Soweto Towers, Phantom of the Opera, and Chocolate chip cookies!

Crazy week!  Well, it just went by super fast. And good news ... I have a lot of pictures to send! 

Last p-day we went to what is called the Soweto Towers.  It is an abandoned nuclear power plant in Soweto (the biggest township in the world) and they've retrofitted it to be a bungee jumping place. Unfortunately, we couldn't jump off, but we still took a lift to the top and took some sick pictures!  That night we ate dinner with another American family, which was cool. When we first walked in they had just gotten their son from soccer so they still had to prepare a lot of the food, and they said we could chill in their living room.  And, like most families in our area, they had a piano!  So I was looking through their sheet music and they had Phantom of the Opera. I just stared at it for like a minute and then asked, “Can I play?" They said sure so I just sat and played through the entire book haha. I haven't played it in 11 months (crazy that I've been out that long) so it was sweet.  It felt so good to play again haha.

On Wednesday we did service for this kid Orobile, who is 16 and his mom and his sister are already members. (And, by the way, he passed his baptismal interview so he'll get baptized next Sunday!)  He made us waffles and we helped him clean up his yard.  It was fun.

On Thursday we ate dinner at this part-member family’s house.  The mom is a member but her daughter and husband are not.  She is inactive, and they were a sweet family! It was fun being there, but kind of sad, because she basically feels that Heavenly Father is pleased with her, even though she's not keeping the Word of Wisdom and like 12 other commandments.  So we're trying our best to work with them and get one of them interested in church, so the others can also tag along. But anyway, they fed us an awesome dinner, and right after that we went to another member’s house who also fed us dinner!  Basically, I felt like I was going to explode, and I didn't even eat breakfast the next morning because I was still full from the night before haha.

And then Friday was cool.  We were able to go to the temple, and then I went on exchanges afterwards with a zone leader. We ate dinner at a member's house and they had a ping pong table, so it was tight.

Saturday was conference! This was definitely my favorite General Conference I've ever listened to! I got a lot more out of it then before. It was the first time that I really took notes, which is awesome, because previously I would just remember a story or two, but now I can look back at all the cool things I liked in all of the talks. I'm not sure what my favorites were, but I definitely loved Elder Holland's talk about mothers, and how he referenced our Heavenly Mother as well. Pretty sweet. I also really liked the lady from the South and someone else who challenged us all to ask "What lack I yet?" in our prayers. Overall, I just got a lot out of it and saw ways to change myself more, which is really the reason for General Conference. Anyway, it was just awesome.

Then on Satuday we got 2 dinners in a row...again. Can't wait till I get fat! (Speaking of getting fat … on Sunday morning I didn't make breakfast because we had to hustle to the chapel.  The American family that we ate with on Monday sat next to us at church and were like “Elders, we made you some chocolate chip cookies!" And so I ate 4 in about 10 seconds.  I was about to eat the other 5 cookies, but I was like, no, I should probably share with my companion. :)  But it was the first time I've had chocolate chip cooks in months so I was going hard hahaha).

So yeah, that was the week.  Because of conference and my companion being sick, we didn't teach as much, just a lot of member lessons, which are still cool. And one of our recent converts brought a friend to conference and she loved it! The members are super good about giving referrals here, which is the best way for missionary work to be done. So I'm loving it here in Randburg.  This is definitely the place I need to be.  The Church is true!

Thanks for everything.  Talk to you all soon!

Elder Savage

Soweto Towers.

Inside the dome.

The lift going up was scary. It was basically a rollercoaster, except the floor was just plywood and I honestly thought we were gonna die haha.