Thanks for the Birthday Wishes!!!!

Area - Kanye, Botswana
Companion - Elder Dlamini
Letter #40

Thanks for the birthday wishes family! :D You da best! it was a good birthday indeed other than the part where I got drenched by a bucket of water! ha. That is a story for anther day though. here s\is one that easier to explain... president Omer called while I was taking a shower in the morning and so the other elders were all anxious to know what he was gonna say, and of course I was even more anxious than them.So I called back twice and he didn't answer and then he called again during church when the phone was silent and so i called again twice and then finally i called later at like 3 and he answered and finally i was gonna get to hear but the "big news" was. Remember that last time I got emercency transferred he called on Sunday morning. Also the xone leaders were telling me that he was gonna give some big calling. So i was so nervous and all that and so i finally get a hold of him and he says "oh Elder Dirkmaat! Sister Omer and I and the AP's just wanted to wish you a happy birthday" Ahhhhh! all that for a bday wish ha. it was great to have pres call to say happy birthday but I got so worked up! haha. it's also funny casue that had crossed a ll of our minds that he just wanted to say happy birthday but nobody ever gets a b-day call so we "knew" it wasn't gonna be that. ha.

Anyway this week was great! Success once again! We had many lessons and were able to see great progress from the Gofhamodimo family. thay came to church again and they have given us a solid commitment that they want to be baptized on August 26th! Hopefully i will still be here cause transfers are on the 21st :/ We were so excited to see them and they have come such a long way from the first time that we visited them and they hardly cared what we had to say to them. As much as I wish they could be baptized a lot sooner, i am so glad that it is taking this long to help them truly make a real change in their lives and not just something that last 1 or 2 months of their lives and then they forget about it. There are people that are ready quickly but I'm sure that those people are the exceptions to the norm.

Elder Dlamini and i have been focusing a lot more on the members this week and you know the crazy thing? we had more lessons with investigators than we have in he past weeks! The member work is super important here in Kanye especially because to be honest the branch is not as unified and strong as it can and should be and so by us the missionaries visiting them it is going to help strengthen them individually and even assist int he missionary work to help people become converted and to have a testimony in the gospel and not in the missionaries. There's one thing that i have been exposed to a lot and that i ave learned, is that when you have a task at hand you CANNOT do it alone. If you do it alone then you are a fool. ive been a fool for 20 years(what the heck? 20!?!?!) of my life and i'm just barely getting the hang of it for reals. First and foremost is that of course our Heavenly Father and His son, Jesus Christ, need to be in it and along with that we need to enlist the help of others. Without others an idea will go nowhere, a project will go nowhere. Of course we can do great thing on our own and of our own free will but in the gospel of Jesus christ we are working together for the salvation of Gods children, our brothers and sisters. NOT ourselves. No matter how well we do on our own, Heaven won't be Heaven unless we bring as many of or brothers and sisters as we can with us! Imagine heaven without your mom or dad or brother or sister or best friend or children or whoever. It would be that great. Heaven is eternal and perfect happiness. We can't be perfectly happy unless everybody is there with us!

Another story, We got bikes finally two weeks ago. 10 mins later...Broken! Gt them fixed and back in kanye. 5 days later...Broken! Sad day. Either i am not meant to ride bikes or bikes are not meant for kanye. ha.

Well i love you so much fmily and so glad that eveything is going well! Have another super week! Just cause you had success selling the car, don't go sellin everything else! ha jk. Have a super week!

-Elder Dirkmaat