June 19 letters

Don't worry about my foot problem.  It turns out it was just an infection and not an infestation so I will be totally fine.  It is actually healed by now so I am fine and will live.  Too bad it wasn't fly eggs because that would have been a way better story. 

This week has been a pretty crazy week.  I said goodbye to everyone in Langa and left Elder Mabanga in charge of the area.  It was a very sad goodbye but life goes on.  Me and Elder Dove flew together to PE so we're here together again and we've been together for the entire mission so far.  

Uitenhage is a crazy area.  First of all it's a really rich area which is kind of bizarre for me.  All the people live in the most massive houses and it's just weird to me that we can even teach people in these massive houses.  It's a mixed area though.  There's blacks whites and coloreds.  Of course you can never teach whites.  No white person will ever listen to the missionaries I'm pretty sure.  But the colored' are pretty good to teach.  The best thing about the area is that there's a lot of father led families.  Almost everyone we're teaching lives at home with their wife and kids which is awesome.

The biggest thing that I hate about this area is that it's an Afrikaans speaking area so there aren't too many Xhosa speaking people.  Even the black Xhosa people speak Afrikaans and not Xhosa.  That makes me sad but there's still a few Xhosa people who I can speak to from time to time. 

The area is absolutely blowing up right now.  I have never been doing better missionary work in all my 10 months of mission.  We actually received more than 40 referrals last week which is just absolutely insane.  

Since I got here on Wednesday we have already committed 18 people to be baptized on July 30.  I hope that some of those can make that date.  There's some people I'm really excited about.  A girl named C who came to church a few weeks in a row but she hasn't brought her husband yet.  She's 27 I think from Zimbabwe and she will be really powerful once we bring in the father of the home.  We met a guy called M who is only 22 and already married which is really crazy for South Africa.  He came to church too but he left his wife at home.  I'm really excited about him though he's a sweet guy.  There's also a girl that is going to college here named B.  We taught her about the Restoration on Friday and she was pretty skeptical.  When we went back Sunday we found that she was hiding from us.  We cornered her though and had a lesson.  In the lesson she really opened up to us and she was pretty emotional.  She said that she had prayed to know if what we said was true and she had some pretty powerful experiences.  She had read some things in the bible that really spoke to her and basically told her that she needed to join the church.  She was hiding from us because she was really scared about the whole thing and she didn't want to make a big change in her life, but the Lord already showed her the way and she will certainly do the right thing.  It's always an amazing thing to witness someone's conversion so I'm really glad that 4 days in I have already seen this girls conversion.

One of the weirdest things that happened is that we were driving downtown in Uitenhage with the windows down when we heard "Come Come Ye Saints" just playing so loud.  Everyone could hear it in the whole city square.  It was kind of crazy.  We went over to the guy with the speaker and he was just a guy with some MoTab CDs and he wasn't even a member.  He told us that he just really loves Mormon Tabernacle Choir so we took his details and sent his referral to the missionaries in Kwa Nobuhle where he lives.  

Me and Elder Lillback are getting along great.  He's from Sweden but he lived in Germany for most of his life.  I like  him a lot.  His previous companion was Elder Ondracek who is also a friend of mine.  He is really hard working and obedient and so we're having a really nice time together.  I really love it here in Uitenhage so it should be a really great time for me on mission. 

To Dad;

Yeah so I'll tell all about the new area to mom no need to worry about that.  I'm a district leader just to answer your question. 

My foot is completely fine.  The doctor said when I left that it was just an infection and nothing too crazy.  It was basically healed by then anyway.  I asked her if she thought it was a crazy infestation of Mango flies and she said no the chances of that were very quite low which will give you some peace I guess.  I'm sure I'm fine now.  

M is S's daughter

This is S in the orange and the other one is N who was baptized about a year ago.

Here is a generation picture.  Elder Wilson on the right who trained Elder Greengrass who trained me who trained Elder Mabanga. 

Here is a picture with one of my favorite missionaries Elder Hugo

Here is me and Elder Dove on the plane together.  We started in East London then flew to Cape Town together and then we flew to Port Elizabeth together too haha.  I can't get rid of this guy. 

This guy was playing Come Come Ye Saints way loud in the town square downtown.  Apparently he was selling MoTab CDs hahahaha.  He wasn't even a member.  This kind of blew my mind hahaha

Then I thought this was kind of funny.  Just a cow chilling in the middle of someones grass hahaha

Here is a picture of my companion