Wednesday 12 December 2012

10th Dec 2012 in the city Mthathat, South Africa


HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!! 
I'm a little early but Happy Birthday!!!! I love you so much!!! It's crazy to think that it has been a whole year since I last saw you!!!! Only one more year to go. It has been flying by so quickly! I just want you to know how much I love you and appreciate all you do for me! I have the best mom in the world! I've learned so much from your constant example. I hope that you have an awesome birthday and just know that my B-day gift to you will come on Christmas! (When we talk at Christmas I'll sing you the Happy Birthday song in 3 languages! Remind me...)
 Lot's of love from your African son!   
Thanks for the pictures and email! I have not received the package yet, but we still need to go to the post office tomorrow and pick up our mail, I bet it is just sitting in there waiting. I'm really excited! There are gazillion different churches here in South Africa... You might have to Google it... It's mostly Christian though.
Dad your right, the house does look better with the tree in the window. It actually looks kinda cool with the lights like that! Good work Dad!  
Those chocolates look absolutely delicious! You could sell those here in South Africa for R150 ($16) a packet... That actually doesn't sound like much now that I've said it... R150 is alot of money here though! Just looking at them makes my mouth water! Thanks for sending the pictures of the pictures from Martin Cove. I loved Martin's Cove! Too much fun! Don't worry too much about the length of the emails you send me, but just understand that I might not be able to respond to everything you put in the email... I now pay R25 ($2.75) for 1.5 hours. Doesn't sound like much but that's a loaf of bread and 2 liters of milk here. I've been able to manage my time wisely so far.  
 
Also, as for whether we are skyping or calling for Christmas, I still am not 100% sure. Most likely it's going to be a call though. I will update you more the more I find out. There is still next Monday and the Monday after that that we can figure this out. I'm still on the hunt to find someone that we can go and Skype with. I'll let you know for sure next Monday though. I love you both so much!  
Well, you are probably wondering what happened this week. Did I get transferred or did I stay to see the 3 baptism that we are supposed to have next Sunday? Well... Drum roll…. if you'd like... I was transferred!
I flew to Cape Town and then I flew to Mthatha (aka Umtata) to be the District Leader of a 4 man District. My new companion is Elder Dolben from England. He is sweet! I really enjoy being his companion. He's a lot of fun! He just finished his 12 week training, so he is rather new on mission (same with a bunch of other missionaries these days). He's in the picture with me. 
 
Me and my new companion Elder Dolben from England 
In the pictures it shows a few things that happened this week. One shows how I was demolished by a flea (I killed the flea) and another shows the size of the hail balls that hit us last night, and another shows the countryside just outside Mthatha from a classic village, and another shows me and my comp. 
This Mthatha location is crazy! It's a completely black city (well there are a few white people that live here, but not many... probably 99.99% black, which makes for an interesting city. For driving purposes, there is practically no laws.. People kind of just do whatever they want. It's really fun! Mom would freak out if you saw the kind of traffic I drive in. For some reason though I find I am rather relaxed driving here... I don't know why but I actually enjoy it.  
 
To sum up Mthatha, its insane! The work here though is sweet! Well right now it's rather slow, but I'm going to try hard to get it up to be where it was in Knysna. Already had some really cool experiences with finding people and teaching people this week. The people here are actually fairly intelligent. More intelligent than other townships I've been in, and the here people know English very well! It makes teaching so much easier! It's funny because majority of the people are Xhosa and speak Xhosa, yet they are all very well versed in English! I like it!  
 
Mthathat is kind of in the middle of nowhere though... but that’s ok. This week we are going to East London for a Christmas Zone Conference. I'm excited! I've never been to one before and apparently it goes from morning all the way till night! And we get to watch a movie apparently! Sweet!  
 Thank you so much Grandma and Grandpa! I really appreciate it! And thank you to everyone who is supporting me! You have no idea how much help it is to me while I am out here serving! I love you all so much!  
 
This past week we also went to a wedding of a former investigator, which was pretty sweet! I took a bunch of video's but it's actually quite humorous to watch how the Xhosa's do things here! I enjoyed it though and we got fed nicely too! We were the only white guys there and I couldn't understand a thing that they were saying, but it was fun and the Former investigator really appreciated us coming, in fact he even gave us a table at the front. Out of the hundreds of people that were there, we were in the 3rd table. The 1st table had the reverend and pastor at it, the second table had his immediate family at it, then it was us at the 3rd table and then like 20 other tables. So we were pretty highly esteemed there! And it was funny how the people would just randomly burst out in song. Everything was awesome.
  I gotta go! Time is gone! Love you all!
Elder Jones
 

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