August 10, 2009

August 10th
Things are going alright. Time is going by very fast. I’ve almost been gone 6 months, that’s weird to think about. The work is going alright we still spend a lot of time finding. The thing we do the most is Business tracting. We do that in the morning. It is going around to the businesses and talking to the people in there. We do that because people won’t be home they will be at work. We have had some success doing that.
We still tract a lot, but there is a severe disadvantage to tracting in town. Everyone has a gate. Some people have call boxes but sometimes they don’t work. It’s a lot easier to say no to someone when you can’t see them. Most of the time we have to bang on everyone’s gate to get them to come outside. About 90% of the time as soon as we say we are missionaries, they turn around and say "Nier dankie" (no thank you). So then we move on. Every once and a while you will get someone who just looks at us and waves us off before we even say anything. Whenever someone does that I always yell " Well we were going to give you 1 million rand but I guess we will just go to the next house." We have a good time tracting.
Street contacting doesn’t work because no one stays in town. They all come from different villages outside town. We don’t give up. Lately we have been trying to teach some of the late night security guards. Because 7 o'clock is too late for these people. The guards have nothing better to do so we teach a lot of them.
I’m learning a lot of the language here. It’s Northern Sotho. I can greet someone and ask where they stay what church they go to and even teach a little bit. The only disadvantage is as soon as I get transferred I’ll have to learn another language.
Church is alright. The Branch Pres is a cool guy. You can tell he works really hard. Most of the time he is the one speaking in church. He doesn’t mean to he just forgets to assign people. We are in charge of the cottage meeting in Motupa. We bring the sacrament and teach them from gospel principles. Yesterday sucked though. Sorry to use that word but there were only 3 of us there. Elder Kogo me and the owner of the house we used. It feels terrible when you work so hard to teach someone and they don’t even come to church. We just feel like we wasted our time teaching those people.
Last week we drove down to Joburg for mission tour. It’s when a GA tours the whole mission and speaks to the missionaries. This year it was Elder Bricknell. He is a very cool guy. It was the most spiritual meeting I’ve been to since my setting apart. I’m also reading a lot. There are so many books around for me to read and study I’m learning so much stuff. That’s one of the things that I think that I’ll bring home is studying. I would love to be in that habit when I get home.
Be nice and keep the commandments. I plan on going to the celestial kingdom. Whether you guys are coming or not, lol.
Benjamin