Well its been a super super busy week. Monday was the start of Zone Leader Council. The weather was pretty lame (Cape Town winters seem pretty lame to me) so we hiked up this hill (instead of hiking something cool, like Lions Head) then we went and played basketball for like 30 minutes, ate pizza, went to the mission home, and commenced a marathon of meetings. We all sleep at the mission home, so its also kinda like a big party, so that part was fun. Presidents training, which was kinda of interspersed throughout the two days, basically consisted of watching and talking about segments of the Hastening the Work of Salvation broadcast which I know some of you saw like months ago. I had seen none of it, and most members here were not even aware that it happened. Its was really good, I really enjoyed it. It is kinda interesting though. Basically, what I got from the broadcast is that missionary work is changing, and aside from the technology part, the main change is that the main engine of missionary work should be members and ward leaders, not the missionaries. So basically we learned how our wards aren’t doing what they are supposed to. But it was pretty revelatory for me and Elder Khoni. Our vision for our area has definitely been altered to incorporate working with the members more. Other parts of the ZLC was the actual council, where issues are discussed, and the Assistants training, a training sent down from the Missionary department about planning which was also pretty good. Tuesday night all the missionaries in Cape Town went to the David Glen Hatch piano concert. It was a little too much culture for me but its always fun to see missionary pals. At the very end of the council President did a really short “study” on exaltation in the New Testament, which was pretty nifty.
Lets see, other stuff that happened this week. Friday we presented a condensed version of all our training we received to our zone in zone meeting. Our zone was not very interactive, so it was kinda a lame meeting, but we hammered through it.
On Saturday we went up to Fish Hoek to do three baptismal interviews, all of which dropped (to me and Elder Khoni’s great dismay). It was all people from Masi [Maasai?], none of who are ready for baptism. But it was awesome to go to Fish Hoek again, I got to swing past Sherrington and Agnus. I had ordered a hymn book for them after Sherrington got baptized cause he said he wanted to learn the hymns and it took like 6 months for it to come, so I got to go bring it to him myself. They were very excited to see me and as funny as ever. I think Sherrington shook my hand 20 times in 10 minutes, apologized 5 times that he had no cool drink to give us, and told Elder Khoni I was the best teacher because all the Elders after me just review the things I taught him (which is kinda how its supposed to work). It was great to see them, I am going on exchanges there tomorrow.
Sunday we had a really nice church service. I got to meet some more members. Its the Mowbray wards 160th birthday, so some old members from Cape Town were there to speak, and I got to brag a little bit about my heritage. A former Stake Patriarch spoke, he would have served in the South Africa mission the same time Granddad did 1960-61, but he said he did not really remember an Elder Martin, but he knew who Samuel was.
This morning was pretty interesting, a good couple hours of our P-day was munched because we had to skype teach some Rwandan lady in Australia. To make a long story short, a senior couple in this mission is close friends with the Brisbane Mission President. In his mission, some sisters are trying (key word, trying) to teach this Rwandan lady who does not speak more then 10 words of English and is illiterate (in all languages) but apparently wants to be baptized. Basically this mission President wondered if there were any Elders here who could speak her language, and there aren’t but there is a member in our ward who does. So the Assistants arranged for this guy to come help teach this old lady via skype, and because the Assistants were traveling (except they were at the mission office while we were skyping). On our side it went fairly well, the member was very good at translating, but this lady seems a little crazy, answered the phone twice in the lesson and didn’t really seem to be listening all that closely. The sisters who are both pretty young on mission seem to be pretty over their heads (this lady was on date for Baptism on saturday) but it was kinda a cool experience. We are probably going to do it again on Wednesday.
Anyway, its been a good week, time is really flying by. Love you all!
-Elder Martin
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