The thing that I love about the Uganda Kampala mission (and
all of the other African missions) is that even after baptism you are still
supposed to visit your recent converts and continue to teach them after
baptism. In fact they are still considered a recent convert for an entire year
after their baptism and for that entire year missionaries are still supposed to
continue teaching them. I really enjoy this because you get the opportunity to
be able to see the changes in their lives even after baptism. My parents
wanted to hear some stories about spiritual things, and some of the
most spiritual moments have been with some of my recent converts.
There's another Recent Convert named Dennis, who I baptized.
He used to live in Kampala in a place called Garden City, which is
like Kampala's Vegas strip. Casinos, strip clubs, and bars,
everywhere. During his time there he was a complete drunkard, he
lived on the streets and got wasted every night. During this time he
had a dream that a giant beer bottle tied a leash around him and pulled him
everywhere like a dog, and this dream frightened him enough to quit drinking
(for the most part) but because of this he got his life stabilized enough
that he was able to get a job, at a bar. After working at this bar for quite
some time he started noticing things about drunk people.
He realized that people who are drunk are ruining their lives and he
says that he could just feel a dark atmosphere around all alcohol in
general. It was at this point that he began to feel something inside of
himself screaming at him to stay away from alcohol Over time this
caused him to quit drinking all together, and at one point he said that going
to work at the bar even became a burden and that it caused him to feel awful
inside "like his soul was pleading with him." He wanted to quit his
job but knew that if he did he would have no source of income, but
over time he felt pressured to quit his job. So he prayed to God and said
"if I quit this job allow me to be able to find another one." And so
he did and within months he was able to get a top end job in South Sudan as a
contractor (which is an amazing job for someone to be able to land in
Africa). His contract lasted for 2 years where he was able to work hard and
earn lots of money, but over time his contract began to expire and he was
forced to move back to Uganda. Having no place to stay he decided to move in
with his brother who lived in Lira, got married found a place of his own and
has had 3 little children of his own. But still never forgetting the
importance of staying away from alcohol. Then not long ago, my companion
and I ran into Dennis and began teaching him. At first he seemed reluctant
to listen to what we had to teach him, in fact sometimes we almost
considered dropping him as an investigator altogether, because he
would intentionally try to run away from us at times. But for one reason or
another we continued to visit him until we finally decided to teach
him the word of wisdom (about the importance of staying away from alcohol, tobacco, harmful drugs, etc.). We taught a powerful lesson about the word
of wisdom to him, and my companion and I both could feel the spirit
very strongly. He then told us all about his background and his past struggles
with the word of wisdom, he told us that this was the first time that he's
heard of a church having the same values and ideas about the spiritual and
the physical as he did. It was at this point that
I completely saw Dennis begin to be converted. Since then he has almost
never missed church and he has been super active. I can really see that God
prepared him for us.
This week we finally got to see General Conference.
Saturday we started conference at 2 pm and watched the
Saturday morning session (loved it) then we had a small break between sessions
before we started the Saturday afternoon session. 10 min into the second
session though power went out at the church and the conference went
with it. For the next 30 min we sang hymns waiting for the power to come back
on, unfortunately though it never did and I missed the 2nd session.
Then the next day (Sunday) we had power once again so we were able to start the
Sunday morning session (Loved it) but unfortunately the disk for
the Sunday evening session was scratched into oblivion and
we couldn't watch it. So ultimately I was only able to watch the
2 morning sessions. I'll have to wait until I can read the Liahona magazine to
be able to hear the rest of the conference talks.
Love you guys have a great week.
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