful for that? Am not certain of how much it equates in us dollars but Colton and i will find out the right price. Thanks again for your kindness and love!!

With love

Elder Eriya Mwambu