Great Week

Well, I am very pleased to say it was a great week. I really like our area. The suburb we stay in, Parklands, is full of relatively economically stable black people, most of them in there early 30s or late 20s, and lots of families. I love it, especially once I discovered that the security on most of the flat complexes here isn’t as good as I originally thought, so I have already tracted a lot in a few of them. I have also been impressed by how many members live in our area, even within about a kilometer of us. Even within our flat complex (which is pretty big, and probably 70-80% black) there is one young active couple (we share a wall) and two less active families. So we have been focusing on getting to know the members in our area, we have gone and shared that “I’ll go where you want me to go” music video clip with several of them. 

One family I have high hopes for is Brother Demerci and his wife Benedict. Demerci is a LA returned missionary from the DRC, and his wife is not a member, but her brother I found out the other day is also a member, so she has got a lot of connections to the church. We stopped by earlier this week and shared some Mormon messages, and I wasn’t really sure how it went, the wife doesn’t speak English super well. But afterwards the wife kinda almost demanded I leave the DVD with her, which I thought was progress. I had seen another DVD with some mormon messages on it at the flat so I took her those. I am not sure if she watched them, but last night we watched  “Joy to the World” with the family. I could see a light in brother Demerci’s eyes that I hadn’t seen before and he shared is appreciation for the restoration and offered to say the closing prayer. It was in french, but it was pretty long, so I thought that was a good sign. We are going to start teaching Benedict the lessons. 

Christmas Zone Conference was on Saturday, it was pretty fun. The zone reports I think were the best I’ve seen my whole mission. Elder Myende and Elder Anderson was really good, they did a, I guess you could say a parody of “Most Beautiful Girl” by Flight of the Concords about their zone, mixed in with Elder Myende rapping, and it was dang good. Especially with Elder Myende’s black man soul dancing. I love that kid. 

I am trying to think of any other cool experiences. Oh yeah, one unique thing that happened this week is we contacted a family that had been referred to us by members in Bellville. Its an Italian family, the father a plastic surgeon who is waiting for his work permit here (sounds like there is some white discrimination involved). We went it talked with them with the Elder Carnieletto, aka the Italian Stallion, who is in the same transfer as Elder Oveson and is a hoot. I love that kid. Whatever he says is funny. Anyway, we had a nice visit with them, the mother has recently lost both her parents and the family has realized that their casual Catholic-ness has not been enough to really answer their questions about life. They seemed a little hesitant to commit to be taught by us, but we had a very pleasant conversation with them, left some pamphlets and they said they would call us. So I guess we will see what will happen. 

Anyway, love you all lots!

-Elder Martin