Kanye Monate Night

Area - Kanye, Botswana
Companion - Elder Holman
Letter #34

Hey! Sounds like you guys had an awesome time for your anniversary! I don't think I ever actually told you happy anniversary but I meant to and I thought about it! So Happy 21st Anniversary! Glad you got to go to such a sweet place! The pictures were great, thanks! Happy 18th birthday to Nate also! How is he 18?? It sounds like Nate is just livin the life! Crazy fun summer trips and scholarships outta nowhere and the summer has only barely begun. Here in Botswana it's supposed to be winter but I'm thinking the winter only lasted like a week and a half cause it's so hot again! As much as I like Botswana I would be so grateful to be back in South Africa by September haha.

It has been an interesting week for us. Elder Holman and I have been doing a great job of having a lot of lessons each week. The more lessons we have the more people that are able to progress and learn the gospel! When I first got here we had around 10-15 lessons a week but now we are having 20+! :D  The Molebatsi's are gonna be baptized on Sunday! Please pray hard that nothing prevents them! They are already practically members and when they get baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost they are gonna see so much more progress in the their knowledge and understanding of the Gospel. I'm super excited for them cause they've been waiting so long and have just been being stubborn about tithing. Now, since we have concentrated a lot on building their faith and helping them feel the spirit, paying tithing isn't such a big deal anymore.

At first when I got my camera stolen I didn't really think much of it, kinda just whatever, i can do without, but each week without it makes me pain so much cause there are so many things that I want to take pictures of! Especially the people and places that i go so that you can see them also!

We are also hoping that Mike and Sazi will be able to be baptized this month on the 22nd and also the Kgaretsi family on that same day. Mike and Sazi finally made it to church! They were an hour late but that's okay. The Kgaretsi's are gonna be tough for that day cause of how busy they have been recently but with hard work and faith it shall be done!

BTW, church was fantastic this week. We had a branch council meeting on Saturday in which we discussed all the things that need to be done. One of those things was time management and the other important thing was fellowshipping. Time management is now a check. Church yesterday started at 10 and not 10:24, each class started at 5 past the hour and we were out at exactly 2. Perfect! Everything was so smooth and it's amazing how much more you can feel the spirit when everything is under control. It felt really nice. On the fellowshipping, the branch is finally getting solid leadership. The branch used to be strong and I don't know what happened but it fell apart and tons went less active. It is now pretty solid again. We are going to start having what is called Kanye Monate Night every weds at 6 where anybody can come and bring friends and there will be songs a short spiritual thought and fun and games. Which means I need ideas and even games sent to me! We have to have fun things to do each week. Any fun games you like to do like EFY games, FHE games, scripture games, card and board games. Whatever! Let me know! Send an email with your idea to robert.dirkmaat@myldsmail.net ASAP! This branch is going to be a branch where everybody knows everybody and people want to bring their friends to activities and to church.


Two crazy things that happened this week. On Tuesday we woke up to our power being out. We ran out of electricity and had to go buy more. We bought electricity and went to enter it into our machine and it didn't work! By the time we figured out that we had to go to the main power station it was too late cause they were closed. No worries, even though the power ended up being out for 30+ hours we still managed to cook our food cause I made a nice fire pit in the back yard! Dinner and breakfast on the fire! I actually would love it if we could do that more often. Anyway, we burned the crap out of the pans and pots and one of the handles fell off ha but we ate! The power guys came in the afternoon Wednesday and replaced our box and then I had to spend P200 for power the rest of the transfer so I've been broke! ha. The other crazy thing: We were walking home Thursday night and there is a bar close to our flat and on the main road they have sewage ditches. We didn't see this happen but there was a truck that was going way too fast and drunk and he hit the ditch and flipped his car over to the other side. All the locals were crowded around not knowing what to do. Since the guy wasn't hurt we just called emergency and left. Nobody would listen to us when we told them to stay away from the car which was upside down on the side of a hill. First time I've been that close to a flipped car.

I thought of another thing you could put in a package: a Pilot G2 Superfine point pen. That would be nice ha. 

Glad you are well family have a fantastic week! Talk to ya next time! :D Love you all!

-Elder Dirkmaat :D