Elder Kaleb Martin in Cape Town: Busy Week with Vacachanges

Wow, its been a very eventful week. Tuesday was a little hectic trying to fit in people we needed to see before we left for what I call our vacachanges (vacation-exchanges). I love the Garden Route! especially Knysna, I would love to serve there.

Our trip was nice. We listened to a lot of conference talk, I have really grown to love conference talks. I am not sure Elder Carlson has taken a lot of road trips because every half an hour he would pull out his camera and record some video that basically consisted of “We are driving!” and then half an hour later “We are still driving!” It was about a 4 hour drive to George. We stopped to take pictures of Bloukrans bridge, where I think the highest bungee jump in the world is. If I weren’t a missionary...

George was alright. I went with Elder Roeloffze and Elder Howe. Elder Howe was trained by Elder Gillespie and therefore is my “grandson.” It was nice to get to know him better. I think it was a productive exchange, it was a good experience. Friday we were in Knysna, which was great. Love it, its is so beautiful and that area is probably one of the hottest in the mission in terms of growth. They also recently got a sweet senior couple that feeds them a lot, and the the Elders out there, Elder Tonge and Whitworth are fun guys.

Saturday we drove back home in time for a Stake Priesthood Meeting. I saw a lot of people from Cleary, but sadly not Duwayne, but I am headed on exchanges there tomorrow so hopefully I will get to see him.

Saturday night we had a crazy experience. So while we were gone we got an SMS from the Elders in charge of the DVD referrals that this lady really wanted her DVD. We hadn’t gotten it yet, but when we came back we had received the refferal. We called her and asked if we could come deliver it at 5:30 that evening. So as we are headed there with Luthando, this stud of a fellow shipper (he is a returned missionary), she calls again asking if we are coming, it was like 5:18. This urgency seems pretty strange, so we kinda expected her to be a little crazy. So the address turns out to be like a theater, so we stand outside waiting for her. She rocks up, and is like kinda covering her face with a book. We start talking to her and give her the DVD, but she keeps asking us where is the DVD. We point to it in her hand, and then Luthando in Xhosa discovers she thought we were bringing her a DVD player. Anyway, then she wants to pray, so we start praying. She stopped trying to hide her face, and we see that she is missing a tooth or two and her lip is cut up pretty bad. She starts crying as she prays (oh, and I can tell she is a little tipsy). After the prayer she starts talking to Luthando in Xhosa for a long time and crying a lot, and Luthando starts talking to someone on her phone. And then this other guy who is like a parking guard (these guys who “watch” the cars, this one had a like a hand held tazer) walks up and starts saying some other stuff. Anyway, after a while we kinda find out, and Luthando explains later, that the girl was a prostitute, and the parking guy was her pimp/ex-boyfriend who had beat the snot out of her. He has a different story, but she is sobbing for us not to leave because she doesn’t want this guy to beat her up again. Luthando was on the phone with the girls uncle, telling him to pick this girl up and take her home. So we sit there for a while, its on a pretty busy street, there was something going on at the theater so a lot of people were around. We end up leaving to go to an appointment near by because things seemed relatively stable, the appointment dropped and we came back to see the girl get picked up by her uncle. What I took from this experience is that it was kinda a miracle that we had Luthando with us. Brandon Chimuti wanted to come with us. He is 16 (and small) and from Zhimbabwe and does not speak Xhosa. But Luthando really was the one handling the situation, for the most part we didn’t really know what was going on. So yeah, pretty crazy.

The baptism was really nice. Candice’s parents and Grandparents came, as did Devryn, her boyfriend, who is supposed to start meeting with the Elders in East London (and is a GIANT of a man). There were a few glitches, like the font not filling up with water fast enough cause the drain wasn’t actually closed and having to use cold water, and finding out the whole issue regarding the fact that she lives in the other wards boundaries was not fully cleared up (our bishop has been out of town for 3 weeks) and me saying “Holy Spirit” instead of “Holy Ghost”, so I had to baptize her twice in cold water. But yeah, it was great.

We also went to Addo the game park this morning, that’s why I am emailing late.

Anyway, love you all!

Elder Martin