Monday, February 16, 2015

"Eldah Savage!"

What's up! How's it going back in Utah? Probably snowy haha, I don't miss that. I'm excited for the next transfer, because it'll cool down a little! The humidity here I'd say is sort of inbetween California and Mexico, so it's not terrible, but it still gets really hot. But Summer is almost "ovah!", as Africans say because they can't say "over" hahaha. "Eldah! Eldah Savage!" hahaha the people here are awesome.

So yeah transfers are tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited! I'll be staying in Daveyton, and I'll see who my new companion is tomorrow! Our whole district is changing up which is cool. I've gotten used to driving on the left side of the road now too! I picture driving back at home and in my head I'm driving on the left side hahaha, it's kind of weird. I think I'm going to take a driving test tomorrow at transfers, because you have to take a test with a senior couple and they're too far from us to take a test on a normal day. So hopefully I pass! Most of the missionary cars here are automatic though, which is nice.

This week was pretty sweet! We had stake conference yesterday, and President and Sister Dunn talked, so it was cool. All of our recent converts and a lot of our most promising investigators were able to come which was so great! It was awesome because they had to pay for a taxi in order to get to the stake center, so we kind of saw who was serious about the church! We've had to drop a bunch of people these past two weeks because they just aren't quite ready to fully accept the gospel, so now we're just left with the investigators who are really cool and down to get baptized! I'm constantly learning how to tell if people are serious or not, like this one girl we got as a referral. She always says that we can come teach her, but she's never there, and we haven't taught her a lesson in like two months, so we just have to invite her to church and tell her to call us when she's interested. It's kind of hard, because I always want to keep giving people chances, but I've learned that people have to be ready and use their agency to learn about the gospel. We can't make them accept it. So it's been a good week of learning and gaining experience!

One of the guys that came to stake conference is so powerful haha, his name is Obed and he's the funniest guy ever, I think I've talked a little about him before. He sells cool times for his job, which are basically little slushies, and he's like dirt poor. We went into his room one time and it was sooo nasty. He doesn't have any money for cleaning supplies, so he would just wear the same shirt every time we saw him, and his room was littered with matches and trash, but he's awesome! He's the guy that was smoking 20 cigs a day so I was like "Can I throw away your cigs" and he was like..."Alright, okay," hahaha. These past few weeks he's just really been cleaning up, because he has money to spend on things other than beer and cigarettes. He even got a haircut, and deep cleaned his room, and bought laundry detergent! :) And he brought a friend to stake conference as well, which was sweet! He's the only person who did that haha. But yeah in the first lesson we taught him, we asked him to pray and ask if Joseph Smith was a true prophet, and he did and he got an answer! He said he just felt really happy, so we were like "Yeah man that's the Holy Ghost!" So after that everything with him has gone pretty smoothly because he has that solid foundation. So hopefully he can commit to live the word of wisdom (he's down to 1 cigarette a day!) and be baptized!

Another cool investigator we have is this family we tracted into. We taught them when we first tracted into them, and then we went again and saw who in the family was serious about the message, and so far it's just one of the aunts, but she's sweet! She's also received a confirmation that the Book of Mormon is true. But the cool thing was they have this little gym in their house, and as we were ending the second lesson with them, talking about the Book of Mormon, the Young Men's President walks in and is just like "Hey Elders!" We were like "Senzo what are you doing here?", and he's like "Oh I come here to gym!" The family loves him too, so we had him bear his testimony about the Book of Mormon and it was powerful. So it's nice because when they come to church they'll already know Senzo and his mom, and Senzo just got his mission call to London, England, so he'll be a super good example for the family! But yeah, Elder Clegg and I were just like "What are the chances that the Young Men's President walks into a lesson with a random family" haha, pretty cool stuff!

So yeah, that's it for this week! I'm just so grateful I'm able to be here in South Africa teaching people about the gospel, because I definitely know that it's true! I love you all, thanks for the emails and the prayers, I'll talk to you guys next week!

Peace






2 comments:

  1. Hello from Elder Smith's mom! (Elder Smith trained Elder Clegg in Daveyton & is Elder Savage's "grandfather.") I am looking forward to keeping in touch with Daveyton via your blog now that Elder Clegg is being transferred. It is wonderful to hear about all the people my son loved! Thank you!
    -Laura

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  2. Me too! Elder Savage is our window into Daveyton now. We love it because our sons loved it! Tell him thanks for us! His stories and descriptions are great!! Thanks!!

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