Sunday, February 11, 2018

February 5 letter

To Dad:

I'm actually liking the Old Testament.  I'm up to page 450 by now.  It's been a really enlightening experience I'm studying it with the student manual and I'm actually learning a lot and it's helping me in my teaching too.  At least I know how the Old testament works and what the church was like then.  

To Mom:


No we didn't get 20-0.  We didn't get time to play any matches on Tuesday or Monday so we finished our record 18-0

Last week we had the craziest experience and I forgot to write you about it.  Me and Elder Reynolds got invited by one of our investigators to a tent for a worship service.  It was in the middle of the village far from town.  We were driving around trying to find it and we found this little wooden shack which was apparently a church.  We walked in and caused a bit of a distraction from the pastor while he was trying to preach haha.  All the people were so surprised to see 2 white guys come into this random church in the middle of the village.  The pastor stopped preaching and everyone started praying at once.  That's very common here and it's really funny although I feel bad about laughing about it.  There's like 100 of them all saying prayers but they just try and make it sound as powerful as they can and they don't pay any attention to what they're saying.  Sometimes they even speak in tongues which is just absolutely senseless.  It was very funny but we realized we were in the wrong place so we left while they were praying and went to the right place. 

We got into the tent where we were supposed to be and when we got in they were really excited once again to see 2 white guys, so they brought us to the front and gave us a place to stand right behind the speakers.  When I say speakers I mean that they had 2 massive amplifiers and they were soooo loud.  We got in and everyone was singing in Xhosa and it was pretty cool.  Then they turned the speakers on and the worship team came to the front and the cool part was over.  I sacrificed my ear drums for that investigator so I really hope he joins the church.  They had the worship team of 7 people up at the front and they all had a microphone, and they each pressed their mic as close to their mouth as they could possibly get it and then screamed as loud as they possibly could.  All 7 of them at once, meanwhile everyone else was screaming as loud as they could too.  I screamed at the top of my lungs and I couldn't even hear it.  It was crazy.  I didn't know that the noise could be that loud.  That went on for an hour straight.  It was so ridiculous.  Then the apostle stood up and he said hallelujah.  and everyone said praise the lord.  And he said hallejuah again and everyone said praise the lord again.  He did that like 15 times and then he switched to saying praise the lord, and everyone said halleluja.  And he did that like 15 times as well.  Hahahah then he gave the mic to the pastor who started preaching in Xhosa.  Luckily they had a translator who followed him around and translated everything into English.  It was quite funny.  The pastor taught some ridiculous false doctrine which was just so bad, but meanwhile all the people were just shouting "Praise the Lord."  They didn't even really pay attention to what he was saying.  It doesn't even really matter to them.  They don't want to learn about Jesus they just want to sing and dance and praise in a really senseless way.  At one point a lady stood up and started speaking in tongues.  She just said "Hagagagagagagesi" Like 50 times in a row and then sat down.  It was so ridiculous.  I felt bad for those people they were so misled and they just believe anything anyone says about Jesus even if it completely contradicts itself.  To them everything is true and there's no point in learning or doing anything except turning up to the church every week to scream and dance and "Worship"  
It was quite a funny experience

But anyway this week has been sweet.  Elder Steffensen is awesome and our lessons have been going so well.  We're teaching great and I love it.  I'm getting excited about King Williams Town all of the sudden.  Unfortunately our baptism for next week has been postponed because the family that was being baptized had to go to Queenstown and they missed their baptismal interview.  I was pretty disappointed about that and I was disappointed in them too, but it's ok we'll probably just postpone the baptism 1 week. 


I went on an exchange with Elder Shaw and i found out his Dad does exactly what I want to do for a career so I've been really excited about that.  I emailed him today and I'm hoping he'll respond and give me some really valuable advice next week especially about what to study. 

No comments:

Post a Comment