Monday, April 10, 2017

April 10 letters

To Mom:

We watched conference this weekend.  I am a missionary, and Elder Costa gave a wonderful talk, specifically for investigators.  You must put 2 and 2 together and realize that that was surely my favorite talk.  When he was talking about unfamiliar words at church, everyone was laughing so hard.  "Who are the Beehives?  What is the Relief Society?"  Hahahahah investigators have said that to me about a million times.  After that talk our investigator S told us that she was very touched and that "He was talking to me."  Haha it was very nice.  My other favorite talk was Elder Sabin's talk from Saturday Afternoon.  In all though I think all of the talks in the Sunday morning session were just phenomenal. 

I have said a little bit about marriage.   I have never taught a single person who is living with someone they are not married to.  Marriage is very easy here.  If they are cohabitating, it would not be difficult.  They would just quickly get married and it wouldn't be too big of an issue.  The only issue is Labola which is one of the dumbest things ever.  The male has to pay the brides parents like 50 thousand rands or something like that before they can get married.  Paying labola is strongly discouraged by the church.

On Friday President Merrill called me to give me my transfer news.  Elder Monoalibe is leaving the area.  He told me that he's releasing me as district leader because he is calling me to train another missionary hahaha.  My new companion is going to be Elder Mbonga from South Africa.  Apparently he is 24 and a recent convert and needs someone with "A lot of spiritual maturity" to train him the president said.  hahaha.  The best news is that the Elder who is replacing me as district leader is Elder Faingata'a.  When I heard this I was so so happy.  You may know this but Elder Faingata'a is probably my favorite missionary in the whole mission.  The other good news is that my new Zone leader is going to be Elder Greengrass hahaha.  I love that guy so much too.  We share an area with the zone leaders so I will be seeing him every single day for the next 3 months again.  Really good transfer news.  

My package came in the mail.  I still need to pay 113 Rands to release it from the post office but I should pay that today.  Happy Birthday to me :)

To Dad:

I am always grateful that I was born to goodly parents that love the lord. Something I hear a lot is something like this: "You were born into the church, but when did you really get a testimony?"  I used to think about that and try and identify when I really found out the church was true.  I used to think it might be when I started reading my scriptures every day.  Or maybe when I started going to the temple a lot.  Since I've been on mission I realized though, that I have always known the church was true.  There has not been a time in my life when I did not have a testimony.  I realized that it's wrong to assume that somebody must find out for themselves the truth of the church when they were a bit older.  Like they weren't sure when they were 8.  Like they didn't have a testimony.  That's doubting the revelation that 8 years old is the age of accountability.  And so basically I am very grateful that I was born to goodly parents who taught me so well, that as I grew up, I always knew that the church was true, and especially that the Savior Jesus Christ lives and loves me.  

No comments:

Post a Comment