Fletcher Madsen formerly in Africa

Oi pessoal!  Well corona really wasn't a thing here... until it got here a few days ago. So got a bunch of food and now we're pretty much in quarantine. We were about to baptize Constantino, but then this corona thing happened, whyyyy. Constantino is still doing really awesome, but now we can only teach people by telephone, and we have to pay to do that, so it looks like we'll just be sitting inside all week not doing much.  At least I'll get a lot of time to study now. Thankfully we still get to stay here in Angola for a while, so we'll see what happens. Honestly I'd prefer to stay here, and then be able to start doing the Lord's work here again when corona stops destroying the world, but whatever the Lord wants is what I need to accept. Sadly we don't have much to do, but hey, we always have running water (most houses here don't) so I'll take lots of hot shower in these next few weeks. Maybe I'll even learn how to cook a bit, ...

Oi todo mundo! Elder Madsen chatting with his little brother Blake Hopefully none of you have the corona virus yet, I've never been so glad to be in Africa instead of the United States. On our way to a church meeting one night, the Sister missionaries called us to say that all our meetings are cancelled. I obviously thought they were joking, but when we got there our ward mission leader Paulo showed us all that's happening around the world because of corona.  Elder Gordon modeling his new watch So other than the world coming to an end, it was a pretty amazing week. I spent the week with my old MTC companion Elder Gordon, we got to reminisce on the good times at the MTC and how crazy but awesome the mission is. It was definitely an interesting week, but a super fun and spiritual one that I don't think I'll ever forget.  Because we're both Americans, the first thing we did was buy a bunch of ice cream and chow down. My stomach didn't exactl...

Oi gente! Josemar's house This week was pretty crazy. Elder Nhamitambo and I had a bit of a learning curve together, but I was starting to get to know him and be his friend. We taught a few new people and had some cool miracles. Eli, a recent convert, finally got back from Lubanga with her family, and her mom wants us to teach her and her sons, so that should be awesome this week. We also were able to set a baptismal date for our friend Constantino for March 28th! Seeing Constantino progress has been so cool, he's always super excited to see us, the only problem is him reading the Book of Mormon when we aren't there, he has a testimony but doing the small and simple things are what will help us the most throughout our lives.  Delano, J osemar's son At district council, Elder Korsten had us take pictures for his signing day to play college basketball (it was for Phoenix junior college, but he hopes to play there, then transfer to a bigger college, li...

Oi pessoal! So, this week I am sadly without Elder Lima, he got transferred 600 miles away to a province called Huambo. He says that the weather is finally cool enough to survive, and the people are really awesome there. I'll miss him, we became really good friends, even though there was a language barrier at first.  Now I'm with Elder Nhamitambo! Good luck pronouncing that one ha-ha. Even the people here can't pronounce his name. He's from Mozambique, so he speaks Portuguese, although he wants to learn English before the end of his mission, so now I'm the language professor, how the tides have changed.  We had a pretty awesome week. We had to say goodbye to a lot of people that we were teaching because they stopped showing interest and stopped progressing, but that meant that we were able to teach a lot more friends! We were able to teach some siblings of people we used to teach, and we got some referrals from other missionaries to teach some ne...