Week 82- Iganga, Uganda with Elder Bukasa

This week marked the end of another transfer. Although I'm staying in Iganga with elder Bukasa it's starting to feel real. I'm getting close to home.
As far as missionary work goes, I don't think my week could've been any better. We are really focused on teaching the people who we are preparing for baptism and we didn't do much finding this week. Somehow, we still ended up teaching 10 new people -which itself is super amazing in this area. It's kind of funny, one of our challenges now is making time for everyone we want to teach, definitely a challenge missionaries in Iganga don't usually face. Today we baptized Shalom, Joana, Patricia, and Wasswa. The first three are sisters and have a super fun family and great testimonies. We had to see them every day to make sure they were totally ready and committed. Now that they're comfortable with us they shared some pretty sad stuff about their lives. Some of the things they went through growing up has helped them to have faith in God. It's stuff that I can't even relate to, they talked about how at one point when Shalom (the oldest sister) was 14, her parents left, and she had to take care of her four other sisters for 4 years. She didn't have a real job so every day she would fetch water until she made 500 shillings (15 cents in our money) and then she would buy cassava (it's like a big potato that's really chalky and hard to eat plain) and water for her and her sisters to eat. It really made me hurt for them, and it made me really appreciate the life we have. No matter how hard we think we have it someone always has it worse, the Savior having it worst of all. Even now they're not financially in a great position, although it is a ton better, but regardless of that they're always happy because they've got each other. 
We did something fun on Saturday while our investigators did the baptismal interviews, we played a game like dodgeball combined with monkey in the middle. The whole family played while they took turns being interviewed. It was super fun, and I obviously was super good at it.
Another really cool thing happened this week. I contacted a deaf guy a couple weeks ago, and last Sunday he randomly came to church. We met him and his other deaf friend on Saturday and had one of the coolest lessons of my whole mission. I'm now learning sign language! The lesson was a combination of us showing them where to read in the introduction to the book of Mormon, texting our testimony on our phone, and signing in the little that they taught us. But it was amazing, they understood very well, and they communicate better than some of the people who can speak. We were feeling really blessed as we walked out of the lesson my companion was yelling "God is great" in French the rest of the day, and I was super happy from it. The best part was today, Sunday, they came to church and brought another two friends, also deaf, with them. I sat by them and texted most of sacrament meeting so that they could translate it into sign and understand. Turns out we happened to have 4 girls from Utah show up randomly today. They are here for some medical project from BYU and two of them knew sign.  So, they signed the lessons and the whole baptismal service for them and then taught me a good amount so I can communicate better with them. It was kind of a little miracle. 
Today Bukasa and I had 15 investigators come to church. Don't think I've had that happen my entire mission. It was amazing. We also baptized four people today, so our Sunday was really good. There's lots of hard things about this area but when people come through and start to live the gospel it's all worth it. I finally feel like I'm figuring out how to be a missionary. My testimony of the gospel is growing, as is my testimony of the love and mercy God has for his children. This is the sweet part of missionary work that Ammon talks about, when the joy that you feel is overwhelming and consuming. I sure love the gospel and the Savior and am grateful for the plan of salvation and the atonement that allows us to return to live with Heavenly Father as families. Count your blessings!  Love Elder Payne