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.
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