July 1 letters

To Dad:

Me and my companion played tons of street soccer this week.  Everyone has a 3 week break from school right now so the kids are playing like crazy in the street.  We even look for older kids sometimes and we just challenge them and we have our own ball so it works out nicely.  One game was really sweet.  We found a bunch of kids who wanted to play and so we set up the field and started playing and tons of people came to watch and all the neighbors came out of their houses to watch and we had so many fans.  We played 2 goals for a game and then a new team would come on.  We played about 6 games and we won them all 2-0 except one of them was 2-1.  The great thing was that the other teams were always pretty good so they always thought they were going to win and then they'd be so disappointed when we won.  And every time we scored all the kids and the fans would go nuts.  It got to the last game and we went up 1-0 early and then they started going really really hard because they wanted to win.  then we played like that for about 5 minutes and then I got the ball near the goal and this kid was going really hard and he came for the ball and he went all in and I totally destroyed him and scored and all the fans went nuts hahahahaha.  It was a lot of fun.  But me and my companion are destroying everyone right now and of course we're undefeated and I think undefeatable.  After the games we gathered everyone together and had a nice prayer.  In all our games we agreed with the other teams that if we won they would come to church and if they won we would bring them cookies.  It was cool because everytime they were so confident and then we started scoring and all their buddies watching the games would say "niya caweni!" you're going to church hahaha.  None of them came to church though, but I hope their conscience haunts them knowing that they totally flaked and they should have come and maybe another week they will come. 

To Mom:

It's been a slow week for us here.  On Saturday we had a birthday party for Mama Ngondo who turned 100.  I love birthday parties here because they're more like sacrament meetings.  We open with a hymn and a prayer and then have a spiritual thought.  Then someone from the stake president is invited to come and give the sermon.  Then some speeches and we close with a hymn and a prayer.  That's what happened on Saturday but it's not just that one.  That pattern of birthday parties has happened 3 times since I got to Queenstown haha I think it's super funny.  But the party was nice but it took almost the whole day and we couldn't leave because we were like the guests of honor or something like that so we ended up staying there until 5:30.  It was supposed to start at 12 but when we got there at 12 they told us to come back at half 1 and when we got back at half 1 it was about to start so we stayed, and it didn't even start for a whole hour after that.  So it went from half 2 to half 5.  African time. Haha but we were able to meet a lot of people there so it was alright.

We played a lot of street soccer with kids throughout this week which was really cool and we obviously destroyed them every game.  They all promised to come to church if we won, and we won every game, but none of them came.  Shame.

Sacrament meeting was interesting.  We had the confirmation of Brother M which was good and we had 2 other investigators come for the first time which we were excited about.  Something that really makes me laugh and I can't remember if I told you this already, but at least one of the speakers every Sunday just stands up and reads a talk from a general authority and then sits down.  Sometimes all 3.  Even the stake speakers sometimes come and just read a talk from conference.  It's really weird and it makes me laugh.  This past week though we had fast and testimony meeting so it was great. 

This week we are going to Cape Town for another meeting.  We're leaving tomorrow and getting back on Thursday so that will kind of destroy our week but it's fine

It's currently snowing outside so that's pretty awesome

here's my new haircut

me and Elder Dos Santos are going to make a customized mug with this picture on it and leave it in the boarding haha

Brother and Sister Mndende came to the birthday party

Me and my comp at the party

June 25 letters

To Dad:

I have to say I've been missing you too.  The World Cup has been on everywhere and it's hard to dodge it or not feel trunky when I see it.  But it's not too bad.  I'm managing it ok.  We went to teach Z the other day and the very end of the Brazil game was on and I saw the score I think it was 1-0 at that time or 2-0 and Brazil had basically already won the game and then I saw Neymar flick the ball over the defenders head.  It made me so mad.  Man I hate that guy what an idiot.  How can he do something stupid like that.  What a joke.  I hope Brazil lose next game and don't qualify. 

It's been funny to be with my companion though for the world cup.  He always says funny stuff about soccer and then says "It's not because I'm Brazilian it's just because that's really what I think."  And then if we're talking to anyone else about it they always just agree with him because they don't know anything and he's Brazilian.  For example: Who's the best player of all time.  Me: It's Messi.  My companion: It's Ronaldinho.  Everyone else:  Yeah definitely Ronaldinho.  Hahaha what the heck.  Nobody ever says Ronaldinho but they just parrot whatever he says haha.  Also he tries to convince me that the teams in Brazil are better than any of the teams in Europe because they win the club world cup.  Hahaha. For the most part what he says is good and correct and he's a really good player himself. 

We've been playing soccer every morning at the chapel with different companionships which has been really sweet.  It's good exercise and it's helping me get a little bit of my touch back which will be good because I'm feeling a bit rusty after not playing for a while. 

We played with the ward on Saturday as well.  It's frustrating to play with South Africans though because they don't really care about scoring or winning.  Honestly it's not their motive.  They always make the field as big as possible and the goal as small as possible to eliminate as much scoring as possible.  Then the point of the game becomes who has the quickest and fanciest dribble.  And it's not even like the dribble past you either.  They never try to dribble past anyone ever.  They just pull the ball back and forth and wait for you to try and steal it and then they just pull it back and pull it back until they get to their own end line and then they pass it away.  And then they turn to you and laugh as if they just smoked you.  It doesn't make any sense.  On Saturday we played the young men and we beat them 4-0.  It was me and my companion and 5 12 year olds against all the 17 year olds.  We were up 4-0 and they still took the ball in their own half and just stood on it waiting for us to come and steal it.  It confused me so bad because we were winning 4-0.  And yet they don't even care.  They have no desire to win or score.  They just want you to go and steal it so they can try and do some quick dribbles and keep you from stealing the ball.  And then after the game, we just beat them 4-0 scoring 4 times on a goal that was about 2 feet wide on a 7 v 7 pitch, and they don't even think they lost because they had done all the cool dribbling they wanted to do.  Hahaha it's always fun to play with them but it's no wonder why South Africa isn't very good.  Even the professional teams play exactly the same way.  And all the South Africans I know are terrible at shooting because they don't like shooting or scoring.  But to be fair just about every South African I have ever met that grew up in the township is a pretty good dribbler and has good ball control. 

But it's been good to be with Elder Dos Santos.

To Mom:

This week was great because we had a baptism.  We also had Zone Conference and some other nice things. 

The baptism was great.  It was just brother Z who got baptized.  He's great.  I've loved teaching him and also I love the food his wife makes for us every time we come.  He's come a long way since we've been teaching him and I'm really excited to see him going forward.  Him and his wife have committed to prepare for temple sealing next year.  That will be super awesome.  After the baptism we went to his house to give him his new member kit and he was so happy.  He just kept saying thank you so much for everything I feel so amazing I feel like a new person.  He's an awesome guy.  The baptismal service was also really nice.  The Elders Quorum President gave a talk which was really nice.  and Sister Mndende gave a talk which was really touching.  

Zone Conference was cool.  Before our interviews on Tuesday President came to our boarding to do daily planning with me and my companion.  That was pretty cool and he had great ideas to bless everyone that we were teaching and things we could do to strengthen them. 

Zone Conference was nice though. President trained about a lot of stuff that we already talked about during MLC last week so that was kind of too bad, but he gave a really great inspiring training about how to pass new converts over to the ward, that is going to help me a lot.  It was Elder Burns last Zone Conference so he's going home.  I'm going to miss him he's one of my best friends on mission.  But he's going to Utah State so I'm only going to miss him for like a month haha

Me and my companion have been finding a ton of great new people and having loads of success this past week.  It's an exciting time to work here in this ward because it's going to split really soon.  Also President Lebethoa is going to be taking lots of cars, but not ours, and he's instructed us to walk as much as possible with the Book of Mormon in our hands.  It's been great and yielded a lot of fruit. 

Here are the pictures from the baptism

June 18 letters

To Dad:

Hahaha I'm laughing that you guys went camping.  Hahahaha.  Mom was telling me about it too and giving some solutions for the next time you go camping.. HA!  I think the real solution is to just never go camping in a tent again.  

I'm dying though.  The relief society brought a Nacho Bar!?  What the heck! hahahaha that's super hilarious.  That's way dope too I hope you enjoyed that one.  

I finished the Book of Mormon last week.  I was thinking about how I used to read the Book of Mormon when I was 8 and I always used to get so excited for you to come home from work so I could tell you that I finished one of the books in the Book of Mormon.  Anyway I love you Dad. happy fathers day. 

To Mom:

This week was an interesting week.  First of all nothing happened in our area because we were in Cape Town the whole week.  It kind of wrecked things here but it was really fun.  The way we've done MLC in the past is that the elders in the Eastern Cape would skype in and the ones in Cape Town would meet together.  But that was always just terrible and frustrating and it didn't really work very well at all.  So now President has decided that every MLC all the zone leaders in the mission will meet together.  Which means the next one will be on July 2nd which is in 2 weeks now!  Crazy.  It did bring a good sense of unity to all of us and it also made the discussion way better and more open.  It was a lot better for sure

It was great to see some of my friends too that I haven't seen.  Daniel Clark was there so we got to hang out for a while.  And Elder Lillback hahahaha I miss that guy so much.  He was making all of us laugh the whole time.  It was pretty cool.  Including Elder Ondracek from the MTC 7 of my 12 companions were there.  I think next time I'll take a picture with all of them.  

We were all hyped for the MLC because the APs kept sending little texts hinting at big things for example "don't freak out when you see the agenda for the MLC..." and things like that.  But it turned out to be nothing special at all.  There was nothing really discussed that was very big or that we didn't already know.  Of course we talked a lot about he issue of cars in the mission and President did reveal that the mission will be losing many if not most of its cars between July 1 and July 17.  So we're going to have to be prepared to walk.  I have a feeling I'll be walking for my last 4 weeks. 

Besides that President introduced a new pass-along card that we're going to be using that has a question of the soul or a verse from the Book of Mormon, and then it directs the person to mormon.org.  He wants us to put them in mailboxes to reach the people who have big gates and who don't like it when we tract.  It's actually a really inspired idea and I think it's going to bless our mission a lot.  

After that me and my companion exchanged with the assistants, one of whom is my son, Elder Reedy.  So I went with Elder Reedy although we only had about 2 hours after everything was said and done, to do misionary work.  But it was nice to be with him and to chat about a lot of things.  I've seen him a lot since we left each other all the way back in MD, but I've never actually got to just be together with him doing missionary work and stuff so I was happy for that chance.  

The plane was awesome.  It seems like the Lord always puts people in our path on the plane who are interested.  All 6 of us sat next to different people and all of use were chatting and having cool experiences.  On the flight to Cape Town I was sitting there while people were coming onto to plane when the guy in front of me turned around in his seat and asked me what all of us missionaries were doing.  I thought, well that was easy! Then I gave him the Book of Mormon and told him we were teaching about it, and then he read it for the rest of the flight.  It was cool he was getting excited about it and taking pictures of a lot of the pages and stuff.  I even saw his chats on whatsapp and he was sending the picture of the Book of Mormon.  After the flight we talked for a bit and I gave his contacts to the East London Elders so I'm sure they'll be teaching him for a while. 

On the flight back some business guy bought chips and candy bars for all of us elders hahaha I don't even know why he didn't even say anything.  We just told him about mormon.org and that was it.  But maybe he'll go there and then we'll meet up with him later. 

Fathers day was sweet. Ward 1 and Ward 2 met together so it was a really great service.  The attendance was 200 which was the most I think I've seen since I've been in South Africa.  And the singing was really awesome.  After church we all met in the gym and everyone feasted even the people who aren't fathers.  So that was really nice.  

Z passed his baptismal interview so he'll be baptized next Sunday.  I'll send lots of pictures of that.  He's an awesome guy so I'm excited for his baptism. 

me and my comp

Elder Lillback...missed this guy like crazy!

me and Elder Davies (turning 80 this Saturday!)

June 11 letters

To Mom:

10 more whole weeks until I get home is a long time mom!  Don't worry about me coming home any time soon I still have a long time left!  

I'm going to be flying to Cape Town tomorrow and flying back on Thursday.  Apparently it's going to be some huge stuff going to be discussed.  I am really excited about that.  Then we're going to fly to Cape Town again for another MLC that will take 3 days in 3 weeks time.  There must be some crazy stuff happening if they're flying all the zone leaders in the mission to Cape Town twice in 3 weeks.  I'll let you know the details next week but for sure we're going to discuss losing all or most of the cars in the mission. 

I'm loving my new companion even more than I thought I would.  We've laughed so much in the last 4 or 5 days.  It's going to be a great transfer.  

I don't have much to say this week but I think next week I'll have a lot.  Also I don't have pictures this week but next week I'll send double pictures. 

To Dad:

I have played soccer with Elder Dos Santos before in East London we played a lot of times.  But since he's got here we haven't gotten the chance.  He's actually really good at basketball. He thought he was going to be in the NBA when he was younger he's like super good and definitely the best basketball player in the mission.  But he's also really good at soccer.  We're going to start playing with the wards though which I'm excited about 

June 4 letter to Mom

This week was transfers so we had a bit of news on our end. 

On Saturday the Mthatha elders had a baptismal interview that they wanted us to do so we drove out to Mthatha Saturday afternoon.  It's a nice drive so it's always fun to drive down there.  On the way a dog ran out from the side of the road and headed straight for the car but I was going to fast to do anything about it and on the other side of the road a semi truck was coming toward us so there was nothing I could do I just screamed "NOOOO!"  and then God protected us because somehow by sheer luck the dog paused in the road right in the middle of us and the oncoming truck and didn't die.  I have no idea how we didn't hit it I was pretty scared.  

But we got to Mthatha and did the interview and afterwards we went to an appointment with those elders at a school, but the appointment fell through so we decided to drop in to a church that was going on next door.  It was so hilarious.  They started by screaming everyone at once for about 20 minutes and then they sat down and the lady pastor started preaching.  Hahaha she started by reading 2 Kings 5:1.  Read that verse haha.  So she read it and then she spent the next 20 minutes just screaming over and over variations of "Naaman was a good man." or "Naaman was an honorable man"  "Naaman was a warrior"  Hahaha she didn't get to any point at all she literally just said over and over about how Naaman was a good man and then randomly out of nowhere she just completely switched gears and she just screamed "Flee Fornication and glory to Jesus"  And she like jumped up and down and flexed her body and the crowd went wild they couldn't handle it like 10 people jumped up and just yelled "Glory to Jesus!"  And then one lady prayed in tongues for like 10 minutes hahahaha it was just so much apostasy in one room I felt so bad for the people who were enslaved by it. 

Then we got our transfer news later that night while we were sleeping over at Mthatha.  My companion is leaving me to go to Cape Town. And my new companion is Elder Dos Santos from Brazil.  I actually predicted it so I wasn't surprised when he came to be my companion.  He's awesome.  He's one of those guys that's just on another level so I'm gonna really enjoy being with him.  Yeah I'm excited about that

Elder Reynolds is going to Cape Town to be with Elder Bozer and Elder Ivins (still haven't seen him) and the President gave them a special assignment to "test something that will soon come to the whole mission"  We think they're getting smart phones or tablets and losing their car.  But next week there's going to be a big MLC to train all the Zone Leaders about these "big changes" so me and Elder Dos Santos will be flying to Cape Town for 3 days to attend that. I'm pretty excited it's going to be way cool.

But yeah I'm really excited for the next transfer.

Some of these pictures are kind of dumb but this is what I had for this week

May 28 letter to Mom

This week was pretty cool

I tried to send a lot of pictures so I hope that that lifts your spirits with tournament week.  Tournament week is hard but I'm praying for you!

I just got it from the mission office about 5 minutes ago and I think that they sent it to you as well.  I'm really stoked about flying home with Elder Ballsteadt, Elder Ondracek, and Elder Ivins.  Those are 3 of my best friends and I think it's going to be just the 4 of us.  So I'm stoked for that.  Haha yeah please make sure you check what terminal I'm going to go to because it would be way anti climactic if it's me waiting for you guys and all of you coming down the escalator hahaha.  But no need to look so far ahead into the future.  I'm still going to be here for 2 and a half months!

This week a lot happened.  We did have 2 confirmations this Sunday which was nice.  Did I send you the pictures from the baptism?  We're planning our next baptism for June 24th.  I'm way excited about a guy named Z.  He's really awesome and he's married to a member.  He's just young though I think he's like 25.  But he's getting more and more prepared for baptism each time we go there.  At first he was like "yeah maybe I'll come. I mostly want to join the church for my daughter" (they just had a baby about a month ago) but now when we see him he's really genuine and serious and his countenance is just changing.  For sure I'm excited about his baptism though.  Aside from that we have about 8 other investigators that are looking pretty good for the next 2 months.  We'll see though.  I'll tell you more about them in the coming few weeks. 

I've started teaching piano lessons.  There's one sister in our ward who wants me to teach her and there's also a 12 year old girl who I'm teaching because she has a piano and her parents are a little bit less active so It's helping her.  But I've had 3 lessons with her now and I realized that I have no idea how to teach somebody to play the paino.  I have no idea if what I'm teaching her is way too advanced or way too easy or what.  Please help.  I really need suggestions on how to effectively teach piano to someone who knows nothing.  Also she doesn't have a piano book and they don't sell piano books anywhere for like 100 or 200 kilometers

Yesterday LX turned 9.  We go to the X every Thursday for dinner and they always give us really big, really nice meals.  So yesterday I was expecting to have a nice meal for his birthday or something.  But turned out he had like a legit birthday party and me and Elder Allred were the guests of honor.  It was so nice.  We just gave a nice spiritual thought and then we ate like crazy.  They loaded our plates with so much meat I was so excited.  All we had was meat and pap. (pap is really really nice and I've just been eating it more and more probably 2 or 3 times a week.  Ask Daniel he'll tell you it's terrible, but I really love it)  We had so much meat more especially me.  I just ate and ate it was really a feast.  But I love their family and L little cousin A is so cute so I sent some pictures of her as well.

This morning we went to hike the biggest mountain in Queenstown called Lukhanji mountain.  It's pretty huge so we were pretty stoked.  On our way there we drove past the fence of the game reserve and there was a Rhino like 15 feet away.  You can't see it very well in the picture but I was way excited to see a Rhino it's the first time in my whole mission to see one.  The horn was cut off though because you can sell a Rhino horn for about 700 thousand USD.  So they get poached about 2 or 3 a day around the world and they're apparently one of the most endangered species in the world. so the owners of the game reserve cut the horn on this one.  pretty cool. 

Hiking Lukhanji was really cool and it took 3 hours to hike it which is 1 and a half hours up and 1 and a half down.  It was cool but the pictures say it all.  Don't judge them I just sent them all haha 

One of the hard things about serving here is that there's nobody who knows how to cut white peoples hair.  So for my last hair cut I just went to a guy from Ghana.  He did an ok job with the machine, but when he used the scissors I realized he had no idea what he was doing.  He used them so rarely that they weren't even sharp enough to cut the hair and he had to like hack at each piece of hair he wanted to cut hahaha.  So he ended up leaving too much hair on the back of my head and on the right side as well.  So I decided the brilliant and obvious thing to do was to cut my own hair with some safety scissors.  I cut the hair on the right side of my head just beautifully and it looked really good which encouraged me to go straight on to the back of my head without really looking in a mirror.  Unfortunately I didn't do so good of a job hahaha.  I cut a massive bald spot on the back of my head hahaha.  The radius is like 2 or 3 inches and I had to use lots of gel to like, fold some of the hair that's left over the top of it to cover it up.  But good thing black people don't actually know what white hair is supposed to look like so they can't actually tell the difference so I should be ok 

About the pictures: probably more than you wanted but I'm going to "try diligently to elevate myself out of the bottom 10" picture taking missionaries of all time before my mission is over

this is the mountain we climbed

funny guy.  We were listening to a BYU devotional where Dallin H Oaks was saying a bunch of stuff about BYU and then we looked up and saw this guy out the window wearing a BYU jacket hahaha 

nice video.  This little girl's name is Aqama Xaluva but I think it's really cute the way she says it

The rhino, but it is a terrible picture

May 21 letters

Travel Plans:

We received travel plans!  Adam flies from CapeTown to Amsterdam to Detroit to SLC, arriving on Aug 16 at 7:51 p.m.

To Dad:

I'm going to try to get out of the bottom 10 on that scale of worst picture takers but I don't know that might be a bit difficult.  I'll see what I can do though haha I think that even if I send 3 a week I'm still losing ground on everyone else and to get 3 pictures a week is steep for me.  My companion has taken almost 5000 pictures on his mission.  I've take almost half of 500 hahaha

To Mom:

This week was pretty good. We had a baptism of 2 girls A and S.  It was a great service and they both were super happy to be baptized so that was great. 

We are excited for the next 2 months when we're going to have lots of baptisms.  There's a member who married a guy named Z who has just been really progressing and doing better and better.  We're really excited for him because he's going to be a great help for the ward when he gets baptized hopefully next month on the 24th.  I really like him.  There's another lady that we just met last week that we're really excited about.  She just moved in so she's going to have no problem coming to the church and getting baptized with her children. 

Apparently our bishop has big dreams.  He's put in a proposal to the area office which they are putting in to the first presidency to build a school in Ezibeleni called Liahona primary school and then later to build Liahona High School.  apparently there's over 30 teachers that are active members of the church that live in the area.  Bishop is proposing for the church to build and fund the school and he's going to manage it and be the principal.  It sounds like a super dope idea.  I don't know what headquarters is going to think but it would actually be pretty sweet if it happened haha. 

Apparently the bishop also said that BYU wanted to buy land in queenstown to build BYU-Africa and they offered the municipality a lot of money and they said they would build an internet tower that would give unlimited free wifi to all the people of queenstown.  I don't think I believe that but it sounds pretty dope hahaha

I'll send some pics.  It was a good overall week but nothing too major.the baptism of A and S

this is a lady named sister Hinana.  She makes a full Sunday dinner for 22 people every Sunday.  All the neighbors who usually just go without come to her house on Sunday and get a plate of food from her and she always has food for them it's really awesome