Cockroaches and Cow Feet!

So how's everyone doing! It's been pretty good here in Sebokeng this past week. It's cooling down a little because it's autumn now, so I've been wearing sweaters a lot. Because it's humid, it'll be like 50 degrees but it feels like 25, so every morning and night it's freezing haha. We'll see how it feels in the winter!

But yeah this week was nice, I got fed some interesting food! We were eating our lunch at a member's house and the grandma asked if we wanted some food she had made the night before and she brought it out and it was cow foot! I guess it would be the hoof, I'm not really sure what to call it, it has an actual name in Zulu, but it was pretty good! Haha she mixed it with some other stuff, it was pretty slimy but it honestly wasn't half bad.  My companion tried to hide it in his tupperware but the member was like... so I guess you don't like it too much haha. So I bit the bullet and ate his too. So yeah that was one of the more authentic "African" foods I've had. I should've taken a pic of it, that's alright though, you'll just half to imagine it! They basically eat like 95% of the cow here, so I'm sure I'll have intestine, stomach, and even cow head in the future! Should be fun.

Then on Wednesday I was with the zone leader Elder Tukia from Tonga and that was super fun! His area is a town, aka white people, so it was interesting. We met some really cool people though, my favorite was this Afrikaaner family, a husband, wife and two children. The husband was baptized into the church but has been less active for 8+ years now, and his wife is not a member. So he was going to his wife's church for awhile, and even though he was inactive he never really lost his testimony, so sometimes he would argue with his wife's pastor because he would be like "That's false doctrine, what you're teaching is wrong", and the pastor finally just said "What church are you basing your doctrines on", and he was like "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints", and the pastor said "Don't ever go there!" So he was like "Hey don't tell me what to do" and then the next Sunday he went back to the LDS church! Hahaha and him and his wife have been attending ever since. So the missionaries have been teaching his wife and she really loves the Book of Mormon, and even though the husband has been less active and forgotten a lot of the doctrine, his testimony is still powerful. Just shows that if the Spirit has confirmed the truth to you, you can't just forget it. You might forget certain aspects or facts, but you never really lose a testimony. So that was cool.

And yeah besides that we just did some service at an orphanage, it reminded me a little of Mexico, so that was fun.

And church was good too! We have a new investigator named Nonhlanhla (kind of hard to pronounce) and she's really powerful. She found us on the street, and said that she wanted to learn more about the gospel, so we taught her this week and she came to church and says she already wants to be a member haha. She's super nice. We taught her about the plan of salvation because she had her 1 year old child pass away, so she liked that a lot, it gave her a lot of comfort and peace.

But yeah, a great week all around, I've just been making pancakes and french toast like crazy haha. Oh yeah and every night we come home and find a cockroach or two on the counter and we've just been like "Where are these coming from?", and I had a feeling that maybe it was from behind the fridge, but I was just too tired during the week haha, so we got home last night and I was like "Elder, I have a fear that they're coming from behind the fridge", so we checked and sure enough there were like 20 behind there. So that sucked. But we went ham, killed them all, I'll show you a picture of the battle ;)

 Thanks for the emails and for all you do though! Love you, talk to you next week!

College students are very receptive to the gospel!

What's up everyone!

It was super fun skyping with you last week.  It feels like a month ago haha. This week was pretty chill though, not too much happened. First we went to Roodepoort for transfers because some guys in our district were leaving and not everyone has licenses, which was sweet. Transfers are always fun! I was able to talk to all my “homies" from the MTC.

This week was pretty normal. We had some free time on one of the days, ( Ican't remember which day it was, such is mission life) so we went to a local college called Sedibeng. We were just sort of walking around scoping out the area around 3:00 pm, so there weren't too many students there, but we were just seeing what it was like. We were looking for a restroom. and I went in as my companion started talking to a guy outside about the Book of Mormon, and then when I walked out of the bathroom (like a minute later), there was this huge group of people around him! There were about 12 college students just listening and asking questions, so we taught them a mini lesson on the Book of Mormon haha.  I was just like where did these people come from?! But the students here are so eager to learn, they're receptive to anything, and they were wondering why two white guys were on their campus.  We gave them all cards with our numbers and told them to call if they wanted a free Book of Mormon. And then they took pictures with us haha.  It was pretty funny. College students are the best, because they're educated and they understand English, so they're super nice to teach!

So that was fun!  We'll probably go back there again this week. And I think I told you on Skype about one of our investigators, his name is Lebohang. We talked to him on the street and invited him to church, which is what we do with thousands of people, but he actually came to church! We didn't even remember talking to him because he was just so normal, and didn't seem extra interested or anything, so it was super surprising hahaha! We have been teaching him -- he's 19 but is still in 11th grade (which isn't that uncommon here) and he's super cool. The day after our first lesson with him he prayed and felt the Spirit, which is the fastest I've ever seen someone get an answer! He's really prepared, and he has come to church 3 times in a row now, and last night he asked when he can get baptized! So we're really excited for that, he's just super prepared to hear the gospel.

We had 9 investigators at church yesterday! That is the most Sebokeng has had in a long time, so the members are getting super into missionary work because they're seeing results from it! There's a lady, Sister Moziboku, and she gave us a couple of referrals the other day from people at her work. While she's on shift at the hospital she talks to co-workers about the gospel, and she's already placed like 4 Book of Mormons, haha!  She's way powerful! We just dropped off 10 more Book of Mormons at her house haha.  The Sebokeng branch is doing pretty well!
I'm happy I'm here, I know there's many reasons for it, and I know that I'm very blessed!

Thanks for everything, love you all, and talk to you next week!
Elder Savage

Mother's Day and Pictures!

We had an incredible 1 1/2 hours talking to Stephen on Mother's Day and loved every minute of it.  I’ve never seen him with such a huge smile on his face.  He is SO happy!  A perfect Mother’s Day gift for me!  :)

Stephen didn’t write a group email this week—he only wrote personal emails to each of the family members since we skyped yesterday.  But, he did have a baptism (pictures attached) along with some other pictures.

Have a great week everyone!

Stephen baptized this 12 year old girl yesterday.  :)

This is Stephen’s smile while skyping.  It was “heaven” to see his face for 1 1/2 hours! 

Here are some pictures of Stephen's apartment. Very clean flat but a little messy.

Kitchen.

Our white board.

Elder Savage and Elder Neuenschwander.

Tennis, Granny, and and Sunday School.

Hey Family!

What is up?  It's going awesome here in SA! This week was pretty sweet. To start, I bought some tennis rackets because in our complex we have some tennis courts, so we've been getting up at 6:00 am a few times this week to play. It's difficult hahaha, but it's worth it for the exercise.

We had some great lessons this week.  Hopefully I haven't talked about these people before haha. . . it’s hard to remember what I've talked about before. But the first one is this 24 year old girl Paballo. We talked to her in the street one day, and she was with her sisters and they just sort of walked away, but she was really interested in our message. Her house is connected to a bar though, which is hard because we have to walk through it sometimes, which probably isn't the best place for missionaries to be seen, so we're going to start teaching her at a member’s house. Anyway, she's super cool. We taught just a simple lesson to her on the Godhead, which is always hard for people here to accept. Basically everyone believes that God is just a spirit who's everywhere at once, like oxygen, but it's pretty simple to explain his true nature. So once we're done teaching we always do the whole-- we don't expect you to believe us, we just invite you to pray so that you can find out for yourself. So we did that, and she's super busy with school and maintaining the bar and her kid, so we weren't sure if she was going to be able to pray. But we went back the next day and she said that she was up super late the night before, and everyone else was asleep so she tried praying in the way that we taught her, and she said that it was the most unique prayer she's ever had. Usually she just says the Lord's Prayer as fast as she can so she can go to sleep, but this time she actually took the time to pray and have a conversation with God, and she said that she had never felt so connected with God in her life! So we just testified that what she was feeling was the Spirit, and that she really was talking to Heavenly Father, so it was super cool. People rarely get their answer that fast, but I think she was just prepared. So I'm really excited to see Granny again (that's her nickname. Weird huh?) and continue to teach her! And also she said that even though she lives next to the bar she doesn't really drink, only on rare occasions, which is awesome, because the Word of Wisdom won't be as hard for her to accept!  So that was good.

Then we had a member lesson with an older guy, maybe in his 60's who got baptized last year, which was pretty humbling. He's been having a hard time.  He was working with a guy on a funeral and he gave him R800 to go buy groceries and the dude just bounced with the money.  And then two days later while they were sleeping some guys came into their house and jacked their R16000 (~$1600) TV, so it was just a super hard week, and he was super stressed and he found himself smoking. So he was asking us about the sacrament, how it works if you've sinned, and it was just humbling because an old guy is asking me, someone who's half a century younger than him, advice on his spiritual life. So all we could do was refer him to the Branch President and hope for the best. And he was just about to baptize his two grandchildren the next Sunday, so that's now been postponed. But it's good he's going through the repentance process so hopefully in a few weeks he'll be sharp, but we'll see!

Then Friday we stopped by this choir, we've gone to them in the past, they're super awesome. We street contacted this girl and she wanted us to teach her, so we went there and there were like 14 people in the house so I was super intimidated.  I usually try not to teach huge groups of people, but we just sort of introduced ourselves and what we're about, and then they were like "Well, we have to sing now, but you're welcome to stay."  It was dope! There were 7 guys and 7 girls, and they were amazing! I took a video, and hopefully I can find a way to get it back to you guys.  It was sweet.  They sang the Lord's Prayer and the guys had super good base (even though they were all high haha) and the girls were super good, so we're gonna go back next Friday too haha.

Church was sweet too. One of our investigators, a father led family, were there and the mom just gained a testimony herself the day before that the church is true, and I was like joking telling her to go up there and bear her testimony, but she was like "I'll go up when the time's right. God will let me know," and I thought "Way to be!" She's super cool, and her family is awesome too. Their baptismal date is set for next month, so hopefully they'll be able to meet that goal!

We were sitting in Priesthood during opening exercises and the different classes split up, and normally we just stay in Elder's Quorum but I just felt like we should go to Young Men's, so we did and it turned out that their teacher bailed, so we were just like "Okay we'll teach!" The Branch President was there at first, but then left, so it was just me and my comp and 10 young men, and it was super powerful. Honestly the most involved I've ever seen youth in a lesson haha, because they all felt comfortable with us.  We started talking about prophets and revelation (that's the topic for this month) and they were asking us a bunch of questions, and we'd ask a question and like 5 hands would go up, and it was just chill. So I'm glad we were able to do that, because a couple of them came up to us afterwards and said “That was so awesome! Like I honestly learned a lot, normally it's just the same sort of lesson every time, but today it was different!" And it was cool because I remember being in their shoes, being bored with the same bland Sunday School lessons every week, so I wanted to make it interesting for them. So I think I would be fine with teaching Young Men's lessons back home haha because it was super fun.

I'm super excited to Skype on Sunday haha, I think it will be around 6-7 pm here, which is like 10-11 am for you! Hopefully that works. Love you! Pet Chloe for me! :)  Thanks for the email dad.  I watched a cool Mormon message about a teenage kid who worked to improve his relationship with his dad and it reminded me of you.  I’m grateful that we always had a good relationship!  Thank you for paying for me to be on a mission.  It really is amazing and I wouldn’t trade it for anything!  I love it, and I love the gospel and I love you as well!

But yeah fam, that's it this week. I'm excited to see your faces next week, it's gonna be awesome! Love you all, thanks for all you do.  Talk to you soon!

Elder Savage

Back Row:, Neunschwander, Carter, Mwale, Savage, Yates, 

Front Row: Tukia, Andriatiana, Tukia, Stomps and Togiatomai

Found the cutest little puppy on the planet!

Waking up at 6:00 am to play tennis.  Can you tell that I’m tired?  :)

Unite, Magwinyas, and the Huff man.

Hey fam,

Howsit? This week has been pretty good!

To start, I went on exhanges on Wednesday and had to lead my area.  I was worried about it at first because there are no street names so addresses are dificult to find, but it all worked out! We did some service for a member, and he makes these things called magwinyas.  They are like deep-fried rolls, not sure how to explain them, but they're amazing! He sells them for one rand each, so I buy like 10 a week hahaha. He served in the Joburg mission a few years ago and is now living here, so it was fun talking to him about what the mission was like back then.
And then after that we taught some lessons and Elder Stomps taught me how to drive a little more, and I finally got stick shift down haha.  So if my comp leaves I'll be able to lead the area with the car still, which is nice.

We taught a lot of good lessons this week.  One was to this girl we street contacted—she’s about 25 year old.  Her house is connected to a bar, which is hard.  It was on Thursday night and there were a couple of guys playing pool and a lot of people in the house so we had to teach her in the bar haha, which was kind of weird, but it was still a good lesson. There was a drunk old guy in the corner talking loud and I was just like "Hey, be quiet," and then after that he just kept to himself hahaha. There's way too many drunk old guys in Sebokeng, but it's alright.

On Saturday we had Unite again, which is when the members go to the chapel on Saturdays and we play games and have a spiritual message with them, so that was super fun. There's this crazy old guy who always comes to church, and he's not a member, but he's super active and dedicated. No one knows where he comes from either, and he's impossible to teach because he just starts talking about his life and then laughs really hard haha, but he's great.  His name is David. Anyway, the joke we have is that he is in an old folks home and escapes every Sunday to come to church hahaha.  He came to Unite on Saturday and brought a big bag of chips for refreshments, and I was just like "Haha thanks man!" Too bad he's crazy, or else he would be the most powerful/active member in the branch! But yeah, for Unite we played Pictionary and then we showed a mormon message by President Eyring, it's called Choose Wisely.  It’s a pretty cool one, and the members liked it a lot.

Elder Neu and I have street contacted a lot this past month, and it's kind of interesting because we always see people multiple times, but usually in different situations. There was an 18 year old kid washing his car, and he was wearing this hat with weed stickers (the brand is huff), and I thought this guy's a joker, but we just talked to him for a few minutes. And then later in the week we were teaching a family we tracted into, and they have an 18 year old son who said "I told my friend you guys were teaching me and he wanted to join, so is it alright if I go get him?”  We said definitely, so he left and came back with his friend, and his friend was huff man! So right off the bat we already had that trust because we had talked to him before, and we had a cool lesson. Not sure if he'll accept our message, but it was still a cool experience. Street contacting can be lame, talking to random people and trying to spark a conversation, but I never regret doing it. Even if we only get 1 lesson from it it's worth it!

So it was a good week, and then on Sunday I had to give a 10 minute talk on protecting the children, and I was just like what kind of topic is that?  Haha, but it was good.  I ended up speaking for 11 minutes! The longest talk I've ever given haha, and I was pretty proud of myself :)  We were fed twice in two hours and I almost threw up! So overall it was a pretty good day.

Anyway, thanks for all you do.  I'm excited for Mother's day!

Talk to you soon,
Elder Savage

The picture here is of a cow who's about to get slaughtered hahaha. In SA for weddings and funerals they buy a cow and kill it the day before, and that's what everyone at the funeral/wedding gets to eat! :) 

Autumn in Sebokeng.

Hey family, what's up! Like the title says it's fall here in Sebokeng so it's super nice, it reminds me of California! It's overcast and a little windy so I just put on a jersey (long sleeve/sweater) and it's prime.

This week was pretty cool.  We finally got to watch General Conference! If we had watched it live it would have been at midnight so the members here just wait for the church to send them the DVD's. So that was our Friday night, figuring out how to work the projector in the chapel and make sure everything was sharp. So we got there Saturday morning to start watching conference, and there were 12 people there.  Then an hour into the first session the power went out! For some reason the electricity companies turn off certain grids for 4 hours at a time.  It’s called load shedding, and it's super lame. So we were just like alright and we saw some cool investigators. One of our progressing investigators is a kid named Luiso.  He is 16 and he is awesome. He's the only one in his family who is serious about the church and he's been coming to church for a month now (he has to come for around 6 months before he can be baptized, since his parents aren't members) but he's one of my favorite people to teach haha. He's the smartest kid ever, and he always reads the pamphlets/scriptures that we give him.  We taught him the Restoration crazy fast because he knew all the questions we would ask.  We’d ask, “So what is a prophet?" and he basically just quoted the pamphlet from memory and said everything that we were going to teach, so we were just like “...Okay, well I guess we'll go on to the next principle" haha. We teach a looooot of people who have a hard time grasping the concepts we teach, especially the Godhead, so it's refreshing to have someone who understands everything we say the first time. When he doesn't understand he asks a question, so we never have to say "any questions?” Ah... it's the greatest! And he has a good friend who is a member and he walks with him to church every Sunday, so it's basically a perfect situation.

So yeah after that we tracted a little, met some nice people--we'll see if they progress. It's not too hard to get into people's homes here, so we have to weed out the jokers, because there are a lot of jokers haha.

Then the power came back so we resumed conference, which was awesome! Beforehand I always struggled during priesthood session, because it's the 3rd session of the day and I'm just like "Please just end already", but this time I was super into it. I loved President Monson's talk!  He is so funny!  Everyone was just laughing during his talk haha. There was another funny talk that I liked, hearing the music. I was just thinking "is general conference always this funny?" Maybe it is and I just never really payed attention back home haha, either way I liked it a lot. But my favorite talk was Elder Holland's. He's so passionate and always has awesome stories. As people say here "He's too much powerful" :)

But yeah, so conference was awesome, definitely the highlight of the week! Besides that we've just been eating a lot.  There’s a lady who sells ice cream cones for 1 rand, which is like 10 cents, so we get at least one every day haha. I've almost killed us a couple of times trying to drive a stick.  Last night was a little sketchy haha, but luckily I only stalled like 4 times. First gear is difficult.

And I always say to little kids "igamilami Sipho" (my name is Sipho, pronounced see-po) so I'll be walking through Sebokeng and a random kid will yell "Sipho! Sipho! Sharp!" and give me a thumbs up hahahaha, pretty funny.

Well that's it for this week.  Thanks for all you do.  Love you guys and talk to you soon!

Bye,
Elder Savage

Nature, haha.

Autumn . . . a double rainbow, kind of hard to see though.

Molo!

That means hello in Xhosa. Usually I yell it to people when I'm driving and they're just like "What the fetch, why is a white guy speaking Xhosa" hahaha, it gets a laugh like a quarter of the time.

This week was nice though! The first week here in Sebokeng was super slow just because I was getting used to the area and the people because it was all new, but now that I know it more the time's flying. Once you start doing the same thing every day time goes quickly! Sebokeng is a super nice township though, it's a little cheesier and quieter than Daveyton, so I've only had to teach like two people in a shack, which is nice, because when it starts raining on their tin roof it's impossible to hear anything so you just have to give them a pamphlet and be like "just read this," but mostly everyone here has a house so it's nice.

In Daveyton, most people spoke Zulu but here they speak Sotho, so I'm picking up new things every day. Sometimes I'll greet someone "Dumelang" and they'll be surprised and then say something that I don't understand, so I just say "Sorry, I don't speak Sotho, mna dingu Xhosa (I'm Xhosa) and then they'll laugh pretty hard haha. We have fun with the people here.

This past week was fun, I went on exchanges with Elder Carter, the black comp from Leeds England, and he's awesome, we had tons of fun. Him and my comp are teaching me how to drive a manual, because once Elder Neuenschwander leaves I'll have to drive it around the area, but fetch man driving a manual is difficult hahaha, I've probably stalled like 12 times! And they're always like "Elder Savage you're driving us to the area today" and our flat is like 20 minutes from Sebokeng so I'm just like "Dude I don't want to kill us" hahaha. But in the next couple weeks I'll get better at it.

Sebokeng is an interesting place though. I don't remember if I talked about it last week but they built a chapel for it ten years ago, hoping it would become a ward, but it has stayed a branch. Apparently the missionary work hasn't progressed too much this past decade, which is a shame, but we're not letting it dissuade us. Four missionaries are in Sebokeng currently, and between the two companionships we had 13 investigators at church yesterday! And it was branch conference too, so a bunch of people from the stake and the stake presidency were there and they were pretty impressed, because the chapel was packed! The previous elders weren't the best, so the members can really see a difference, because they've never seen so many new faces at church! So it's going pretty well here.

Some of our most promising investigators are a father led family. Apparently the mom just came to church one time out of the blue, she had never heard anything about it, she was just sort of prompted to come! So my companion and the last elder started seeing them and they're progressing like crazy! We've really focused on befriending them with the members, and the members are down because they really want the branch to be changed into a ward, so it's been super nice. The family (the Mqwati's, the q makes a click so it's freaking hard to pronounce) is made up of the mom and dad who are in their early 40s, their 19 year old son, 16 year old son, and 12 year old son, so when they get baptized it'll add a lot to the branch! So we're pretty stoked about them.

Branch conference was good as well, the stake presidency talked about tithing, and how that's one of the things holding us back from becoming a ward, so it's really motivating people to pay their tithing. Even Sister Mqwati was like "I feel like the windows of heaven poured down on me, I really want to pay my tithing" and she's not even a member yet haha! Super dope stuff.

But yeah, that's it for Sebokeng this week! If I don't email you next Monday it's because I tried driving stick on the freeway hahaha.

Love you all, thanks for everything you do! Till next time.

P.S. I took a lot of pictures this week because I felt so bad about how lame my email was last week, and the internet is super fast here so it can upload them like a boss. :)

Ice cream from KFC.

Ice cream from a tuck shop.

Hahaha... people here sometimes use a horse and buggy.

Donkeys eating out of the trash piles.

Cool nuclear power plant we can see from our flat.

Our flat!

Getting ready to leave the area.

No caption necessary.

Flipping Fong Kong car. No stereo, the doors all have to be locked/unlocked manually, and it only has three buttons... haha. It's the cheapest car money can buy, but I'm learning to drive it. :)

Another horse and buggy.