Elder Grilliot in Uganda

Elder Grilliot in Uganda

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

New Area- Lugazi

    Finally in my new area! It feels so strange to leave an area after being there for so long. I miss all of my old converts in Seeta, and the members that I grew close to from there. But at the same time I'm really excited about being in Lugazi.
    The church is extremely young here in Lugazi.  The branch has been opened for less than a year so far. To give you an Idea of how small the branch is here, when it opened it had about 10 members of the church living here. 3 of them have moved, and about 20 have been baptized since it's been opened. So there are less than 30 members of the branch here. There are two or three that are less-active, but from what I've heard the rest are fairly active.
    Lugazi is really, really small. There are lots of people that live here but about half of the town is slums and the population is extreamly compact. You could walk around the whole town in a matter of hours but there are probebly like 25 to 30 thousand people living here. It's a conjested little settlement.
    The whole town is based around a sugar plantation there. There is a massive sugar plantation that sits in Lugazi that employs about two thirds of the town. The whole town is sorrounded by sugar cane, for miles and miles and miles and miles. You can drive for 30 min outside of Lugazi and still see the sugar cane that is processed for this sugar plantation. The whole town's economy is based solely on this one company. Someone told me that Lugazi supplys all of the sugar for Uganda and for large parts of Kenya and Rwanda. So pretty much everyone in this town works for this sugar plantation.
    Just in my first few days in Lugazi we found a few really good families. One of them is Robert and his wife Jennifer (They're both teachers who work in Njeru, but they live in Lugazi), and the other is
Innocent and his wife Topista (Innocent is a firefighter and his wife is a elementry school teacher). They are both really intelegent and recepive famillies, and I know that they could really help out the branch here in Lugazi and help it to grow. Please pray for them.
    Also please pray for this branch in Lugazi. It is still young and is struggling alot. The members here need to help us to do missionary work, but they havn't been too cooperative yet. Plus over half of the branch are recent converts and still need lots of help and support.
    My companion is a good guy, Elder Alfred. He's been out almost as long as I've been (he's been out for like 9 months) so he's pretty experienced, and we work well together. It's a nice change in contrast to training twice in a row.
    Miss all you guys back home and I send my love and prayers your way. Keep looking for and praying for missionary opritunities each day. The Lord needs your help and your service.

-From Elder Grilliot

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