Joel 2:28

Hey family, howzit going! 

This email will be a little shorter because I just talked to you guys a few days ago, but that's alright! Skyping was rad! 

So for Pdays now we go golfing, because Daveyton has a free golf course. It's a little ghetto, but it's free so I can't complain! 

Golfing on P-day

The teaching this week has been pretty crazy! I've been reminded a lot of the verse in Joel 2:28 "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." I'll explain why.

On Monday we were walking and this lady was in her front yard and called us over, and she was talking about how she wanted to learn more about our church, and she saw missionaries a couple of months ago from a distance but wasn't able to get to them. Before we left she said "You remind me of a dream I had. I'll tell you about it on Friday when you come to teach me," and I was just though "no, tell me now!" haha, but we went on Friday and taught her. Her name's Ulga and she's pretty powerful. She said that she stopped going to church because the preachers would talk about Jesus Christ, which she liked, but then they would just start talking about money and how the congregation needed to pay them. She was praying a lot to know which church to join, because she's been so confused about religion, and then one night she had a dream that a person dressed in white came to her and said he "would come and fetch her." She said that every time she see's the missionaries she's reminded of the dream that she had. Pretty cool stuff! We've only taught her one lesson but we just explained that the message we are teaching is what her dream was talking about. So hopefully she can gain a testimony of that!

And then on Saturday we taught the plan of salvation to a member, and she said that a couple of years ago she had a dream where her brother, who had died, came to her and asked her to take him out of the prison that he was in, and then a couple of nights later she had a dream where her dad came and said the same thing! She didn't even realize what they were talking about at first, but then she realized that she needed to go to the temple and be baptized for them! The 7th Article of Faith states "We believe in the gift of...prophecy, revelation, (and) visions," and I definitely know that's true! Hearing her tell the story just made me want to go do family history work haha, but unfortunately I can't. But you guys can! :) 

Thanks for all you do! Mom that Christmas package is seriously awesome, the chocolate is gonna last forever haha! Love you all, talk to you next week!

Elder Savage 

Here are a couple short videos of us Skypeing with Elder Savage. :) It was such an awesome experience! He is just glowing with the Spirit. 

Exchanges with Elder Otieno

What's happening! 

Things are going pretty well here in South Africa! Christmas time is nuts, it's weird because it's hot and people are just barbecuing every day, it doesn't feel like Christmas at all haha. I'm so excited for Thursday! For Christmas all of the Elders near the MTC are going there and we're just gonna do fun stuff and braai (that's what they call barbecue here) and play volleyball and stuff, it's gonna be awesome! And then afterwards Elder Clegg and I will go to a members house, and mission pres is awesome and he's letting us skype for an hour! It's gonna be sweet!

This is slice. Four pieces of bread, french fries, hot dog, and this amazing sauce! It's like 90 cents in american money and 4000 calories haha!

This week was awesome though. On Tuesday I went on exchanges with the zone leader Elder Otieno. He's Kenyan, and he's huge, and I sort of expected him to be serious because he only has a few more months on his mission, but he's like the goofiest guy I've ever met haha. After we went tracting at a mall for a little while, we went and taught some lessons and ate at a member's house, so it was a pretty good day. But then we went back to his flat and I spent the night there, and it was honestly like sleeping over at a friend's house. We were just laughing at all of the pranks he's done on companions haha. He was training this guy from America and they got in the car to go to there flat from the MTC, and Elder Otieno was just like "Elder, I can't drive, you're going to have to drive us to the flat." The new Elder said "I've never driven on the opposite side of the road before!" But Otieno was just like "I don't know how to drive Elder, it's up to you." So the elder had to drive them like 40 minutes back to their flat! Haha Otieno didn't even tell him until they got back, oh man so flipping funny. 

But yeah I'm not sure if I've explained the church situation here, so I'll just explain it really quick; so in Daveyton, we have a chapel, but people here don't really have cars, so they can't travel very far for church, so along with the chapel we have what are called clusters. They're like church branches, but smaller. There are only about 5 clusters in the world and two of them are in our area! Each cluster has like 30 members attending, and half of those are kids haha. So if I ever talk about clusters, now you know what I'm talking about. Elder Clegg and I have investigators that go to both clusters and the chapel, so Sundays are pretty hectic for us! We're just running around like chickens with our legs cut off (Sons of Provo quote). 

Elder Savage walking an old woman into the church cluster. So sweet! 

One thing that's difficult with the investigators here is they can be really nice, and they'll always let us in and say they want us to teach them, but they're really not that interested in the church. They'll agree with everything we teach them, but they won't make any of the commitments we give them, so we've had to drop a few this week. But it's good because it lets us see who's really serious about the gospel!

After the rain in Daveyton 

Well thanks for all the emails, they're awesome! Can't wait to skype on Thursday! Merry Christmas, talk to you all soon!

Elder Savage 

Stephen's caption for this photo: 

Scabbers! No but seriously, rats are everywhere here. I probably see like 2 or 3 squished rats on the street every day. But I can't complain, it's free food! ;)