Talent Show

So its been a good week. The weather has been super nice, I have enjoyed it. We are headed to Cape Point today, it should be pretty cool.

The Talent show was...interesting. There was some positives of the activity, but it wasn’t really what we had hoped it would be. Not a lot of members really knew what was going on or invited friends, and the missionary side of the activity suffered. Part of this was because of the number of conferences this month, General conference and then the special stake conference last week to reorganize the Stake Presidency. So we were not able to hype it quite as much as we would have liked. The activity went longer then we wanted it too, it didn’t get over till like quarter till 10, which in South Africa is very late. But other then that it was really fun. There was some pretty funny talents. The last one was of Brother Brian, kinda this crazy guy, who did a solo latin dance. It was pretty funny. He is probably in his late 50s. Our talent went well, I will try to send the video, but I am not sure if it is small enough. 

Our Lyrics were something like this, we sang the first two verses of I Hope They Call Me on a Mission like normal, and then added three verses:

So now we’re serving our missions
Here in the Fish Hoek ward.
We really love it when you feed us
with braais and fish and chips while we work for the Lord.

We’re trying to kill all of the roaches
and fleas that bite us in our sleep.
We need to get up at six thirty
but we itch and scratch and rub while we count sheep.

We hope we can survive our mission
and maybe learn a thing our two.
We really like all these adventures
we knock and tract and run from dogs in Ocean View.

It was reasonably funny and a lot of people have been inviting us for dinner appointments this next week so it accomplished our purpose.

Lorraine and Andile came, I hope they enjoyed it. Alastair is doing really well, I think he is very close to being ready for baptism. He brought his adult son and his son’s girlfriend to the talent show and we are going to start teaching them. I had a nice chat with Alastair during the braai portion of the talent show and he shared how sharing the gospel with his son has really been helping him acknowledge his own testimony. I suggested he review Elder Holland’s most recent talk a few weeks ago because I felt it was almost written for him and he said he really enjoyed it and it did help him a lot. His path into the church is a very interesting one, and it impresses me a great deal, not only with Alastair and his desire to know the truth, but also the role the missionaries that he bordered twenty years ago planted a gospel seed, that has just taken a long time to bloom. In fact I think its a miracle that after boarding missionaries he doesn’t chase us of his property anytime he sees us.  

Sipho is also doing well. He has been struggling to find time to read the Book of Mormon and on Saturday he expressed a desire to get his act together and meet with us more regularly. He has two sons and he also is worried about some of the influences of the world on his children. He will be a great member and I think his family could really help to bridge a little bit of a race barrier in the ward. 

Lets see...oh a big bummer this week is that all those Book of Mormon media referrals we were hoping to get for the Simons Town youth group, none of them went through. Seems like something was wrong with the referral phone. We talked to the lady who invited us to the group last night and she is going to try to get the kids to re-SMS, and we are going to give her more cards to hand out, but I feel like some of the good that could have come out of that was lost, and that we wont be able to share the Book of Mormon with as many people who originally sent texts. But what can you do?

I started reading Samuel’s (Great Great Granddad) book again this week. Originally to tell Elder Burton where Samuel comes from, but I ended up reading it all over the course of a few days. The part about his mission and South Africa were a lot more interesting now that I am pretty familiar with the geography of the area. He even talks about taking a trip to Cape Point through what is now my area and seeing baboons. He also says somethings that I think was kinda funny, like kinda dissing on the Afrikaaners, and talking about how German Southwest-Africa (now Namibia) was a fertile place for the gospel. How when he was there the people he talked to were very interested in the gospel, which is much what people who go there now say as well. I was also impressed with some of the spiritual experiences he had. Very cool. Well, Love you all!

-Elder Martin