The picture is of Elder Henerico and I overlooking Khayelitsha on lookout point
Hello!
I'm grateful for your update mom and dad! I love hearing about everything that is happening back at home! Thank you so much for inviting Viktoria quadding! That means a lot! And I’m sure she loved it! I am quite surprised! HAHA! But it looks and sounds like it was a blast! I'm sure I’ll hear about it in a letter in a few weeks!
Sounds like this winter has been awesome for everything! Too bad I couldn’t experience the awesome quadding! But that’s alright! My time will come though. It sounds like Easter and Tristan’s B-day were both a blast! I can't believe he's two already! Sheeowsa!
Mom, I really appreciate you sending the packages! Don't worry about how long it takes to get me the package :) I am not in a rush! But I am super grateful for your helpfulness! Thank you so much for all you do for me! Even during your busy work and school schedule! Just so you know I am doing well and I am super excited for these packages! I might even have your first one today! I won't know till later when I get post from the zone leaders. Excited to get those photo copies of my exercise stretches too, I’m pretty sore these days... and I’m really happy to hear about everything!
To answer dads question…the church services are the same as back home, but we are in just a small building, so it’s kind of different, but if we were in a normal chapel, we would have church just the same as back at home! I will answer the rest of dad’s questions next week. I haven't heard from Aaron and Kim in a while, hope they are doing good. It’s nice that Anona and Riley write me every few weeks or so to keep me in touch of how they are doing. My new companion and I are getting along well now! It's just taking time but we are enjoying each other and working well together.
So turns out we have 4 baptisms for the 29th of April!!!! We met with a guy, Jared, who has been attending church for quite a few weeks now and who we found out was in our area. So we talked with him and he told us we should come visit him, so we arranged a time and went and saw him. I was thinking when we got there that this would just be another investigator and that we would have to start from the top, get to know him and see what he has learnt from attending church and teach him the restoration... but I was very wrong! As we started talking with him, he was telling us that he had already been taught all of the lessons and that he was already set for baptism once before. He had his interview and everything! The problem was, the week he was supposed to get baptized; he was called back to work.
Now Jared works on a ship that runs cables on the ocean floor, and when he was called back to work, he was called to leave for 3 months. So just before he could be baptized he had to leave... so he got back in January, when I started my mission, and has been attending church for 3 months now! So that was absolutely incredible! All we have to do is very briefly teach him all the lessons again, because it has been so long since he was taught them, and then baptize him! We already set the date with him and everything! I am super stoked!
It's funny because ever since we’ve been told to stop our efforts to find new investigators, we are just getting heaped with investigators and no real effort on our part! We are also now teaching an investigator that is a brother to one of our recent converts. His name is Lazola and he is 18 yrs old! We didn't do anything to find these people; they are just coming to us! It's pretty awesometakular! We are still focusing our efforts on reactivation and this week we had 21.5 hours of less active work! So that was awesome! The work is just super awesome!!!
But there was one thing that happened this week which was super poopy... to start the day, there was a soccer tournament between 4 of the wards and us elders were invited to participate... so I was SUPER STOKED and when the day come, it was pouring rain! Which I love by the way! But the tourney ended up being a bust and we ended up just playing soccer for a little bit between our own ward...
But after that, we had an appointment with this one family who saw us on the street one day and really wanted us to come visit them, so we set up an appointment!... I was kind of leery about the strange excitement for seeing us, I went into the appointment apprehensive about what was about to happen. Turns out my hunch was correct... they were merely trying to pick apart our church... and I later found out that they were watching anti-Mormon stuff as well... so that was kind of really sucky... but we defended and got no progression and I was posed a lot of questions that I didn’t know the answer to but that I knew that there was an answer to... so all in all, my companion and I were defeated... due to our lack of interest in bible bashing and the fact that most of their questions and accusations were absurd... but we spent 2 hours in there wasting our time... that was not a productive day that’s for sure... I did learn a lot though!
The things that they were saying stuck on my mind for days afterwards because I knew there were answers to them, I just didn't know where or who knew... so I did a lot of research into the things that they were posing, and I found that I was able to find answers to those things myself... these people were 7th day Adventists and I had never encountered them before... but now from that experience I was able to learn and to grow more! And if I am ever put in a position like that again, I will be able to hold my ground, keep the spirit with me, and confound men! And do all of that without bible bashing at all! (Did I mention that I did not feel the spirit whatsoever while I was there! except when I bore my testimony...)
Winter is apparently hitting... once again, I can't tell... it is raining more though! But once the temperature reaches below 20 Celsius, everybody is telling me that its freezing out! I keep telling them that it’s super nice! So I dunno anymore... my internal thermometer is going wacky and I don't know whether to conform to the crowd or just enjoy the nice weather! I'm just kidding I’m definitely enjoying the weather! Short sleeve shirt! And the rainy season is starting so I’m going to enjoy this a lot! I love rain! :D well I hafta humba! My time is far spent! "Ixesha lixatshwe yinja" translation "the time has been eaten by a dog" I love saying that at the end of appointments! I love you all!
-Elder Jones
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