First Baptism!

What's up everybody! This week was sweet! Last week the chapel got broken into and people stole the pipes in the bathroom, so we just had to tell some investigators that they couldn't go to church, which was lame, but yesterday was awesome!

To start off, the bishop asked me to give a talk on missionary work in the North Cluster (remember me and my comp work in two clusters that are like 10 minutes away from each other, and we also go to the chapel), so I had like an hour to prepare it on Saturday, which was fine, but I would've liked a little more time. And then on Sunday we get to the cluster and I see all these white guys outside of it, and one of them was President Cook of the seventy, and I was just like "Fetch I'm gonna have to give a talk in front of a general authority" hahaha! So it was pretty stressful, but then I got to the pulpit and started talking and I really wasn't nervous at all, which was nice. I talked for like eight minutes, so it was good! President Cook gave me a thumbs up and I was just like sweet :)

And then we had our first baptism! There were 2 teenage girls that my comp had been teaching when I got here, but they were out of town for awhile, so they came back and we taught the last lessons and baptized them! I baptized the 13 year old, whose name is Ellelwang Ptlele, so I had to practice saying her name a bunch of times haha, but it was good!

We have a few solid investigators, and we invited one to the baptism but he couldn't come, but he was like "So when can I get baptized? Because I'm definitely ready", and Elder Clegg and I were just like "Bro we can baptize you in like two weeks!" So that'll be awesome. He's the guy that we tracted into when he was watching Lord of The Rings, so you know he's cool ;)

And then Sunday night there was a YSA devotional thing on serving a mission. So all the Elders from the nearby area were there, and the stake president and his wife gave cool talks. His wife's talk was awesome though, she talked about how she went on a white water rafting trip, and when they were coming to the class 4 rapids (the really big ones) she asked to get out and walk on the land because she was too scared. So she got back in the boat afterwards, and she was happy that she didn't do the class 4, and she felt good about not doing it. But then later, people would ask her and her husband how the trip was, and he would say it was great, but she would say yeah it was good I did most of it except for the class 4's, but then I got back in the boat and finished the rest of the trip! She always had to explain why she couldn't do all of it, and after awhile she just felt bad about it, and really wished she could've gone back and stayed in the boat, and she related that to serving missions, and how people will leave the boat, and just do school or their career, and then later down the road they'll just wish they could've gone back and had the experience of serving a mission. It was a really good talk, and we had a less active from our area who's been struggling with a lot of commandments, and he was just like "I need to serve a mission, I have to." It was awesome! He's been struggling a lot recently with some commandments, so I think this will help him to change and have a desire to be more converted!

So yeah, it was a crazy cool Sunday. I don't even remember what happened during the rest of the week, it went by too fast haha. I've just been eating pancakes and teaching the Africans how to play chess ;)  No, but it was awesome.

Anyway, thanks for the emails, love you guys, talk to you next week!
KAOFELA ( it's Sotho, one of the 12 or so main languages of SA, pronounced sootoo, for united). It's what all the cool kids are saying :)

Olga and the tea.

Hey fam!

It was so good to read your emails this week! There is definitely a bunch of stuff happening! Well, not a whole lot happened this week, but it was still awesome!

The new cluster in Minenawe (min-uh-now-way) is sweet! Because everyone here walks or gets taxis, it's hard to get to church when it's far from their house. So, we've just been tracting all around the cluster and been like "The church just opened up right by your house, so you don't have any excuses not to come!" Haha, we've been able to have a lot of investigators because of it, it's super nice.

One of our coolest investigators is Olga, I think I talked a little about her last week. She's like 40 or 50, and she's the one who had a vision of a man in white saying he would come and fetch her. She's definitely been prepared to hear the gospel. Anyway, at the end of our first lesson she was talking about how life's hard, but she's always happy. She was like "As long as I can come home and drink my tea, life's good. That's all I need is my tea." and Elder Clegg and I were just like fetch. This is gonna be difficult haha. So we planned to teach her the word of wisdom for the second lesson, because we just felt like that's what she needed. The day we were going to teach her we went on exchanges, so I led our area (which was a little stressful, but it worked out) with Elder Stilgoe from England, and he didn't know Olga obviously, so I had to lead the lesson as well. So we were talking about how one of the things God has commanded us is to abstain from coffee and tea, and she was like "Yeah, I wasn't going to say anything, but this last week at church (her first time at the cluster) I was praying that maybe I would be able to stop drinking tea, because I've just talked to a lot of people about it and haven't felt as good about drinking it. I don't even like the taste of water anymore, I just drink about 5 glasses of tea a day, and I think it's causing problems. (one of these problems was not being able to read for more than a minute or two, because she just got headaches and became tired) So I was praying that maybe I would be able to start drinking more water, and then on Monday I didn't make myself one glass of tea. My husband made me one, because he thought it was strange that I hadn't drunken any tea all day, but besides that I've been drinking water, and I like the taste of it now!" Hahaha I was just like why are we even teaching you, you're like already converted hahaha. So she started living the word of wisdom after drinking tea her whole life before we even talked about it! It was awesome! She straight up already has the gift of the Holy Ghost, like she has promptings to do things all the time, and she sees the consequences when she doesn't follow her promptings, it's insanely cool. We saw her again and she said that she's even able to read the Book of Mormon now! She's already seeing the blessings of keeping the commandments, it's just awesome.

Well that's it for this week, thanks for the emails and everything! I finally finished that chocolate you sent me for Christmas mom! It was money. Talk to you guys next week! Bye.