JOY

Hello family and Friends! Oh, my Easter started out depressing...I was struggling so hard to just focus and try to feel the spirit but was really down after a busy busy week that we had worked our butts off to fit in every second we could to go proselyte to only have 1 investigator in sacrament meeting, a wonderful young 21 year old guy who is just changing from Islam and its fun to watch the transformation, but we had taught so many people and so many people had promised to come that the service was just really rough for us to concentrate...but, after I was on the phone with some missionaries, when we realized one of our wonderful families was coming out of the other ward's sacrament meeting!:) The giant ripped father wearing a white shirt and carrying his small daughter in her little white dress and his step daughter at his side, I almost cried with excitement :) we got him with the other missionaries to take care of him for the rest of the day and then hugged my companion in sweet relief and excitement...our hard work this week had not been in vain...we had found a family...a man I had been prompted to engage for a long time now and we finally did it and he is truly prepared to receive the gospel, and I'm so thankful to my Heavenly Father for that tender mercy...It made the whole rest of Easter Sunday sweet as we testified to everyone about the Atonement and literal resurrection of our Living savior, Jesus Christ and it was a wonderful note to end the week on! Even if we were doing follow ups in the office until 10:28 at night haha... 

But...on to my week. Tuesday we caught some transport over to Wellington to go and attend Elder Mongalo's wonderful district meeting and he truly enlightened us and it was very edifying. He talked about our special message to the world, the restoration of the GOSPEL and not the restoration of the CHURCH, and he focused on how the gospel was the more important part of the messsage, and how we can sometimes fall into the routine of focusing too much on how the church was restored instead of the fullness of the everlasting gospel. so it was a good refesher and we saw plenty of spiritual miracles as we went out and fully applied it in our teaching throughout the week. Very sweet meeting and getting transport home didn't prove TOO difficult this time around. Wednesday was supposed to be a full day of proselyting but due to project after project and little disturbances we only got in around a couple hours in the end...but, we did our best with what we had. Thursday was another downer day as we went over to Mt. Aureol to go observe and aid in their weekly planning sessions but were forced to retreat to the office for an emergency missionary departing that day and had crazy day plugging in CDEs and doing weekly planning for ourselves and then no time to even go out, just straight to follow ups, so of course the Lord in his mercy blessed us with a magnificent Friday. 

Friday we got up early and caught Poda Poda around the back way of Grafton and made it to our sister training meeting 45 minutes early due to the easiness of the traffic that way, which was a mighty blessing. Elder Weller and Mosenthal joined us to instruct our wonderful sister trainer leaders and missionaries and it was a really superb meeting and we all left edified and wanting to do better and do more, so that was sweet! Then, we rushed home, enjoying wonderful Clif bars courtesy of mother dearst and went straight out to the field and got to see some wonderful people and had a very uplifiting day of teaching ALL families. Just mother and father and children at almost every appointment, so that was super sweet! came home, follow ups with sisters,  but we enjoy it all as much as we can... 

Saturday...not so sweet, we went over to the sisters apartment in congo cross in the morning to replace their lightbulbs...again, and then rushed into airtel in town to get all of our missionaries numbers registered and the process is so stupid and long that they have to manually put in each number and take my picture and get my thumb print...not once, but 15 STINKING TIMES! It took about 2 and a half hours as they would enter in ALL my information, take my picutre, wait for me to scan my thumb, and gosh they are so slow...and for the record, YOU DON"T HOLD DOWN THE CAPS LOCK BUTTON AND TRY TO USE IT LIKE SHIFT, IT JUST DOESN"T WORK! but, enough about that, I love these sweet people :) at least they are trying. So, with that frustration done, we finally got home and managed to salvage some of the day in the field and teach some wonderful people...so all in all a super duper busy week full of success and miracles and we are just trying to stay as busy as possible, with another insanely busy week of training, exchanges, and zone meetings and the like, so we are very excited for all of that! 

Football today was a lot of fun and I had a good day of dancing and goal scoring and the sun stayed away mostly so I'm not pink at least ;) but, Life is great and we are exhausted and I'm about to take a nap in this office to be honest, that would be really nice...maybe I will get my prayer mat and just pass out...so sweet, life is great, just keeping busy and working hard here, I love and pray for you all, thank you for your prayers and encouragement, it means so much to me!:) 

Love, 
Jesse 
Elder Sumrak

And how could I forget...Christiana Samba left for her mission Friday morning. I got her a mini hymnbook and preach my gospel and we said our goodbyes. She looked so mature and happy and scared and I'm just so proud of her. Only her sister came to see her off, and I imagine that nobody will be writing her throughout her mission except me, so anyone that wants to write this sister just let me know and I'll give you her email address :) So happy to think that she might have entered the temple today, or sometime this week! Oh, joy :)