Elder Adam Heald: March 13 letters

Letter to Mom:

So the difference between Langa and Mdantsane is huge. Mdantsane is called the land of milk and honey in the mission and for good reason. You always have members present at all of your lessons and you teach a lot of people. The wards are strong. There's 2 chapels and the church has been there for over 20 years. Also you baptize a lot of people. Not only that but the Eastern Cape is a lot quieter and a totally different environment. It rains a lot and it's super humid there, and the cost of living is so cheap. Groceries are super cheap.

Here in Cape Town and specifically in Langa things are a lot different. First of all Cape Town is a lot more of a hectic and busy place. Everything feels like it's moving at a thousand miles an hour and everything. Also Cape Town is a very iniquitous city. What makes it kind of annoying about Cape Town is that there is so much sin so there's nobody in the branch who I think I can trust. We take brothers with us to do missionary work and they hit on the girls we go see and try to break the law of chastity with them and they turn around and smoke weed and stuff and scare away all of our investigators. Also there is 3 or 4 members in the ward who are rm's who met their wife here in Langa and came back and married them within like 2 months. That causes a lot of problems for us because people are always asking us why they did that and if they can date us and stuff which we obviously can't but the other people obviously did. There's even a few people who went less active because the missionary that taught them immediately came back and got married and 9 months later there was a baby. That's very frustrating for us and very sad.

In all I would say that I like Mdantsane more because it's a quiet place and there is more success, but I really like Langa as well regardless of the things that are hard here. Me and Elder Monoalibe have been working really hard and having lots of success and everything here. We've really been praying for miracles and we've seen some crazy things happen in the last week. Everyday we find someone new who is absolutely prepared to hear the gospel. That being said I don't think we are going to get the goal of 10 baptisms which is sad. I don't want to baptize anyone that's going to immediately go less active and the retention rate here is already terrible, so I want to make sure people are really ready before we baptize them. I think there's probably at least 5 though that are really ready which is a lot.

On Sunday we had a lesson about women in our lives and stuff and I just kept thinking about my mom hahaha. I'm just super grateful for you for giving me like pretty much everything I could ask for and for loving me so much and making sure I turned out right.

Letter to Dad:

Dad I heard a talk this week that I thought was really sweet and it answered some questions for me. I definitely recommend that you listen to it and read it if you want. It's called 7 deadly heresies by Bruce R McConkie