Marromeu Week .5

This was a strange week mainly because I spent the most of it in Maputo again. We had several days at the start of the week with Elder Stevens and Elder Thornton to go over last minute questions, tips and then just tell them 'Well.... good luck!'

We also spent a large amount of time shopping and getting supplies collected for the branch such as printer ink, manuals, books and so forth.... Which came out to about 80 kilos..... Great, its not like we have to fly to get close to there.

This also gave us time to pack our bags. The definition of trunky was found... All my stuff packed into my suitcases waiting to go to the airport, exactly what I needed :)

However once we finally got going to Beira things went super smoothly to get to Marromeu. False.

We arrived a bit late due to us having to beg and plead to bring 130 kilos of baggage when we should have only had 46..... Ooops, but it was needed. Then we tried buying train tickets. HAHAHA nope, we were supposed to buy them the day before (thank you for the person who didn't tell us who gave us the 'guide to how to use the train'). We were told to come back, so we went to get lunch at 14:30. Then the Sisters called (Dofelmire, Mabaso, Dart and Kefu).... They had gotten their 4 wheel drive truck stuck, in the city. Parabéns. Second time Sister Dofelmire/Sister Dart.... Second time. It was pouring rain and after 40 minutes we got it out thanks to Elder Da Rosa. We had 2 minutes to buy food then got dropped off again at the train station to try again for tickets, thankfully this time it worked.

We loaded all our baggage up without problems and got into our train car... It was 1st class, how fancy... But it had spots to lay down. It was 19 when the train left and we had a long journey to go. We didn't however really get to sleep. The cabin had 4 beds, we were only 2. We had people going in and out of our cabin all night, the train had loud annoying music playing in the hallway all night.... Thanks train people.

At about 6 am we got to Marromeu, unloaded all the stuff then it rained on us and our stuff. Great start Marromeu. After an hour the branch president showed up and we paid 3 motorcycles to hall all the stuff to the chapel (150 MZN, super cheap)... We wanted to ride too, but its against the rules. Dang it.

Once we got everything in the house, we slept a bit, finally.  Then  we set up for General Conference. On Saturday and Sunday we watched all of General Conference, which is always fun in Portuguese with the translation, but there was a really good turnout of members (over 120). Sunday night we got going on organizing the paperwork of the branch (membership records and so forth).

We have a ton of work to do here, but it will be good for my last area!

Love you all,


Elder Howell

PS: No photos, I am waiting for my camera to get repaired... But I did find a film camera... I'll use that a bit!