WALKING, Walking, walking......

Ya know how at some basketball games when someone travels, the announcer is like, "WwwwwwWWWALKING (and then comes the echoed) walking walking".  That is my inspiration for the title because man we walked a ton this week.  Our car broke on Monday right after we emailed and push started it and jumped it a few times but it just kept dying. It was so sick tho, we would push it and my comp would start it and then we all just hop in the windows or jump on the back while he drives like 100m and then it would die so then we do it all again hahaha felt like the coolest thing ever.  But yeah we eventually got a tow truck to take it and now its getting fixed.    

So Elder Petersen left..... so sad.

So the baptism this week was postponed yet again but its kind of cool why it was postponed.  So the kid is named Liboni and he has been coming to church forever and the mother okayed him to be baptized but never really asked anything about when or where it would be.  So the last week she started sitting in during the lessons and we were talking to Liboni about how it would be on this Saturday and then his mother stopped everything and asked if there was anyway we could push it back a week so that she would be able to make it to see him be baptized.   So cool. And  McDougal and I really want to start teaching her because Liboni is like 10 years old and already knows so much about the gospel.  He even asked, "Who baptized John the Baptist" the other day...... hahahaha this kid.   But yeah so hopefully we can talk to the mother and start teaching her too. 

Also, we met this less active recent convert in our Pumula group and his name is Gift and he is legit a rapper.  His accent is super funny and like mixed with an American accent too and he knows a ton of English and loves to rap and make music.  He has a little street corner shack shop thing and we just chilled with him the other day and talked about the gospel.  He's truly converted but just didn't come to church for a while but man I love him. Hahaha during our conversation we were talking about how messed up the world is these days and he just went off low key freestyling about the world hahahha and it was pretty good. I really want to listen to some of his songs.  But yeah yesterday we attended the Pumula group for church and they are the ones that legit meet in someones living room  so it was interesting. But Gift came along with another less active named Marshal that we met this week. And Gift was wearing a basketball practice jersey and baggy shorts and his beanie hahahahaha nonetheless, still came to church and participated in both classes. 

We also met this family while gate knocking one day and they let us in gladly and they were all working on this thing that looked like a scouting project and when we asked them what it was, they said it was part of the Master Guide course with the Seventh Day Adventist.... Those guys copied scouts too....  The mamas also accused us that Joseph Smith was a member of their church and then we looked at one of their books that said They're founder was born in 1827..... hahahahaha yeah okay mama.   Funny people but they want us to come back so we'll see how that goes.

We did this service project this week for a member and we dug a whole for their trash. basically the same process they do at landfills but on a way smaller level.  So we did that for her and while we were digging in front of her house, you can just imagine the weird looks and stares we got during that.  Its so funny.  Not only are we white as snow but the majority of these people think we are helpless and that we have servants that do everything for us.... Its ridiculous.  The other day we asked this mama if we could help wash her dishes and she started laughing and was like, "You know how to wash?!?!" i just stopped and stared at her for like 5 seconds and I 'm like, "You think I dont know how to wash dishes?" And she legit thought I didnt know....  So I washed all her dishes and everyone was like, "Ah makiwa can wash! hhahaha" man it was so stupid but still cool to do service.  After we dug the whole for the member tho, we were about to leave and then she was like, "Okay so you cant leave until you eat something so I'll be right back" So she goes to the shop and buys us some nice food to eat. man I love these people ... most of the time hahahaha

Well the last thing I like to say is that I watched Ephraim's Rescue this week and man It inspired me a lot to always be able to worthily use the priesthood that we have. That movie almost makes me cry every time.  That movie is so good.   

Well thats all I got for this week.  Hope you guys had a super good week! Also Uncle Matt reminded me today, 1 year ago today, I gave my farewell talk..... woah. 

Anyways love you guys!

Stay Steady Grindin'

Sizabonani,

-Elder Anderson

 Here's what I see every day...

 This is Marcus, he's pretty cool! 

Third bonfire of the transfer at our house, Love it!! 

2 Baptisms and Another Broken House

Well shoot.

So one of our planned baptisms didn't go through because the kid was really busy this week so we couldn't finish teaching him but next week we will dunk him haha. The other two went super well though and they chose Elder McDougal and I to baptize them so it was cool.  They're both powerful and were super happy after the baptisms.  Future was so excited before it haha I love that guy.  He brought his friend Junior and even another non-member friend to the service! Already doing missionary work haha and Junior even came to church yesterday! So cool.  

We even have 6 others still on baptismal date right now!  The area is doing so well!

Two of them are a part of this dope family we just started teaching!  The mom is Mellisa and one of her kids is Nduduzi.  The rest of the family is too young to comprehend anything but Mellisa and Nduduzi accepted a date this week and I felt the spirit so strong in the lesson.  At the end, they both thanked us a lot for teaching them the truth because they have gone to other churches and even been taught by other kinds of missionaries but they didn't feel the same when they taught them.  They felt worried and afraid of the gospel and God but because of us, they have felt peace and happiness when they learn! Its so cool! And they want to come to church but the group  that meets in  Pumula has had some troubles to set up the  sacrament meetings so the people from Pumula have to go to Nkulumane for church right now. And its pretty far.  But yeah we are super stoked for Mellisa and Nduduzi!

There's also this part member family, the Dube's and one of the daughters is now home from school and she was interested in learning from us so we started teaching her and she came to church! Not even with the members in her family haha.  So that's exciting. She told us she had been taught by other missionaries but this time she understood a lot better! Nice.

We also had zone conference this week and it was dope! Sister Mkhabela said something that hit me pretty hard that I will remember for the rest of my life haha. She was probably quoting someone but she said, "The pain of discipline is temporal but the pain of regret is eternal."  Chills down the spine am I right?  Took some nice pictures at the conference with my boys out here though so I'll attach those.

So Elder Petersen has been teaching me how to play guitar in our spare time at the house. I can already play like 3 songs so that's dope. Successful week. Sadly he'll be leaving this week sometime to go start training his visa waiter so then it will be back to just me and McDougal. Gonna miss that guy.

Oh yeah so about the broken house, the ceiling in our bathroom collapsed while Elder Thomas was showering hahahahaha like only a corner fell but it made rocks and dirt fall everywhere so now its barely hanging on and each time we look at it, it seems lower.  Also, I don't know if I have said this before but the shower shocks us too.  Sometimes when you adjust the water, the handle thing shock you! lol It's ridiculous but its so funny.  I have lived in the two worst houses in the mission hahaha. We might be moving again soon.

We played volleyball and football as a zone today and it was so sick.  Couple of elders started calling me Tom Brady hahaha

Got another dope haircut this week. Trying to grow it out as long as I can within the rules hahhaha.

Yeah well that's all I have for this week.  Time is flying that's for sure.  Its already week 4 in this transfer what the....  Crazy.  Love you all.  Have a solid week. Church is true.     

Stay Steady Grindin'

-Elder Anderson

Whittier and I reunite hahaha love this guy

Bus on the way to zone conference. The poly elders brought an ukulele and guitar so we were jamming

Baptism. Future on the left and Sinolwazi on the right.

This dog just hopped up on my lap during an appointment and we immediately were best buds.  Made me miss Max and Blue so I wasn't focusing at all on the lesson hahahaha

Fallen roof lol. And our shocking shower without a curtain hahahaha

Conference

Well conference was super good.  The only bad thing was that our bishop was telling us the whole week that he had made accommodations for us to use our meetinghouse to watch conference and that it would start at 10.  Meanwhile the other elders in our district had it scheduled at 9 for their ward at the stake center.  So Saturday morning we get up and go to our meetinghouse at 10 and its locked..... and so we go to the stake center and we were an hour late for the first session. So that sucked but no problem.  Today, I'm downloading all the talks haha.  But the rest of the conference was amazing. Super spiritual and even provided me with answers I had to questions going into it.  My favorite talk was the one by Callister about the Book of Mormon where he just destroys every false idea about it hahaha it was so dope.

So something dope happened this week!  Tuesday night the assistants called us and told us that Wednesday morning we would be getting another missionary to be with us to make us a three some.   So for this week and the next week, we will have Elder Petersen with us while he waits for his trainee to get here.  And this guy is straight poly from New Zealand and we are bros already.  We're always singing poly music together its dope.  He told me he's adopting me to the group of islanders out here. hahaha which is almost as cool as an African calling you nigga. So thats dope.  He's the chillest dude ever and its cool to work with two other guys.

We had pretty good progress with Pride this week!  We taught him again and he had already read some in the Book of Mormon and he had a couple questions about the restoration but he was content with the answers we gave him.  His mother also sat in with us and we could tell she is very knowledgeable of the scriptures but she was pretty receptive of the message and she even thanked us for everything we taught her and was excited for us to come again!   Pride was also asking really good questions and even had one that stumped me at first but i remember the scripture that tells us to open our mouths and they will be filled so I just went for it and very soon I was able to give him a pretty good answer to the question!  It was pretty cool to experience that.    Pride is hilarious too. He loves joking and speaks perfect english so we love joking with him its dope.

So we are baptizing this young blood named Future next week and he is so chill and he has a friend named Junior who started joining us so we gave him a restoration pamphlet and at our next appointment with Future,  Junior said he read the whole pamphlet and he was asking super good questions so we ended up teaching him the whole thing and he liked the message a lot! It was cool! We are thinking about giving him a date this next week! Including him, we would then have 7 people on date! Loving this area.

So there's this less active recent convert in our area named Gift and he's legit a rapper and is the funniest dude ever. He speaks amazing english and even freestyled a bar for us when we visited him and he was the best I've heard here haha it was sick. Hopefully we can get him back to church though. He also introduced us to this new fruit and it was crazy.  So its like this baseball size thing that is harder than fetch so you have so slam that thing on the ground and crack it open and then you eat this slimy brain looking stuff inside but it is my new favorite fruit hahaha its soooooo good. I have 0 idea what that stuff is called but we bought like 6 of them to eat that night hahaha. I'll try to get some more this week to send pictures to you.

Well thats all I got.  I love you all and hope you had a good week and enjoyed conference!  Its so much more exciting out here that it was back home hahaha.  Anyways

Stay Steady Grindin'

Deuces,

Elder Anderson

McDougal me and Petersen with the Zuze family

Salibonani

First week down in Nkulumane. 

This week was sooooo sick. We got work done and have our area figured out.

So the area is actually super nice.  Like its mostly middle class gated communities and it is pretty quite compared to what I'm used to.  Also, we serve in two groups.  One is a ward and the other is legit just a group haha.  But the ward meets in a tent/house thing which is actually pretty nice.  And the group meets in a small house haha.  But there are actually a lot of members!    The tent was overflowing on Sunday haha.  The area is pretty big but we have a baby blue chevy that we get to whip in.  And I'm no longer the driver! So now I get a break from it hahaha 

Our house here is officially the worst house in the mission hahahaha the shower handles and sink shock you sometimes and everything is just falling apart but as long as there is a bed and a roof its alright hahaha my standards for a home have gone down a lot after being here.  Still a dope place. 

Ndebele is actually not that tough.  Salibonani is how you say hi though so thats cool. But I already figured out the clicks. There are 3.  The Q, C and X all make different sounds and its so cool.  I figured out some greetings this week and some random words so its already a work in progress. 

The missionaries before us left 3 people on baptismal date and they are all powerful and came to church yesterday!  They should be baptized together the week after this because we are viewing conference this week.

There is a super nice gym in this area and its cheap so we are gonna be lifting a ton.   

So this week we found 17 new investigators.... and we weren't even trying. And we are whitewashing this area.  hahahaha so sick.  One of them we saw on Sunday and his name is Pride and he told us about how he had a rough past and how the gospel helped change his life.  He also said he doesn't know if he can trust prophets because everybody and their dog is a prophet here so we taught him about the restoration and he was super interested and we gave him a book of mormon he was thrilled and said he would start reading and praying right as we left.  We even gave him a baptismal date for early december and he gladly accepted. It was the coolest thing ever. He told us that he expected us every week because he really wants to find out the truth and he has already felt that we can help him.  Such a cool guy. 

We also were teaching this guy named Justin about the restoration and he told us that he had this feeling inside him that our message is true and I testified to him that the feeling came straight from God and it is how the Holy Ghost teaches us what is true.  Left him with a book of mormon too and he was excited to start studying it. so sick.  The message of the restoration is so powerful.  Confounds everything. 

Something super cool that happened this week was actually with a less active member.  We were working with this kid named Wayne and he was showing us all the members in the area and we stopped by the Ndlovu's and didn't know the dad was less active but we found out they were moving and we wanted to help them so they said we could help them clean the new house before they moved all the stuff.  So on Saturday we went and mopped the house while they did other things and after we were done the baba was like, "Wow.. I'm feeling the spirit.  I am coming to church tomorrow.  Ya hear that honey? (speaking to his wife) I'm coming to church!"  it was so cool! Don't know how long he hasn't been coming to church but he came yesterday and it was sweet. 

Also, my companion is a band kid so we are kind of different but still get along. He's a cool guy and works really hard so we get work done.  We stay with two other guys from Colorado and Utah and they are so sick so our house is all American.            

Today we played football in the morning at this park and then like after an hour of playing we got kicked off by the people that work there.  Darn.  Still enjoyed balling up. I miss football haha  Glad to hear Utah is winning and BYU isn't hahahahahhaa  

Well love you guys. Hope you have a good week!   Church is true

Stay Steady Grindin'

Cordially,

Elder Anderson