Pictures of Josh's b-day celebration with the chocolate chip cookies they made that I sent to them....they also made homemade rootbeer!Dear Family!
This week has been good. it has been great actually. It started off with elder Holland coming and visiting us. which was amazing. He went threw John 3 and 4 with us and gave his training from those two chapters. He started with John 3 which is where Nicodemus comes to Christ in the middle of the night and asks how a man can be saved. then Christs answer was to be born again. then Nicodemus asked how somebody could go back into their mothers womb. Elder Holland then said "Nicodemus' response is possibly the stupidest thing said in all of canonical scripture.Here he is, a member of the Sanhedrin, a very educated pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, and he is asking. . . what about my mother?" it was pretty funny. he then went to John 4 which talks about the women at the well. As Christ told her that He had water that would make it so that she would never thirst she got confuse just like Nicodemus had. she responded by asking how He could give her water when he had no cup. Then after wards Christs apostles come back with food and Christ tells them that He has meat that they know not of. and the apostles respond with the same confusion. They ask where He got the meat from and why He didn't tell them about it. He then explained that one of the major problems of the day was that the people took everything too literally. They had been raised that way, it was part of their culture and their traditions. Elder Holland then went back through all of the stories to show how Christ taught each of these people using simple examples that they would be able to understand and by doing so He "lifted" them, and helped them to come to a higher level and a better understanding of the gospel. By the time Christ left any of them, they understood what he had originally told them. He compared that to us as missionaries and how we need to "lift" people to a higher level of understanding and to help them to have a more sure knowledge of Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father and their love for us. He related this all to "teaching people, not lessons" which is one of the new focuses that was brought out in July at the mission presidents training.
It was a great meeting and it was wonderful to be with Elder Holland and Elder Snow of the presidency of the seventy for those few hours. It was a meeting filled with the spirit and filled with joy and excitement. A lot of the missionaries were scared at Elder Holland coming i guess because they thought he was just going to blast us the whole time, and they were very surprised at how funny he was. He doesn't show his humor as much in his conference talks as some of the others, but he really was super funny.
The rest of the week was good as-well. We went to Dar for zone conference and exchanges and what not and that all went well. it was fun to be on exchanges with those guys too. The day wasn't the busiest, but i was with elder Trickett and he loves to tract, i think even more than he loves to teach although he denies it, so we kept busy and working.
This week is crazy too. We were suppose to have time to e-mail yesaterday but then there were visa problems with a few of the elders and so we had to go and pick them up from their areas and bring them back to our place for the night and then get them to the airport by 5:30 am so that they could go to Tanzania so they wont be here illegally. We had a zone conference this morning and that went very well. i would say it was the best one this transfer, except that the area health guy talked for more than an hour on bleaching our fruits and vegetables. not that we shouldn't be doing it, just that it could have been covered in under ten minutes. We are about to leave to take another elder to the airport because he missed the flight this morning because he was suppose to be at the zone conference today. then tomorrow we have to figure out transfers and then on Thursday we leave for Chyulu to do exchanges there. i should be back by Saturday to e-mail and take a p-day, but that might change because we might go straight to the kilungu hills to stay for the next week. if we do that i will be e-mailing on Tuesday because that is their p-day in kilungu. It will be crazy, but i wouldn't have it any other way.
i had a few questions. first, when is my homecoming thing? or do you not know yet? and also i was wondering if Greg's engaged roommate decided to sell me the contract? and if not then can we go to Logan for a weekend to go apartment hunting? and i was also wondering if you could send me a copy of your flight plans, here and back. i guess sister broadbent is planning on going back for a short visit in may and they wanted to see your flight plans because she might want to do the same way we are through Amsterdam instead of through London.
anyways, i have to go. but i love you soooooooooooooooo much!!!!! i will write again when i get time.
Love,
Elder Harris
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