November 28 letters

To Mom:

I agree with Daniel.  It sucks that shops open so early.  Pretty soon shops will just open on Thanksgiving and they'll call it Black Thursday.  I get Black Thursdays every Thursday so that would be lame.  They actually had Black Friday here for the first time this year and it was pretty sweet.  A couple of the members here bought some sweet TVs and stuff.  They don't do Thanksgiving though so that sucks.  I celebrated by making French Toast for myself in the morning and then eating a bowl of cereal too, which was pretty much a feast.

As far as Elder Greengrass goes.  He is a very cool guy.  I never read his emails but he spends a long time on them and he definitely writes more information than I do.  I'm sure my next companion won't have quite so much information in his emails.  Elder Greengrass was trained by Elder Wilson who had been on mission about a year when he trained Elder Greengrass.  Usually you train after you've been through 3 or 4 companions.  Very occasionally a person will train right after they've been trained but it doesn't happen very often.  People do train a lot in Mdantsane yes because it is the most fruitful area of the vineyard so you are right about that for sure.  

You asked about the primary program a few weeks ago.  Sunday was the primary program.  You would have died.  All the kids in the primary, which is about 50, wore white dresses or white shirts and all the girls had yellow bows in their hair, and it was very cute.  Also most of the kids in the primary don't really understand or speak English so they mostly just imitate syllables and so it was super cute.  They all know just enough to say a basic testimony.  Like half the kids said this exact line for their testimony "I know the church, it's true.  I know Thomas S Monson. Amen" hahaha but I loved it it was very nice.

We're starting to get fed a lot.  Usually every night we get fed once or twice a night and we eat lots of vegetables.

Next week we have a sweet baptism so I'll tell you about those people then.  Also I will be getting a new companion next week.  

Also I'll try and get some nice pictures to send home.  

Love you Momma

To Dad:

Elder Greengrass will be trasnferred on December 7.  This is our last full week together.  We will always be friends though.  

That's sweet about going to the temple and doing family history and stuff.  I really miss that so I'm glad you're making use of having a temple so close.  The people here do lots of fundraisers throughout the year and save up and sacrifice a lot just so they can go to the temple once a year.  It's really cool, but it makes me realize how lucky we are in Utah.  

I'll try and step up my game as far as pictures go.  What kind of things do you want pictures of?  People we see?  The area?  What kind of stuff.  Also what kind of information do you want me to write about? 

Love you Dad

The district

November 21 letters

Letter to Mom:

First of all setting spiritual goals for mission in my opinion doesn't work.  If I set a goal for how many people I want to baptize then I will undoubtedly start baptizing people who are not ready and become motivated by statistics.  I personally will never baptized a person without a proper testimony or who is not ready to be active in the church.  Also the areas are so diverse here that you can never tell what you can consistently do.  Some areas rarely baptize at all and some areas you baptize 5 every transfer.  The entirety of mission is centered on spiritual growth.  I want to become more humble but that's not a goal that I can set and measure and achieve.  It's just a thing I can work on.  Also I told you I want to always stay young and motivated on mission which is coming along really well.   Also learning Xhosa would be so sick.  I'm actually learning a lot and it's something I think is definitely attainable.  I don't even care about speaking Xhosa but I just want to experience the mental shift that happens when you learn to speak another language.  

Yeah I remember Elder Cornish's talk.  I liked it a lot.  I talked with Dad about this too but I really like the theme about striving for exact obedience.  Also the thing about missionary work being about the missionary is very interesting as well.  I have never really looked at it in quite that way.  

Today we went to a game reserve.  I really wanted to see a Rhino but I was disappointed :( We did see lots of Zebras and Giraffes and stuff which was cool.  It cost 120 Rand which is about 9 dollars.  I don't think we're going to go to the expensive one anymore so that's good.

The best thing that happened last week was that they raised MSF.  Before we were getting _ Rand every 2 weeks.  Now we are getting _ Rand every 2 weeks which is a big difference.  I feel so free.  Now I'm eating lots of different fruit and veg and I'm starting to cook different things.  I definitely have enough money now so I won't be needing you to help me out anymore.  

We baptized that girl Y on Saturday.  It was a very spiritual experience.  I think I told you that she is terrified of water and so she was very nervous to go in.  When she did get in the water the spirit was so strong there because she was showing so much faith to overcome her fear.  She had literally been shaking about it every time we talked about baptism for the last few weeks because she's so scared of water.  I think that for a lot of people here, their baptism is the only time in their entire life when they are completely immersed in water hahaha.  But yeah it was very spiritual,

To Dad:

The theme about exact obedience is something I have thought a lot about.  There are a lot of Elders who are ok with listening to pop music in the boarding and going to bed late and waking up late and not being too serious with studies.  For me it makes it difficult to get to bed on time because everyone's usually milling around until like 11 but I always try to be as obedient as possible.  I really like the message though and I definitely agree with you that the misconception that you have to be immediately and perfectly obedient is a big stumbling block. 

Definitely me and elder Greengrass are doing a lot of good missionary work.

November 14 letters

To Dad:

Yeah the weather is weird.  It's starting to get really hot some days but it's still a little chilly at times.  It should get really hot in December.  Right now there are a lot of rainy days.  Last week it rained and church attendance shot down.  People are terrified of the rain here.  

I enjoy teaching from the scriptures, from Ether 12:6, and talking about how the witness only comes after some sacrifice and the trial of faith.  

Why I love Jeremiah 12:5 so much.

It says if the footmen or the foot soldiers weary you, or if you have a hard time doing the easy things God asks you to do, then what are you going to do when it comes time to contend with horses or soldiers on horse back.  You'll have no chance.  I feel like I really want to be obedient to every small little thing that God has asked me to do so that when it comes time to be faithful to the big stuff then it's no problem.

To Mom:

The mission goals are really nice.  President Merrill put in this program called the standards of excellence just a few months before I came in and it really caused convert baptisms in the mission to spike up.  Basically the goals are to proselyte for 50 hours a week, teach 15 lessons to investigators with a member present, teach 6 less actives and 6 recent converts each week, get 10 referrals, 10 new investigators, and as a mission baptize 50 people each month.  Me and Elder Greengrass usually get those standards easily besides the 10 referrals.  It is a sweet program though because it motivates all the missionaries.  Our zone doesn't really have goals I don't think.  Our district has a few goals but I don't really know what they are.  My district is the four of us that stay in our boarding and also the zone leaders.  Our district is just in Mdantsane and also our zone is just in Mdantsane as well.  The whole mission has I think 8 or 10 zones or something.. I'm not really sure.  Mdantsane is by far the most fruitful area of the mission though.  Especially me and Elder Greengrass' area.  We actually made a goal to teach 30 lessons to investigators with a member present next week which is a pretty insane goal.  

This week was very encouraging for me as far as food goes.  I was able to cook a lot of different things for myself and eat a variety of fruits and vegetables every day.  We get fed by members a lot especially lately.  Last week we had like 6 DAs.  We had a couple days with double DAs as well.  When the members feed us they always give us lots of different vegetables.  I've actually been very good with my money though and me and Elder Greengrass decided we're not going to eat fast food at all or buy treats at all.  I think in a few weeks I will be able to budget properly so that I don't have to spend any of my personal card at all.  Mission is definitely a learning experience for me.  Also I've been working out every night and I'm trying to start working out every morning too.

Last week I got some things to help me learn Xhosa so that is really coming along now.  It's a pretty simple language once you get the clicks down. 

Last week was a pretty cool week.  First of all the morning after the election was pretty insane.  I was just calling the bishop and he was telling me the progress of the election and stuff and then he said Trump won and it was way crazy.  We went over to the other Elders boarding and we were just going insane.  A lot of the elders were saying like here comes the apocalypse and stuff but I was way stoked about it.  I think it's so hilarious that Donald Trump actually became the president of the United States of America.  Every time I think about it I just laugh.  But yes I am way happy it wasn't Hillary.  It's crazy how close Hillary came to winning Utah.  I think people in Utah really hate Donald.

Next week we are having a baptism and so the people being baptized had to have an interview on Saturday.  So about 2 months ago a girl in our ward called Uviwe got her mission call.  She had her friends over and one of them was called Y and so we talked to her briefly.  The next day at church Y was there so we scheduled an appointment to go see her.  When we got to our appointment she was just shaking.  I don't know why but she was just so so nervous to meet us and to have a lesson.  She was really freaked out.  After we talked to her a bit she calmed down a little.  After that we started to teach her and she got comfortable with us and now she loves us.  Anyway she reads everything we give her and she memorizes everything and she is just so prepared for baptism she's super awesome.  But when we told her last week that she was going to have an interview with a different elder she like got really freaked out.  when we showed up for the interview she was pale and she was visibly shaking and she was so so nervous.  It was funny to us that she was so freaked out because she was so prepared anyway.  But anyway we talked with her and she calmed down a bit.  But she's super powerful and she said she thinks she might want to go on a mission which would be sweet.  

I forgot to tell you this story which is insane.  So when I first got to the area we decided to tract for like 20 minutes just for fun and we went to this house where there was an old woman sitting in a chair reading a Xhosa bible.  We talked to her for a minute but she said she can't get out of her chair because of her leg and she didn't seem to really speak English very well so we left and didn't really think about it.  About a month later we were around the area and a girl about 10 was running around and she said she loves Jesus Christ and we asked her where she lives and she pointed to the same house.  When we got there the same old lady was sitting in the same chair.  Well we decided that because we were led to the same house we should set a return appointment even though she doesn't speak English very well.  Well when we went back for the return appointment I was with one of the zone leaders Elder Muller and we taught her a little bit about the book of Mormon.  It turned out she spoke a bit better English than we thought.  Well we got to know her a bit and found out her name was N.  After the lesson we prayed and then we told her we could give her a blessing.  We laid our hands on her head and blessed her leg to be completely healed.  It was really amazing because we left but when we came around the next week she wasn't in the chair.  And we knocked on the door and she came walking around the corner and she told us her leg had been completely healed.  Since then we have taught her the restoration and she said she will walk to church.  I think when she understands more she will be a powerful member.

Anyway it was a powerful week.

November 7 letters

To Mom:

This week I have been eating far better.  I actually ate a variety of good meals with different fruits and vegetables.  I felt very good this week and I didn't even get fast food.  It did cost a little bit more money to eat properly though but I think in a few weeks time I may be able to budget properly.  I think the pancake recipe would be super useful and I would love it if you had Daniel send it to me.  We don't eat during the day though.  We eat at about 11:30 and then we go to the area and we don't eat a meal again until we come home at about 8:30 or 9:00.  

Also I have been waking up at around 6:45 most days which is good.  I still have work to do but it's getting there.  I am also running every day and exercising both morning and night so it's very good.  I really want to be healthy.  

You mentioned that you wondered if there is a primary program and the answer is yes and it will be sometime this month.

So this week was pretty dull there wasn't anything really exciting that happened.

We had a couple of drunk people screaming at us.  This drunk lady actually came up to us and talked to us for like 5 minutes and she was like screaming at the top of her lungs "We've both been saved by Jesus! Who's better than who?"  And I was just laughing so hard and she started talking to us and she pointed at Elder Greengrass and she said you look like a humble person and she pointed at me and she was like you look like you're not humble. then she said to Elder Greengrass you're more Jesus than him.  Than I was just laughing and laughing and telling her Jesus loves her and then Elder Greengrass was trying to be serious with her and ask her to have lessons with us and then she was like give me your number so I can call you guys for a lesson and so we did and then before she left she said to Elder Greengrass "You aren't very Jesus.  You look like the Elders sat you down and told you exactly what to say."  Then she pointed at me and she said "You're the real one.  You're actually more Jesus than him"  Hahahaha she was super drunk and we were both laughing about it a lot.  

Church on Sunday was very frustrating for me.  We have been getting better and better church attendance for the last little bit and so Sunday I was hoping to get about 130 people in sacrament meeting.  Unfortunately it rained.  I don't know what it is about rain but it terrifies Xhosa people.  Nobody was at church.  We counted the attendance and it was only 71.  The other Elders said their ward got 198 last week and this week they only got 90.  The rain really sifted the wheat from the tares here I guess but it was very frustrating that nobody was willing to come to church because it rained.  It's understandable though because a lot of people have to walk but it's still frustrating.  

Other than that it wasn't a super interesting week.

To Dad:

Yeah we do get lots of dinner appointments.  Every Sunday we have one sister from the relief society feed us and they never drop.  Usually we have 1 or 2 more during the week that we schedule and those never drop either.  The bishop and his twin brother who is on the stake presidency usually both feed us every couple weeks so we get good dinner appointments out of them.  Usually all of our dinner appointments cook chicken with this african rice stuff and some vegetables which are usually the same.  The bishop gets us fast food though and his brothers wife is a really good cook so she always cooks us a variety of very good food.  

We street contact every day.  We drive around and there's always a lot of people walking around so if we see anyone walking alone we stop next to them and give them a pass along card.  It works pretty well we usually get 3 or 4 new investigators a week out of that.  As far as knocking house to house we never do that.  We are way too busy to waste our time doing that.  We usually have 6 to 8 appointments a day and we struggle to fit people in to our days so we have no time to go house to house.  The people here are super receptive though and so when we talk to them on the street they are usually very interested in what we have to say.  

My favorite part of missionary work is probably finding.  I am very good at street contacting I think so I always like to talk to random people and make connections with them and get new people to teach.  I think it's a skill that will serve me very well for the rest of mission.  Even the other day we were looking at the board and we have about 50 people on the board that we think about and of those 50 probably 20 of them are people that I personally have contacted.  The only thing I definitely dislike doing is visiting recent converts who have been taught all the lessons over again and we have nothing to teach.  I always think it's a mental strain for me to think about them and what to teach them.

I told you about buzz crew at the mtc.  In case you didn't think it was real... It's real.

here is a picture of me and Elder Ivins in Cape Town

October 31 letters

To Dad:

The thing that has changed the most about me... hmm Nothing major has changed about me.  I am still pretty much the same person that I was.  I guess some things that have changed though is that I really really love to study now.  I spend almost all my extra time reading the book of mormon or the bible or Jesus the Christ.  Also I have really gained a desire to improve myself physically and I've been working out every single night so that's new.  I would say Also I am a little bit more mature.  I have made myself a goal to always stay young.  Even now I feel like I'm still 16.  I would say it's part of who I am to be young at heart and my goal is to never get tired on mission and never allow myself to get lazy and also in life even when I'm old I want to stay young at heart.  But I think I have learned a little bit when it is ok to act younger than I am and when I need to act mature and present myself as a representative of Jesus Christ.  And I'm still working on it but I guess I would say I am acting more mature when it's time to be mature.  Being kind of crazy is really really useful in street contacting though. 

What do i wish I would have done to prepare?  If I could do it all again I would read all of the bible and all of Jesus the Christ before mission.  I'm having to catch myself up now.  Also I wish I would have done better missionary work.  There's a couple people who I really wish I would have talked to about the gospel from home and even lately I have been emailing some of them.  I'll tell you a story.  So I don't know if you remember B? I kept on emailing her and talking to her about the gospel and she said she's never really read the book of mormon before and she decided to really start praying and reading the book of mormon and she said in a week she read all the way up to Enos so that was pretty sweet.  Anyway The thing I wish i would have done is better missionary work before I came out and better home teaching.  I really want to be a better home teacher when I get home.  

And learned how to cook.  I should have done that.

To Mom:

yeah hahah the haircut was funny there was a bunch of people gathered around because they thought it was funny hahaha,.  My comp has been driving all the time lately but usually we switch off pretty even.  

I think I made a terrible error in my last email to you.  I said we get 200 dollars a month.  We only get 100 dollars a month.  It's terrible.  But I have been thinking a lot.  First of all I have really made a decision to live the word of wisdom and to become way ripped and healthy and stuff.  I've been running every morning.  Even I've been running with my comp and then coming back and running with Elder Faingataa who is the new elder in the boarding.  Also I've been working out every night for a while now.  I really really want to be healthy but I just can't eat healthy with the amount of money that I have.  We eat well when the members feed us.  I don't know if I told you this but last week I ate chicken liver and chicken heart.  The heart was actually super good I really liked it.  

Yesterday we had kind of a funny experience.  We pulled our car up to this guy and we were like hey we have a gift for you and he was like ok and we were like here is this pass along card if you text your name and address to the number on the back we'll bring you a free dvd about Jesus.  So we were about to hand it to him but then he was like no Jesus isn't my friend and we were like what?  And he said Jesus isn't my friend.  My friend is Qomata.  He teaches me to slaughter cows.  Hahahahahaha we thought he was joking but he was dead serious so we took the pass along card back and drove off hahahaha

My companion wants us to go to a game park some time this month.  It will be really cool.  What it is is a huge reserve for African animals that live in the wild and you go with a guide who takes you around in a land rover and he takes you to see all the african animals in their natural habitat so it should be way sweet.  It's going to cost about a thousand Rands though which is about 80 or 90 dollars.  I should have some sweet pictures soon though. 

Here is a picture with a guy called Lux. He's super powerful I think I've told you about him.  But yeah he has a sick beard and this picture shows what my hair looks like now.

Also this other picture is a picture Elder Greengrass took of what Mdantsane kind of looks like

October 24 letters

Letter to Mom:

One thing I really want to do when I get home is play a lot of piano.  I play the piano at the chapel sometimes if we're there and have spare time for some reason but I don't really get to play at all and I really miss it.  I think I'll play a lot when I get home.  

Don't worry about me I'm doing super.  People probably ask you like 10 times a day how's Adam doing on mission?  You can just tell them I'm doing super :)

So on Saturday we had an appointment drop and so I thought it would be funny to get my hair cut.  So we went to this shack where this black guy cuts hair and I asked him to cut my hair.  Haha it was super funny though because Mdantsane is a 100% black area and he had no idea how to cut white people hair so he said no way man.  And i said come on it will be funny if you mess it up super bad I won't care at all.  So I just had him cut the back and sides and not the top and he ended up doing a super good job.  I bought some gel and spiked up my hair and stuff and now I look super good I keep staring at myself in the mirror because I'm not way ugly anymore.  My buzzed hair is all the way gone now so I'm more happy  

This week they reorganized our bishopric.  Our old bishop was called bishop Mahlangabeza but he got called up to the stake presidency.  It was funny though because he has an identical twin brother and he got called to be the new bishop so we have bishop Mahlangabeza again and he looks exactly the same haha.  

With food I really have a desire to eat healthy and really live the word of wisdom but I just have no idea what to cook.  I know I could cook from a recipe but the problem is there's no way to get the variety of ingredients I would need to cook a variety of foods.  I have no idea what to buy or where to start and I feel like there's no way for me to eat healthy.  I don't really know what to do so I just eat toast with jam or nutella all the time and call it good.  I have been working out every night though and I really think I could be in pretty good shape if I were to eat more healthy.  I don't really know what to do though.  They have every ingredient you could get in America here so if you want to help me out with what I could plausibly cook for 200 dollars a month then that would be amazing but I don't really even know what to ask for.

Lately I've been reading a lot of talks and I just love Elder Christopherson so much.  He's my favorite dude he's so sweet.  All his talks are so powerful and they're my absolute favorite.  If you want to read a powerful talk with some sweet doctrine please read "Why Marriage Why Family" by Elder Christopherson

attached is a picture of our crew.  This is my zone.  A bunch of us found this cardigan at Mr Price and so we all bought it.  Everyone who has one is basically my biggest homie on mission.  It's like the sickest thing in the world so I love it very dearly.  The old people in the picture are the senior couple who stay in East London which is Elder and Sister Halverson and they're also way awesome.  

Letter to Dad:

I will be with my comp for another 6 weeks.  Transfers are on Wednesday so we will be together for 1 more transfer and then he'll leave. P days are pretty boring for the most part.  I don't think there's anything really interesting to do around my area.  We went to the beach and to this dam but it wasn't really anything special.  I haven't seen any interesting animals either except I saw a monkey just chilling in the road one time which was sweet.  

October 17 letter

so yes I have been super happy on mission.  I think I'm just lucky and blessed to be a super happy person all the time.  Before mission and in the mtc and on mission people have told me about a million times that it will just suck sometimes or you'll get super homesick or you'll just hate mission sometimes or it won't be fun or you will be stressed out or depressed sometimes, but in all honesty I have felt none of that.  I guess I'm just blessed but I haven't felt even the slightest negative mental state since leaving on mission.  I miss you guys a ton for sure but it doesn't really affect me too much.

So this week we had zone training with the mission president.  It was a super awesome experience.  I actually think mission president will be an apostle.  He's a super down to earth and charismatic guy and his knowledge of the gospel is amazing.  Also Sister Merrill is super awesome.  I can tell they really love me and care about me but what's even cooler is that I can tell they like me.  They're super nice and I am really honestly not looking forward to a different mission president.  So in my interview with Mission President he told me some really interesting things.  First of all he really made me realize how important families are in the gospel.  More important than anything else.  I actually told him the story about N and he didn't even hesitate.  He said absolutely you need to drop her immediately.  He said tell her to keep reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church and stuff but we shouldn't teach her until her husband gets home and she can work it out with him.  It was not what I was expecting but it makes sense.  I guess even bringing her into the kingdom and getting her baptized is not as important as keeping the family together.  President also told me some other good advice and he really built me up and made me feel good about myself.  I have a lot of respect for him and his wife.  His mission president on his mission was actually Elder ballard so he knows all the stories from Our Search for Happiness and stuff which is super cool.  

On Saturday we had a baptism.  I'll send you some pictures.  We baptized 5 investigators and 2 child of records.  one of the girls who is only 8 asked me to baptize her and she is absolutely tiny.  she literally only comes up to my waste.  The water was really cold and brown haha apparently they have a problem with the water system or something.  The service was really nice though.  

about the food...

we get about 200 dollars a month to buy food.  I don't really know how to cook and it's not enough money to buy all the ingrediants I need to cook properly.  I'm not a very good cook either so I just eat toast every day.  Also I buy lots of juice which is expensive.  Sometimes I cook rice with some butter and salt and sometimes I fry up an egg or make french toast.  Also they have frosted flakes here so I eat them a lot as well.  Also I eat lots of apples and some pineapple.  That is the entirety of my diet though

they said the missionaries are going to start getting more money which would be sweet.

In answer to your question about why I attended the temple so much.  Basically in the New Testament the savior says the same thing a couple of times.  He says basically to those that have more shall be given but from those that have not it shall be taken even that they have.  That's not a direct quote but it's basically what he says.  For me I think this really applies to the temple and desire.  To those that go to the temple they will be given even more of a desire to go to the temple.  To those who don't go to the temple even the desire that they do have to go will be taken from them.  I think as soon as you start going regularly, your desire to go increases and Satan has a more difficult time convincing you to not go, but if you don't go regularly Satan has an easy time telling you not to go when you have planned to go.

Abulele

Jackie