Robert and Jennifer

   This last week has been pretty good. I met lots of the members of the branch here in the last week, Including the Branch President and several other Auxiliary Leaders. The branch might be young but it has some good leaders in place. The branch Pres. is a really well put together guy and I'm glad to be able to serve him. 

   To report on the two families that I mentioned last week: Innocent and Topista have been super busy this last week and we haven't been able to meet with them (they have been out of town for the holidays, but should be back later this week). Robert and Jennifer however are doing really well, They have read about 5 or 6 chapters from the Book of Mormon and are willing to come to church this Sunday. We are planning on taking the branch president and his wife (the Primary President) to their house tomorrow so that they can be their fellowshippers. I hope that they continue to progress as they are. 

   This week we met a lot of crazy people. I met a lot of super old drunk muslims (like 5 or 6 of them), and one lady that followed us a quarter of a mile down a road shouting at us in french. And another lady who became really upset at me when she found out that us missionaries just preach the gospel, and that we can't pay for her children's schooling, or pay for her rent. She called my companion and I con men.

   But overall it's been a nice week. Love hearing from each one of you guys. Keep emailing me.

From Elder Grilliot

Answer to Dad's questions:

I've heard a lot about Nelson Mandela as well. People in Uganda Love him because of the things that he had done for the black community. They also see him as one of the only non-corrupt Black African Leaders, so naturally they love him.

Yes my companion has been able to tell me a lot about Mugabe (I've also heard a lot of things about him from other Zimbabwean Missionaries). One thing that they always talk about is about the inflation that they went through (I think it was in 2008 or 2009 or somewhere around there). Basically Zimbabwean money became worthless because of inflation and ruined everyones life. It was tough for everyone there. But ya they don't love Mugabe, but they have to tolerate him. 

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

Nsenene

I had completely forgotten about Thanksgiving. If not I would have bought a turkey. It's strange to think about it but Thanksgiving was the first Holiday that I missed when I was on my mission. I missed it when I was still in the MTC. Next Thanksgiving I will be in America, just that thought makes me realize how fast time go's by and how little time I really have left on my mission.

Shoes are going nicely. Already busted one pair of shoes pretty badly, but the other pair is doing nicely. I hope it can last me another year.

Interesting fact about Lugazi, I didn't even know that they had a little league team in Uganda, let alone Lugazi!

My companion is actually from Zimbabwean, not South Africa (if that's what I said last week).

“Nsenene” or the season for cooked grass-hoppers. I love Nsenene! It's like popcorn, but a little more juicy. I watched how they catch them too. They put up all of these great big iron sheets surrounding a really bright light. The iron sheets act like mirrors reflecting the light. The grasshoppers see the light and fly towards them. Seeing the light reflecting from the iron sheets they fly head on towards them and run right into the sheets. After running into the iron sheets they fall to the ground where there is a great big plastic garbage bad hoisted up around the bottom of the iron sheets. Once in the bags they can't fly directly out because their bodies won't allow them to fly directly upwards, only at an angle. It's pretty cool to watch all of these grasshoppers by the hundreds get trapped like that one after another.

I looked in my suitcases as I was packing up and found another 2 memory cards (2gb), so I think I'm set for now.

Sorry pictures were having problems sending this week. Internet was really slow. Next week I should have some good pictures for you. Anything specific that you want pictures of?

Love you

Love- Elder Grilliot

Transfer to Lugazi

     Today I received transfer news, and it came as a very big surprise to me. I am finally being transferred again. This time to Lugazi. It is the newest area right now in the whole mission. It's been open for a little less than a year but it's growing pretty quickly. I'm excited to go there. My new companion is going to be Elder Alfred (I think he's form South Africa), and I'll be in a home with two other missionaries as well.

     I got a new camera this week. It works well but it's having some problems with battery charger they gave me, So I'm going to have to buy a new battery charger this week before I can take more pictures. But otherwise the camera works really well. It was made by this strange Chinese company but so far it works fine and all. I'll be sending pictures this next week to you guys.

     This week we found a bunch of less-actives. Like 6 or 7 of them. Some of them will be easy to reactivate (like a lady named Lovisa who basically told us that she stopped coming because her friend that she had at church moved away, and she felt lonely at church without a friend(she just needs a friend at church and then I'm sure she will come again)). But some I feel will be difficult (like a guy name Dennis who was seriously offended by something the Elders Quorum president had said, so he left the church and joined a born again church). However, there are some really nice things about trying to reactivate people. These people they already know the gospel, they just need to feel the spirit again and feel loved again.

     I wonder how things will be in Lugazi. Because of how new the branch is, I don't imagine that there could be too many less-actives there, I imagine that there would be a big need for new members. But I guess that we will see soon enough.

     Anyway, love you guys. Enjoy your week.

     

Good Week

Good to hear that everyone is alright after that tornado. Crazy to hear about all the damage that it caused there.

Do you and mom go to the temple often? I wish that I could go back to the temple at some point on my mission, but the nearest temple is a like a 5 hr plane ride to reach. When I get home I would love to visit the temple within the first few weeks of being home.

I'm adjusting a lot better now with the new type of missionary work. The changes in mission basically make it so that reactivation is key, as well as focusing on the wealthier homes. In the past it has kind of been about finding and baptizing whoever, but now it's about those wealthy people who can legitimately help out the branch more. Finding these people at home and teaching them can be a difficulty now though.

I was planning on celebrating my one year mark (by fasting like you said), but that day I got super sick and didn't even leave the house. I had some kind of stomach bug and threw up all day. I felt much better the next day though and haven't had any problems since, but it was kind of a downer of a one year mark.

Love you dad

Happy to hear that no one got hurt from the twisters. Funny to hear that you mention power outages though. I remember being home and having a power outage would be something kinda crazy (it almost never would happen). In  Uganda if we go a week without a power outage you think somethings not right. I once had power out for almost 3 weeks straight when I was serving in Lira.

It was kind of a good week with all the adjustment, lots of learning happened this week.

. Rick, Mimi, and Renae have all shared with me missionary moments from the last few weeks. 

Love you mom,

-Elder Grilliot

   This has been a fairly decent week for myself. As we begun adjusting to the changes and stuff this last week, I've learned a lot. I have relied more on Preach my Gospel this last week than I have my whole mission. I really feel like this next week is going to be better than the last.

   I finally reached my one year mark on my mission. It really doesn't feel like I've been out for a whole year though. Time has gone by extremely fast, and honestly I can't believe that I've been in Uganda for so long.

   This week we were given 5 names of people who are less active in the branch, people that we are to activate. Just names nothing else though. No phone number, no address (there are no addresses in Uganda), or anything. We have to rely a lot on the branch members to track down many of these people and bring them back to activity. It feels a lot like detective work though. For example there is this one guy named Martin that is less active in the branch. The only information that we received is the place that he used to work at (at a barber shop). We went to the barber shop yesterday and got information from the manager as to his phone number and after that we had to call him and track down his home. It was kind of fun though.

Anyway, I'm about to run out of time, but I thank you for all the support that you guys give me.

-Elder Grilliot

One Year Mark

So ya there are lots of changes in the mission. There is a big shift off of tracking and finding, and a much larger emphasis on working with the members to reactivate Less-actives. There is still lots of missionary work to be done, but the emphasis is on now baptizing the wealthy, learned, and strong minded people that will help establish the church in Uganda.

I like your idea of what to do on my one year mark. I think that I'll do that. It really helps me to focus on my calling.

Sorry to hear what's happening to the Vikings, sounds like they're having a bad year again. How much longer do they say Aaron Rodgers is going to be out (and Clay Mathews)? Sounds like green bay is having some bad luck right now.

Thanks for sending that world news. I haven't seen any evidence of terrorism in Uganda or anything but when/if I do I'll let you know.

Thanks as well for the money for a new Camera. I was looking at all the Cameras though in Kampala and the cheapest one was a little less than 300,000 shillings. I'll keep looking to see If I can find one cheaper though.    This has been a very difficult week for my companion and I. There have been some MAJOR changes in the mission as far as missionary work is done. It's hard to describe all of the changes that have begun happening but in short things have just made it a bit more difficult to find people to teach and stuff. I have a good feeling about this next week though. I think that I will start getting things figured out with this new type of missionary work.

   There is a member of our branch called Erasmus. He's a really cool guy and he's leaving on his mission to Sierra Leone in a few days. To celebrate with him we went to his home and we made/ ate hamburgers with him and his family. They were all supper amazed with the hamburgers that we made. They had never had one before in their lives, and they said that it was the best thing that they had ever eaten. It was pretty funny to watch their reaction the burgers. Could you imagine living and dying without ever eating a hamburger? Too many Ugandans do it. It really is pretty sad :(

Ya there are lots of Changes that were made this week alone. It feels like I'm part of a whole new mission to be honest. It's hard to be a district leader and training right now when all of these changes are happening. I know that I have to lead all these people but it's kind of hard when I myself am having a difficult time adjusting to so many changes. It can be a little stressful. If there is anything that I would like for you to pray for me about it would just be that I can adjust quickly to the changes in my mission and become effective at fulfilling the mission president's view for this mission.

Love you mom, only 12 more fast Sundays and then I will see you again (when you meet me at the airport in one year have a bag of McDonalds in your arms. I miss food :( sometimes I have a huge craving for fast food and there's nowhere to go to sate my taste buds).

-Anyway love you guys, have a great week!

A Lot of Changes

I forgot that Halloween even existed. It would be so awesome right now to be able to get a bunch of free candy and Chocolate.

How can you have Spanish sisters in an English speaking ward? Are they thinking of opening up a Spanish ward or something? Are there even enough Spanish speakers in Bloomington/Normal? Are they are members of the branch that speak Spanish (besides you, dad). How do Spanish speaking missionaries go proselyting in such an English speaking place? WHAAAT!

Sounds like things are going well back home.

Honestly it does not feel like it's been a year. Maybe that's just because I've only been in two areas... But I feel like I've only been in Uganda for a short time (but at the same time it feels like it's been an eternity since I've been home).

This has been a week of a lot of Change.

The Area 70 over the Africa Southeast area came down to Uganda and got together with the Mission president, The stake president (of the Uganda Kampala Stake) and each of the branch presidents/ bishops. They held a big conference with basically every leader of the church and talked about some stuff. One of the biggest things that were talked about was missionary work, and to summarize it all there's a lot of changes taking place in how missionary work is going to be done. A lot of Changes. All of the changes are focused on retaining members. There are lots of Less actives in this mission, too many. There are about 15,000 members of the church in in this mission, but the average sacrament meeting attendance for the mission is a little less than 3,000. There are a few reasons for this, but the two biggest are that people move to a place where the church doesn't exist yet, or because the hand off from the missionaries to the branch/ward wasn't smooth enough. The Changes are mostly focused of fixing those problems and on helping rescue the less-actives.

On November 15th I have officially been serving as a missionary for one year. Any Ideas of what I should do on that day?

I was thinking about it, you guys should tell me about your missionary moments that you have had during the week. (and those of you who already have done so continue doing so). I almost get the impression from some of you that you haven't been doing any member missionary work back home.

This was a good week. My companion is adjusting fast to life in Uganda, he's a quick learner. We have met some good people over the last few days. We met a guy called Steven this week who seems to be pretty solid. He came to church on Sunday and really loved it. He's a bit quiet, but I just know that he is really searching for the truth. Plus he was a referral to us, so he already has a fellow shipper and stuff which is awesome.

Love you guys have a great week.