Week 35

Time keeps on Slippin'... Into the Future

The sky was pretty today.

Dearly Beloved friends, family, and aquaintances,

My turn for the Monster Burger

My heart is full this evening as I address you from my usual Internet Cafe here in Masaka Town. ___ Nope... Can't continue that writing style...

It's been a pretty good week!The weeks are starting to run together, I feel like the week just began; hence the title... Today we played sports for a little bit. Elder Weight and I got dressed fast though so we could go back to cafe frickadellen and try our hand at tackling the Monster Burger for strong men. We both did it! Yay! I am really full right now. I was mistaken when I opened this email: That wasn't my heart, it was my stomach.

Anywho, on with the weekly report!

Baptism of Patrick and Swabrah

This week has just been bad for finding new investigators... people are just all over the place... The school holiday change just happened so everybody is between here and the village and it's a mess. The work moves on though!

For you Utah peeps:
This caught my eye while walking
down the street. People are everywhere
 here selling stuff that was donated.

This week Patrick was baptized! He has been investigating and taking lessons from the sisters for a long time, but he finally made the commitment to being baptized. He had been faithfully coming to church and reading the Book of Mormon but he just wasn't making the commitment to go for it. Last week he had a dream that changed the story: He dreamt about his baptism, and saw me performing the baptism. He hadn't been to a baptism before, but he knew that God was telling him it was the right choice. I also had the privelege of baptising sister Swabrah from Nyendo. It was an amazing baptismal service!

Anyway, it is time for me to go once again, but I love you guys! Have a spectacular week full of really good stuff! Email me!

Love,

Elder Winn

Me trying on Brenda's sunglasses.

Week 34

All the miracles out of nowhere (-Kansas)

 Elder Obeng and I trying hard to finish the Matooke

Working off the Matooke. The "Gym and Eat" Method.

This week has been a bit crazy! 

I had an Exchange with Elder Obeng on Wednesday. That was fun. After Lunch we went to see an investigator of theirs, and she pulled out a huge plate of matooke and some beans. we slaved away for about 30 minutes. I just barely managed to finish it, but Elder Obeng saw one of the kids going back for more and quickly took the chance to unload the last quarter of his portion on him. Lucky man... I was almost done at that point and was able to muscle it down anyway, but it certainly took a mind over matter mindset. The rest of the exchange was fun, but that was probably the highlight. I did learn a lot though.

Masaka Zone Confernce
(Picture from Sister Collings)

We also had our Zone Conference this week. President and Sister Collings came here this time. Even the AP's joined us. It was a good conference, we just met at the church. As the conference neared an end we picked up and moved our conference to Cafe Frikadellen so they could take our orders and start cooking. Now Cafe Frikadellen is famous for this "Monster Burger"... Sadly they could only make five because it is so big. The Chicken Burger was delicious though. Sometime soon I will give you a picture of me tackling it next time we go, but for now: here is Elder Kagson to show you it's size.

Elder Kagson vs. the Monster Burger. 

(Coming soon: My turn!)

A bit of a miracle this week is that on Tuesday we couldn't get a hold of anybody so we just decided to do a whole bunch of finding. Things weren't going well though. We were getting rejection after rejection, a phenomena that is quite abnormal for Uganda. I guess the area had been pretty well tracted by previous missionaries. Nobody seemed interested but we kept good morale as we were just glad they weren't pretending to be interestedwhen in reality we would never see them again. We pushed on until we found an interesting little guy named CB- a Chemistry teacher at a local school. He had to go quickly but we shared a small

Masaka Zone Conference...Powerful Missionaries
Picture from President Collings

message with him and he was very interested. CB decided he knew some guys who would also be interested so he took us back to meet eight young men around 18-20 years old. They all had great questions to ask and were very open to meeting again and learning more. After a full day of hard, unsuccesful work, we ended up finding nine new investigators right at the end of the evening (the goal we set that morning was eight). Whatever the situation: make sure you don't give up too soon. Even if hope seems slim, continue in faith and do your best. The lord will make up the rest! Those are this weeks words of wisdom!

I hope everything is going well for all of you. I'll talk to you next week!

It's foggy lately...

Love,

Elder Winn

Masaka Branch

Week 33

Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys

Zone Beach Activity

Hey guys!

I hope this E-mail makes a little bit of sense! I am writing really fast since we got back a bit late from our zone

Beach-front Selfies! 

People always seem to hop in my photos!

activity at Namugabo Beach (on lake victoria). Yes, this weeks subject line is a bit of a stretch, but it's what popped in my head at the beach! We had a swell time there. We ate​​ some nice food, played some fun games, took a TON of Pictures, and best of all: there was a swingset! It was a blast! 

This has been a really good week for us. we had nine baptisms in our branch this week, two of which were our investigators. Paul became an investigator just before I got to Masaka and has come a long way in his journey to Christ. He has hit many roadblocks along the way, but he is truly a changed man. Jeremiah is the 13 year old son of a convert, for quite some time he has resisted joining the church with his family. He continued attending the Catholic church until recently when he made the decision that he needed to be baptized like his mother and siblings. He may be young, but he has a tremendous understanding of the gospel. We reviewed everything with him, but I think he taught us more than we taught him in the process! He'll be a powerful missionary!

With Paul and Jeremiah before the baptism

On top of our two, there were seven others baptized this week; One of which was sister Juliet who was taught online by a brother in Utah.This Brother, Richard, was able to come and perform not only her baptism, but the baptisms of all of those seven. It was a very neat Baptismal service. The spirit was very strong in the meeting!

Anyway, The work is going so well here in Masaka. I am very grateful to be blessed with this opportunity to serve others. I have to go, but I hope you all have an amazing week!

Baptismal service picture. 

Week 32
I'm not dead yet (I can dance and I can sing) -Spamalot

The new District...Is still Crazy!

Sister Emily and Sister Lizee's Baptizm (Missing Emily)

It's been an interesting week. A new branch just opened in Kijjabwemi (Chee-Juh-Bweh-Me) so we did a lot of work in helping the other district prepare for an Open House on Saturday. We spent a lot of time in their area... It felt like we were there more than ours! It was all worth it though, the event went very well and their meeting attendance was double what it has been with them meeting on our building. They had 101 people at church. Go Kijjabwemi!

Elder Mukuna seems to really like
 stealing my Camera and Taking Selfies...
I've counted about 30 now!

This week I have been a little bit sick. Thursday night I just suddenly got really dizzy and cold, my throat kind of hurt, and I could just feel it getting worse and worse. I didn't need a thermometer to know I was burning up big time; These African Germs don't mess around! A while back I found some EmergenC vitamin C drinks someone must have left behind (Maybe placed by an angel, #Blessings). They weren't out-dated so I took a lofty portion with some Ibuprofen and went to bed. (My home Remedy as well!) The next morning I was feeling near normal, but I kept up the treatment. By the end of night two I was feeling the effects again (just not as bad). It has just slowly been getting better from there. I think I'm finally over it, but I'll just tell you whatever it was was a lot more persistent than any average American bug that I've ever experienced. Still haven't had to take a sick day! Woo Hoo! 

The sisters had a couple Baptisms this week and they both asked me to perform them. Sister Emily and Sister Lizee are both super powerful Converts! The sisters know how to teach!

I apologize that my letter last week didn't seem to go through. Don't worry, I'm not dead!

The new District...

Week 31
Everywhere You Look (Full House Theme Song)

The master photo bomber gets photo bombed

That's right! I am living in a Full house!

Transfers just happened, and that means I have a new companion, plus four more missionaries living in the house! Our zone is getting bigger and bigger! Two more came into my district, and two to the other branch. 10 in one, 6 in

Senene (grasshopper) traps. I think...

the other. I love this area!

My new companion is Elder Weight. We were in the MTC together, so that's cool. Being a district leader requires a little more effort with two more elders, but it's still fun! The great thing is that I was able to get a guitar this week! I found out that a while back a missionary left his behind, so when they went to town for transfers, Elder Denison was able to bring it back for me! So now I've been jamming out to kids songs from the Children's Songbook! I didn't realize how much skill I'd lost, but It seems to be coming back quickly with my small practice time. I can play an F bar chord again! (If you have any idea what that means...)

The work is going good. I've been having so much fun, and I am excited to see what our little band of brothers (Elders) and sisters can do this transfer! It'll be great! Hope you enjoyed my short but semi-sweet email!

Have a great week!

Love, Elder Winn

Elder Bimpeh and I

Cry Me a River...

Our reaction to no update email.
For some reason, Elder Winn's Email did not come through last week.  It showed it had sent but we did not receive it.  He forwarded the last one to me so I updated the blog with his original stuff on the top.  

But there were some things that made our hearts happy this week.  We did get some personal messages from him and a Facebook picture from President Collings.

President Collings posted this picture on his Facebook page with the comment "Great run with the Masaka Zone."  Elder Winn is peaking in.  This made me wonder if he actually ran or if he just photo bombed the picture.  President Collings assured me that he did in fact run and that he is an amazing missionary.  These are the things that make a momma's heart happy.

 Enjoying the guitar... Thanks Elder Randall!

Before he left on a mission, Elder Winn played his guitars...A LOT.  Imagine how happy I was to receive this picture of him.  He wrote "A previous missionary left it, I heard about it, and I had them bring it on transfer day."  He has been jamming to Christmas Hymns and Primary songs.

He also says "I've been trying to learn (to play piano) on the little keyboard in the chapel. I can almost play Nearer My God to Thee.  Half the bass notes on ours don't work so that makes it a little tough to know I'm reading all the notes right."


Thank you for your prayers, good thoughts, emails, letters, and other support that you have offered Elder Winn.  We are all looking forward to hearing from him next week.