So this week is my Dads brithday! I am so grateful and thankful for him and all that he has done for me in my life. For being a great example and leader and just fantastic all around! If you see him wish him a happy birthday! Congrats on being 50 haha! love you dad!! ❤ Hope you have the best birthday! So this week we got to meet some members of our new district. Elder Coombs. Sister Kiio. And Elder Gimeyi and his trainee Elder Wilde. It was great to meet with all of them and things will go great with us! We get along great! We met with Brother Matika and his wife Elizabeth again this Wednesday but we split up so i went with Elder Cotts and he interviewed her for baptism. We then talked about somethings. They want there baby Samuel to have a baby blessing and Brother Matika wants his patriarchal blessing! So i told him how he can get those things done. We then read some of the Book Of Mormon with them and there baby was making noises the whole time so it was abit hard. But something interesting happened. When we were closing with a prayer the baby didnt make one peep the entire prayer! Then right after we said amen it started making noise again! Thats the power of the holy ghost!! It was awesome! We lost our phone on Friday...it slipped out of Elder Otikas pocket on the bus and someone apparently wanted the crappiest phone that orbits the earth so yeah we gotta get a new one. But on Saturday and Sunday we had Stake Conference. It went well and they talked about the importance of self-reliance as well as how important it is for members to work with the full time missionaries as well as be missionaries themselves! I have been reading an Ensign that we have at our flat and am loving it. I would like to share something from a talk I liked as well as here is the link for the full talk. https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/11/general-womens-session/living-the-gospel-joyful?lang=eng You are loved. You are dear to your heavenly parents. The infinite and eternal Creator of light and life knows you! He is mindful of you. Yes, God loves you this very day and always. He is not waiting to love you until you have overcome your weaknesses and bad habits. He loves you today with a full understanding of your struggles. He is aware that you reach up to Him in heartfelt and hopeful prayer. He knows of the times you have held onto the fading light and believed—even in the midst of growing darkness. He knows of your sufferings. He knows of your remorse for the times you have fallen short or failed. And still He loves you. And God knows of your successes; though they may seem small to you, He acknowledges and cherishes each one of them. He loves you for extending yourself to others. He loves you for reaching out and helping others bear their heavy burdens—even when you are struggling with your own. He knows everything about you. He sees you clearly—He knows you as you really are. And He loves you—today and always! Do you suppose it matters to our Heavenly Father whether your makeup, clothes, hair, and nails are perfect? Do you think your value to Him changes based on how many followers you have on Instagram or Pinterest? Do you think He wants you to worry or get depressed if some un-friend or un-follow you on Facebook or Twitter? Do you think outward attractiveness, your dress size, or popularity make the slightest difference in your worth to the One who created the universe? He loves you not only for who you are this very day but also for the person of glory and light you have the potential and the desire to become. More than you could ever imagine, He wants you to achieve your destiny—to return to your heavenly home in honor. I really love this. God loves each and every one of us. He is not waiting for us to be perfect to love us. He KNOWS us. Not he knows OF us. But he KNOWS us. He knows our struggles, weaknesses, pains, sorrows, desires, passions, hobbies, etc. He knows we have made wrong choices and mistakes but HE STILL LOVES US! He does not care about what makeup, clothes, car, house, or anything. He loves us as we are but also for who we can become. I cant really explain how much God loves us or is there for us but he loves us so much. I hope this helps some of you to know how much God loves you and is there for you. I hope you all to have a great week and be safe! Again Happy Birthday Dad!! 🎆🎉🎈🎊❤ Love, Elder Merz

So the report for a few weeks is not very big. The Lucky Summer Elders came to stay at our flat. That is Elder Brown and Elder Nyanhamo. So we had 5 Elders in our house. It was great though! We all got a long very well and no one got killed surprisingly. But it was awesome to be with Elder Brown my first ever companion on the mission wayy back to the MTC days! We have both came so far! All of the days except for 3 we were strictly stuck inside not even in the compound. But 3 days we were allowed out so we got together with the other Elders and just partied and talked with them. Elder Brown also brought an American football so elder Card, Brown and I threw it around and all the little kids were trying to take it haha! Its funny all 3 of us were running backs as well! But now everything seems to be going okay and safe so that is good! Googling about the elections here would give you more information than i can give to you haha. But this last week we were able to go out for 3 days. So the transfer news came as well. Elder Mbaya left for Mountain View with Elder Carlson. But Otika and I are staying here!! Excited for this! A lot of our investigators are still coming back from up country so we had a hard time to meet with them but we were able to visit a few members and recent converts and have great lessons with them! Also a miracle happened! My comp and I as we leave in the morning we say a pray. I prayed that day that as we were at the church meeting with some of our investigators that the Lord would provide us a new investigator who will be good. Who speaks good English and is ready for the gospel. While we were at church a new car came in and the soldier came over and introduced us. The guy lives by the church and passes it everyday. So we gave him a tour of the church as well as we got his number. He also got to meet with Bishop and a member of the stake presidency and he had some very good questions by someone who really does just wanna know the truth about out church! The craziest thing is that he listens to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir like every morning for an hour!!! So it was a direct answer to my prayer for that morning!! We are planning to meet with him this week!! Also on Sunday another new guy just showed up who lives by the church and we talked with him and he participated in all of our classes and is as well "a kingdom builder" if you would. We are going to meet with him on Saturday! We were able to extend a baptismal date to brother Felix who is the Bishops nephew and yeah overall it was a pretty good week!! Lots of love and hopefully more stories for next week. Stay safe and for those going back to school I wish you luck! Especially to my amazing Brother and Sister! Also a little shout out to my little brother for being a great mechanic to my car! Love you bro keep it up and we'll have a duel when i get back! Or just work on the cars together...hahaha Love, Elder Merz