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.
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.
Elder Jones
No comments:
Post a Comment