Hello everyone!
This week has gone pretty fast, and today has been awesome! The whole zone got up super early and left for Addo National Park this morning. We got to spend like 4 solid hours there, and there is still four hours left of P-Day! Best P-Day everrr. I saw a bunch of elephants, some zebra, kudu and other kinds of deer-like animals, buffalo, a bunch of wart hogs and some jackals. It was sweet. I am sending the pictures I took. Yes, I bought a camera on Saturday cause I wanted it for today. Its like the cheapest Fujifilm camera ever, and it just about zeroed that card, but it does the job and if it gets jacked again then I guess its not quite as big of a deal. It kinda sucks that electronics are a bunch more expensive here. I was missing Skyler and his photography skills today, he would have loved the safari.
Elder Bangerter will be leaving on Wednesday, and I will be getting my new companion, Elder Wolfgram, a Tongan from Utah who has been out just under a year. There are a lot of changes to the zone, as an area is closing, and the zone leaders are being whitewashed cause Elder Penman is going home and Elder Doxy is going to be an AP. Elder Nielson knew like 5 days ago my transfer news and has been taunting me, which was driving my crazy as you can imagine. I am a little apprehensive about having a new companion, but also excited. I have really started to love some of the people in Cleary and am excited for what the future holds.
I had a really humbling experience Saturday night when I was on exchanges with Elder Davuke. He is a transfer younger then me and so it was pretty much the first time on my mission that I didn’t have a really experienced companion to know what to do. We went to teach this young couple (Marvin and shavondre) who has a couple of daughters, and we brought Duwayne with us. We hadn’t seen them for a while, but I knew Marvin had started reading the Book of Mormon. I hadn’t thought about what they remembered about the restoration, and I assumed that we had taught it and they understood what we had taught. They are both pretty involved in some up newly started “charismatic” church, but Marvin especially wants to learn and is pretty humble. So going into the lesson we just basically taught them about the Book of Mormon. It was going alright, and we invited them to read and pray about it to know if it was true. They said yes, but then Shavondre asked “once I know its true, what do we do then?” I was like boom, and invited them to be baptized after they knew the Book of Mormon was true by one holding proper priesthood authority. That’s when things started to go down hill fast, cause I guess we had never really taught about authority to them. They had already been baptized in their current church and didn’t like me suggesting that their pastor did not have authority. I struggled to try to summarize the restoration of the priesthood, while Elder Davuke sort of seemingly randomly threw in various parts of the restoration, and then Duwayne tried to explain it in Afrikaans. Pretty quickly I could tell that all we were doing was confusing them and upsetting them more, at which point (we had already been there a while). I just tried to apologize for confusing them, and tried to get out and come back when I had a more experienced companion with me and we could just re-teach or teach the restoration. Marvin did not like that idea, cause we had clearly upset them and he wanted us to explain why we were there and what I meant about authority. At this point I realized we were really on the hook and just started praying to know what to say. I definitely was given words, and after very humbly apologizing, bearing my testimony and explaining our purpose very sensitively but clearly we were able to leave on a good note, with them promising to read and pray about the book of mormon. It was pretty intense cause the whole time I was thinking that I did not want to be accountable after I die for this family not receiving the gospel because I screwed up a lesson and taught like an idiot. It was a really good learning experience for a lot of things, and I realized how blessed I was to have Elder Bangerter as a companion. I think I definitely needed to be humbled cause I had definitely been thinking I was a better missionary then I was. I am just glad that we got out of there with everyone smiling and a return appointment. Nice father led families are always really stressful cause you really want them the get baptized, so it just seems like so much more is at stake. It was probably also a good learning experience for Duwayne, who is already planning on a mission and is going to be a really good one because he is a pretty good teacher and a really fast learner. He knows a lot for a week old convert.
I got the privilege of ordaining Duwayne to the office of a priest yesterday, so I need to type up his line of authority for him today. It was a pretty good experience, the branch has already recognized his commitment and President Barrendse has been really impressed by him and is taking him under his wing, which is great because thats what every convert needs, and he is going to be a powerful force for good in the church in Africa.
Prinetta is doing well and has apparently quit smoking, so she will hopefully be baptized two weeks from yesterday. They are such a nice family and fed us yesterday and will feed us again today, after we watch the Joseph Smith movie. We have been getting some nice Indian food, but yesterday Rajan made us eat the traditional way, with your hand. It was a little different to eat rice with like sauce on it with your hand, but it was really good. I think thats about it in terms of how the week was. We taught a sweet lesson to Theo (Duwayne’s brother) and some others Friday night around a campfire amongst the shacks. I wish I would have had my camera. Yup, well it was a good week. This one is going to be pretty interesting. Thanks for everyones prayers and support.
Love,
Elder Martin
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