"It came, it finely came!"-Toy Story "Stupid [holiday] of stupidness"-Phineas and Ferb "[18]!"-Cat in the Hat "They are so adorable at that age"-Treasure Planet

"Like the wind [it] came like the wind [it] touched all and like the wind [it] was gone."   I am of course talking about rain.   For about a week we had some pretty good rain out here, not enough to undo the drought, or to make the maize grow any better then it already is, but it was enough to help us have enough drinking water and such.   And now it has "gone like a freight train" and the sun is back out on full blast.   How can that happen so often?   I don't know.

Okay, so since it is now a school's out situation lots of people are now on Holiday and are gone.   So we go to have lessons and the people are gone, and we go to contact and set lessons and the people tell us they are just there for a little bit for Holiday or they do some other stuff like that.   So the holiday out here means lots of people gone and lots of missed stuff.   It is just how it is.   

In a few days I am gonna be 18 months on mission.   With only six left.   So in the words of my great friend, Elder Merritt "We are no longer sister missionaries".   Hope non of the current/returned sister missionaries who read this don't take offense to that, it is just how we are thinking of it.   Hard to believe a year and a half have already gone by, and the next six will probably go by fast too.

So there is a great member out here, Brother Chriewo and he has the cutest little granddaughters.   They are four and two and they actually know pretty good English, but mostly they use Shona.   So he invites us over quiet often, he is planning to go to the Temple this year, so we are helping him to prepare for that, and so we were visiting with him and his granddaughters come out and start trying to talk to me, and then I tell it was my birthday a day before and they start just whispering at me in Shona, and it was so cute, but I didn't know what they said.   They are so nice, to me, and it is just great.

This week we had our first baptism here in Mutare, at least first for me.   We had a few set backs.   First there was no water in the fount, so my companion and I and our Branch Mission Leader had to use water buckets and take three hours to fill it ourselves.
Then there was no baptismal clothing to be worn by the person being baptized.   So we had to run to another chapel to get some, and then after all that we had a great baptism.   We have been working really hard to establish our teaching pool(group of people who are taking the lessons) and it is a bit of a slow process, but slow and steady wins the race.   We are moving along pretty well.

"Be the same person in the dark that you are in the light"

-Thomas S Monson

I love the simple message of this quote.   President Monson is simply saying that we ought to be consistent.   I was always told growing up that integrity is who you are and what you do when no one is watching and it is so true.   We ought to be the same person in all times and all things.   I know that we need to be the same obedient person on a Friday Night, as on a Sunday Morning.   I know that as we are obedient in all tings we can be blessed.   The Stripling Warriors in Alma were blessed and protected because they "did observe to obey every word of command with exactness" and so they were preserved from death many times, when countless others around them fell.   I know that they were obedient both on and off the field of battle, and we need to be so too.   

"I checked behind the Cyclops eye, I did, but he wasn't there."

"Look guys, it isn't a competition, but if it was I WIN!" 

"Which door? There's more then one, Sandy Claws is behind the door shaped like this."

"So the next time the Man in the Moon tells you something, believe it."

I love you all.