The flights where a little painful, and pretty boring. The flight to London and Joburg where both fairly empty, so I got more room then normal, but you can only read preach my gospel for so long. Elizabeth Stegner, Katherine's older sister was on my flight to London. Small world I guess. It was nice to see a familiar face. I met up with 4 other Elders in London, two from Utah, one from South Carolina and another from Toronto. Elder Burton, from E. Utah, is also going to Cape Town. The others are either going to Kenya or Uganda.
So I have only been at the MTC for a few hours, but I love it! My companion's name is Elder Govindasamy, he is Indian and from Durban. I need to show him that picture of me and Jashvina at homecomming [where Kaleb wears traditional Punjab clothing]. I think he would get a kick out of that. He is really cool. There are only 14 elders here for this session (I guess a bunch bound for Kenya had a hard time getting visas, so are coming next round) and all but a few are headed to Cape Town, and most of them are from South Africa. I can already tell that I will be really good friends with them before I leave. The facilities here are really nice, and since its such a small group we have plenty of space. Just from the the drive from the airport, South Africa, at least Joberg, seems pretty westernized and modern. There are spiked and razor wire fences everywhere and people advertising armed guard services, so not quite like America.
Saturday we are going to the temple, for the only time because I guess its shutting down for two weeks for cleaning, so thats a bummer. So far it has been pretty relaxed, mostly just hanging out. I didn't really sleep at all from London to Joburg, and only a few hours to London, but it hasn't really hit me yet, so thats good. I am told our p-day would normally be Saturday, but due to the whole temple deal, its getting moved to tuesday. So thats when you will probably hear from me next. [P-day or Preparation day is one day a week where missionaries prepare for the upcoming week, shop, write letters, do laundry etc.]
Not a lot more to say. Oh, the Elders from South Africa say that I will probably come home speaking Xhosa, especially if I serve in the Eastern Cape province. The halls here are filled with these awesome pictures of missionaries in Africa, it is pretty inspiring. I will make sure to take lots of pics. This MTC just got a new president, so we are his first batch. Everyone has been asking us if we went into London, meaning apparently that was ok, which is too bad because all we did was sit there for 8 hours. Oh, and I also bought a sandwich for 10 pounds, so like 20 bucks. It wasn't even that good I am not sure why they instructed us to bring all the american money, because now that I am not in the airport, I can't really do anything with it, I should have exchanged it in London or the airport here, because now I have like 300 dollars in useless money. Anyway, well my time is running out. I love you all and I miss you guys, but I am already loving my mission.
Love,
Elder Martin
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