Week 9

April 17th 2018 President Nelsen visits Zimbabwe 

Visiting the Prophet was so cool and a ton of fun.

We left our house at 5:30 in the morning and drove to the bus pick up. The bus left at 6:00 am and we arrived in Harare at 12 pm. We got to meet the prophet around 1:30 he talked to us and then we had to be back on the bus by 6 to drive back to the bus station. We got back at to the bus station at

 12:30 am then we drove home and were there by 1:00 am. Such a long day but it was so worth it!

Elder Holland talked to us as well and he said that we need to focus on our mission and give all our

time to the Lord. We can do this while we are young single missionaries. If we do this it can be life changing. 

We are running low on investigators so we need to find more we don't have a baptism this week but 

we have at least one next week. One of our investigators is about 30 years old and is struggling with some stuff and he doesn't ever want to leave his house. He resorts to drinking to forget about everything. We are trying to work with him to help get him ready for baptism on May 12th.

Most of the people here don't work and if they do they just sell things out of their houses like corn or little snacks. Most people walk everywhere or they go to town on a commuter van for 50 cents.

School here is a little different. they have 1-6 grade then they start forms. There is a form 1, form 2, form 3 and form 4. That is like all of junior high and high school. Then if they want to go to University they go to form 5 and 6 to prepare them for University. Right now all the kids are on break and go back in another month or so. They wear uniforms and I am pretty sure the schools separate the boys and girls until they reach the forms. The kids here are so cute and they always want to touch my hair because they've never felt white people hair before. 

By being on my mission I am learning to use everything as a example to teach the gospel.

Love you all,

Elder Rasmussen

Posted by Brooke

Week 8

This week has been really good!
We had zone conference and my Mission President told us that we need to give everyone a
baptismal date. The more dates we give out the more we are going to baptize. My Comp
and I decided to do this. We just walk up to a random person and ask them if they have been
baptized. If they say yes then we ask them, "who baptized you " and when they tell us who
baptized them we then ask "was he authorized by God to baptize."
Most of the time they say yes and then we ask if we can set up a time to meet with them.
This way we can see if the person doing the baptizing was really authorized by God. Then
we will set up another time to meet and talk about it.
If they say "no" they haven't been baptized we ask them if they "want to see God one day," they all tell us yes. We then tell them if they want to see God they will need to be baptized and we have the authority to do that for them if they would like. We set up an appointment to visit them and discuss baptism. We have found that this really does work, now we have 4 new investigators and we have only had three days to try it.

One of our investigators, Mtinzi is wanting to get baptized. Her son Leroy we baptized 3 weeks ago. She would like to be baptized but she isn't legally married. Here they get customarily married so that they don't have to pay lobola. We are working on that with her. A big problem is that her husband lives in Botswana and she only goes there once a month and she has already visited for the month. So we will have to wait until next month.
Next week is our transfer date but since I am training I will stay with my comp for 12 weeks so 2 transfers.
Love you all!
Elder Rasmussen
 

Week 7

 I am doing really well, this has been pretty good week. I am getting used to everything now the only thing I haven't adjusted to is eating a whole plate of sadza. That stuff fills you up so fast it's crazy! We eat it with our fingers and it is so hot that it burns my hands but all the Africans can eat it with no problem!

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The cool thing about Zimbabwe mission is that it is the highest baptizing mission in the world, and we have baptisms almost every Saturday. Which is so cool! We had 3 of our investigators get baptized on Saturday, Mathias and his son Emanuel and a kid named Wilson. 
We got to watch conference in a near by chapel. I really think the changes that are going to take place will help the church just like Pres. Nelson said.

This week we went with the other Elders that live in our house to a member's home who lives in their ward for dinner. After we ate, the man of the house pulled out two bags of snacks. In one bag there was dried up caterpillars, which were really gross! They left a nasty taste in your mouth. In the other bag there was little dried up fish like the size of Swedish fish. They tasted like a salty sunflower seed with a little fish flavor. I actually thought they were pretty good!

It's a beautiful place here. What is sad is that it is very poor here. Everyone asks us for money and if we will take with us back to the states. We just tell them we are leaving in two years and they walk away. Many people here have a TV and big speakers and smart phones but nothing else.       
 Love you all!
-Elder Rasmussen                                                                     

Week 6

It's been a pretty good week! We are working with about 10 investigators and we have baptismal dates set for all of them, which is really cool. This mission is a baptizing mission we baptize alot of people. Zimbabwe is ready for the gospel, most people accept it so fast.

The weather here has been good it rains every other day and when it rains here it floods the streets and you can't even see the road.

When the mission splits I will probably be in the new mission, the Zimbabwe Bulawayo Mission.
We do a little service here mostly for members who just want help from the missionaries. We help them water their gardens and stuff like that.

We didn't watch conference this week, instead we watch it this coming Saturday and Sunday.
 We also have 4 baptisms this week Mathias his son Emanuel and a boy named Wilson
 and a girl named Sindi. We are really excited to baptize them.

We went to a Animal Orphanage where they have tons of African animals that were injured in the wild and have been rehabilitated. Sometimes they let them go back to the wild but some of the animals won't make it in the wild so they keep them. It's kind of like a zoo but the animals are more active.We took a taxi for 30 minutes to get there and then on the way back we had to flag down this tiny little truck with a shell on the back. There were already 5 people in the back so we squished in and it smelled so bad! I think they used it to haul meaner, it was so gross! But it only cost us 2 bond notes so we didn't have to spend much.

Thanks for all the prayers! Love you all!
Elder Rasmussen