Elder CJ Rees

Tuesday - Got an emergency call from President Senna.  Had to do divisions with some missionaries all day. There has been lots and lots of rain today, but some great work! These missionaries were having some problems in the area.  Wednesday - Woke up at 4 am to take these Elders to the airport because of the problems happening. Afterward we switched out for our new car!! ( photo )  Maputo received automatics, but we still have stick shift - getting pretty good at driving one now! Thursday -Worked in our area and held interviews. Did an interview for a family of 15! it was incredible and they were all baptized this Saturday. But other than that it was a normal day of great work.  It was a way long day, but we dropped 3 baptismal dates with Dinnho and Palmeira and Joao for the 11th of January so we are getting really excited for them. Friday - Our scheduled baptism with Ancha is leaving for Tete today and isn't returning so it was kinda sad to say ou...

Elder Rees was able to call briefly and he mentioned he wrote a letter, but lost it when the energy dropped.  So this is the brief information CJ relayed: 1.   The Maputo, Mozambique Mission is the highest baptizing mission in the church for 2019!   Manga & Beira Zones   They have increased significantly from when President Senna began serving.  He said that Pres and Sis Senna are incredibly driven and hard working people. 2.  They had their special Christmas Zone Party and Conference.   They had fun decorations, really nice food, games, and instead of going to see real animals - they brought in The Lion King movie and watched it in Portuguese!  CJ said he even got some of the jokes!  The missionaries loved the movie!! 3.  The picture with CJ in the hole.  This is what they have to do to bury garbage.  He likes some of the physical labor.          ...

We have had a Wet Week!! Tuesday  - we had the most incredible storm.  The Lightening was so close I could hear it hit and crackle over and over.  I just kept praying it was not coming for us.   I am not sure I have ever been in a storm like it before.  It dropped 2 feet of rain also.  That is a problem here because there is no where for the water to go and it is filthy!  When I was driving in an area with lots of water, I saw a person washed away and go down the river that had been created.  I have never seen that much water in a storm that short. Wednesday I had an interview in an area and we could not drive to it.  So we parked as close as possible and we walked.  We had our water proof boots that go all the way to our knees on and thought we would be fine.  We stepped in and then the water was almost up to our waist.  We had to lift our bags over our head to cross and it almost swept me down.  I knew I was not s...

This has been a great week!   President & Sister Senna have been with us from Tuesday to Saturday.  The best part is they took us out to eat every night!  Tuesday I drove Sister Senna around to check the cleanliness of homes.  She is a germophobe - I am not sure how she got sent to this mission!  The first place we went was the Sisters home (it is usually the cleanest!) Sister Senna walked in a saw a spider web and exclaimed, "Pessoas!  Pessoas!  Pessoas!...."  and she just shook her head.  That means people, people, people!  I was prepared from so much worse as the day went, but she was really kind even though she was firm.  She told us lots of stories as we drove.  She is really cool! President now is pushing for people to get baptized.  They want to build a new stake in Manga/Beira area for when the new mission president comes this summer.  He said we need 300 more people in our area!  He sai...