To start, last Monday we had a zone activity and went bowling! At the bowling alley I was talking to this Afrikaner (a white guy from South Africa) who worked there, and I told him I was from California. He asked where so I said Sacramento and he was like "oh I know Sacramento! Great place. I used to live in Reno, and I would drive to Sacramento in the mornings to get Krispy Kremes donuts," hahahaha I was just like no way!! That's awesome haha. Afrikaners are crazy :)
Our flat is a little hectic right now because an Elder got ET'd (emergency transfer) so we have five guys in the flat, but it's fun! It's also a little dirtier though. I don't want to tell you how many maggots we found this morning. And yes, there was one in my bedroom :/ No idea how it got there, but I basically wanted to throw up hahaha. But next week is transfers! So hopefully we'll be able to keep our flat a lot cleaner.
This week has been a little difficult with investigators. We have some people who have testimonies of the Book of Mormon, and they know that the church is true, but they just have challenges that they can't quite get over. One of the big problems here, not sure if I've talked about it, is lebola. Basically, if you want to get married, the bride and groom's uncles and parents (no idea why the uncles are involved) get together and negotiate a price. It's very traditional, and it's pretty lame because it takes awhile to save up the money for lebola, and then the couple are just living together, which is a matata. (zulu for problem. Like Hakuna Matata, hakuna means nothing, matata means problem, so no problems/no worries...for the rest of your days) So we have a couple of investigators who can't get baptized until they lebola and get married, but we're just encouraging them to get married in a chapel for free! Haha they usually just laugh at us when we say that, but we're still working on it :)
The other big problem is the word of wisdom. We found one of our favorite investigators drunk one day, and so we just left. After we left he apparently collapsed, because the only thing he had consumed the entire day was alcohol, so an ambulance had to come and give him an IV with sugar and other things, but he basically almost died. So we saw him again and he was like "Don't send Joseph Smith and his angels to me again, they almost killed me last time," hahahaha, we were just like, "that's not how it works", but he just kept on saying "I almost died!" haha he's so funny.
We also have an investigator who has a problem with smoking. He was smoking like 20-30 cigs a day, so we asked if we could throw out all of his cigarettes and he was just like "........okay," so we did! He's cut down to just a few a day, so he's making progress! I felt a little bad throwing them away, because he's suuuuper poor, like he hardly even eats, he just makes pap (maize meal) and smokes, but at the same time I was like nah it'll be good for him ;)
And we were supposed to baptize Sipho (the guy we tracted into 6 weeks ago who was watching Lord of the Rings ;)) but he's not quite ready, so it'll be postponed for a couple of weeks because of Stake Conference, but he's an awesome guy!
Anyway, that's it for this week, sorry my emails are short haha, I try to make them as long as I can! Love you guys, talk to you next week!
