Week 94 Iganga, Uganda with Elder Bukasa

Week 89 - Iganga, Uganda with Elder Bukasa

We are continuing to teach people in the deaf community. We have 12 people coming to church every week that we are teaching in sign language. President Chatora wants us to teach sign to members of the ward so that there are members who can minister to them before they are baptized otherwise they would be isolated after I am gone. We just started a new transfer this week and Bukasa and I will be staying in Iganga so we can continue teaching in sign language. I might even be here until the end of my mission. I really enjoyed interviews with President and Zone conference. I can tell how much President cares about us.
This week we had a great opportunity to serve the 3 sisters we baptized a while back. They had a giant hardwood tree in their yard, it is a tree that poisonous caterpillars breed in , so it needed to be removed. Our whole district worked on cutting it down with a little hatchet and a machete!!  It took the whole day to remove it, it was so much work. Everyone was spent, but it felt really good to get it done.
As I reflect back on my mission I've thought about what I've gained, and what advice I'd give a preparing missionary...Baylor that's you.
#1 Make personal prayer and scripture study a priority. These daily devotions have become as important to me as my physical workout. It sustains me daily and through the hard things as well.
I wish I would have taken this more seriously before my mission.
#2 A mission is a spiritual fast track. Set legitimate goals about what you want to get out of and give in your mission. Set goals about what kind of missionary you will be. And believe me -the more you give, the more you get from your service.
#3 Try to develop charity. A mission is about loving and serving the people around you. Learn to love people who are difficult or different.
When I live the gospel the best I can, when I try to be like our Savior Jesus Christ and act the way He would-I have the best days of my mission and get the most out of my service. I teach better. I love my mission! I have found that working my spirit is much like working my physical  muscles.  The harder you work at it the bigger your muscles get. Spiritual or physical.

Week 85- Iganga, Uganda with Elder Bukasa

As you can see there were a lot of baptisms this week. The really tall guy is Elder Maw, He is super awesome and is one of the Elders in our district. And the other guy on the bike with me and Bukasa is our guard, Raymond. He often proselytizes with us and sometimes translates for us. We rented bikes one day this week to get out to sister Petro’s home. It is about a 20 mile trip. We had some great opportunities to serve this week. It was All-Africa Helping Hands day on August 17th. For our project we cleaned a school up. We picked up piles of old bricks and garbage. We also prepared a sisters field for planting by turning the soil and weeding the ground. We pulled all her cow weeds- they are like thistles. Don’t freak out when I tell you this, I had to break up a fight this week. I had to stop a guy from beating his girlfriend. I didn’t want to get involved but I couldn’t stand there and watch him hit this lady. So I grabbed him from behind and held him down until he was calm. Probably the craziest thing I’ve ever been involved in.

Week 84- Iganga, Uganda with Elder Bukasa

Sometimes Missionary life seems the same day after day. We get up pray, exercise, pray, study, pray, eat, pray, walk, teach, pray, eat, pray, teach, walk, pray, eat, walk, pray, find, teach, walk, pray, sleep, repeat. There are a few miracles and a lot of great people squeezed in there. The miracle this week was I gave a talk in church on repentance and was able to sign the whole thing! I am really enjoying signing and teaching. We have 6 deaf people that we are currently teaching.
Shalom, Joana and Patricia, the sisters we baptized 2 weeks ago were confirmed on Sunday. That is them in the pictures above. We are averaging about 20 miles of walking each day. Our guards Fred and Raymond love to proselyte with us. They are both members and hope to be missionaries themselves soon. We have some really solid people we are working with on progressing towards baptism. All are attending church regularly! I love working with  Sister Petra right now. She walks an hour and a half to get to church. There is such sacrifice when it comes to many of the saints here in Africa.  Count your blessings and live with gratitude!

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

Week 80-Iganga, Uganda with Elder Bukasa

Our week was really busy. We had a lot of people who came to church last week and we've been working really hard on finding people so this week we narrowed down our focus on those who are prepared for the gospel and are serious. Tuesday, we went and taught some of the people who came to church and realized that they still believe in the law of Moses. They don't understand that it was done away with in Christ. So, they don't actually live the law of Moses themselves but because we don't "live the law of Moses" in our church I guess it was a deal breaker for them. The explanation was over their heads. Kind of weird that they believe Jesus Christ was the Savior and they still think they live the law of Moses. I tried to explain that the law of Moses meant if they broke the Sabbath they'd be put to death and they said they understood. Then I asked them if that meant they would need to be put to death if they didn't come this Sunday… they said yes if that's the law of Moses.... They also didn't come... We won't be teaching them next week... I won't say if it's because they were put to death or if it's because I dropped them....
 This week we had an awesome experience with this sister we are teaching. We invited her to pray about the church and the things we are teaching her. She had a special dream where someone in white robes confirmed what we were teaching her and told her she needed to be baptized. She and her three sisters came to church on Sunday and are now preparing to be baptized. Iron Man is not progressing, and we will not be teaching him again. Shocker. We're feeling super blessed right now as this is a tough area, but we feel very successful. I'm loving the book of Mormon more and more all the time and my testimony of the truthfulness of that record continues to grow. I've been reading a lot in Alma about pride and have really focused on developing humility. I know that probably made you giggle and go ya right. love you momma! 

Week 79- Iganga, Uganda with Elder Bukasa

  

We have been very successful at finding people to teach in Iganga. We had 6 investigators come to church this week-although it was definitely not the best fast and testimony meeting. There are some growing pains in the church here and we had a drunkard do a comedy routine instead of a testimony. I had to explain to our visitors that this was not the normal feeling in church. Hopefully they will come back. I talked to the bishop and explained that he needed to kindly intervene and stop it from happening again. Luckily we had 2 other testimonies that were great and powerful. This week we were able to teach Ironman again and his daughter. Although I don't think Ironman is serious about the lessons. He is fun to visit and workout with but  his daughter is very interested in the church.
President and Sister Collings have officially been released. I really look up to them and enjoyed serving with them. I had my 1st interview with our new mission president.  And our first zone conference. It was wonderful! We had such good discussion about being better missionaries.  He talked alot about how the Lord can make our weaknesses become strengths. There was a strong spirit and new energy. Sister Chatora is bold and powerful as well. I really enjoyed visiting with her -plus I love to listen to Zimbabweans speak-they have a super cool accent.They also seem very aware of the hardships and conditions we experience as missionaries in Africa. President Chatora feels it is important to be feed temporally so we have the energy and strength to work hard and be great missionaries. I love working with Elder Bukasa. He is a rockstar teacher, hard working with a powerful testimony. Plus he is fun and a roman-greco wrestler from the DRC. His English is coming along well. One thing that has been difficult in this area is buying chicken. so far I have to travel to Jina to buy it. Which became a problem this week as taxi drivers went on strike. Thankfully a member was going and said he would buy it for me. I am adjusting well to the new area and enjoying missionary work!