Week 53- Mbale, Uganda with Elders Hall and Asare

Lemme tell you a little about my week, it's not nearly as good as yours but it was interesting. Tuesday morning, we did service at an orphanage. This orphanage is unique. It's super bush and it houses about 80 kids. Most of the kids are between 10 and 15 years old. We farmed for them mostly. It's really cool because they can grow all their own food on the property. Also tried to ride a REALLY mean cow and got wrecked. Wednesday, we went to a little village called Namabwasa that's in our area and spent the morning there. We worked with some of the members and taught a part member family. Then that day we went to Jinja which is halfway to Kampala because MLC was the next day. We spent the night there, then the next day went to Kampala for MLC. MLC was super amazing; President Collings gave some really cool trainings. He talked about the washing of the feet ordinance and then about doing the will of the Father. That day was my year mark so to celebrate after MLC I had an Oreo milkshake in Jinja. The next day we drove back to Mbale and taught a bunch of people. That day we had a baptism for Peace and Desire, so we had to get everything set up. Super cool experience at the baptism. It was soooo chaotic, as you can imagine, just having the service outside in the middle of nowhere. The whole-time people were just going crazy and were super disrespectful to the fact we were having a baptismal service. But after they got baptized and went up to bear testimony the spirit was so strong. Even amid all the chaos you could feel it so strong. It was like having one foot in hot water and then one in cold. The baptisms were hard though, because there was only like a foot of water, we had to baptize them sitting down, and one of the girls cried because the water was cold.  We didn't go to the formation of the Busia district because it's really far, but it is in my zone.
In answer to your questions- the branch does have the Come follow Me manual, we do not though. They aren't giving them to us yet and I don't know if they will even allow us time to study them. I hope they do! It takes us a good 30 minutes to set up the tent each week. We don't take it down though, someone else does since we always have presidency meetings with the Branch Presidency right after church.

Elder Walter Chatora has been called to be the new Uganda, Kampala Mission President when President Collings is released in July. Elder Chatora is from Zimbabwe and is the last man on the far right in this picture.