Monday, August 12, 2013

Service - Being a Missionary 100%

Area- Pretoria, South Africa
Companion- Elder Center
Letter #89

Wow! Thanks for the pics of the awesome vacation!! I did get a petty good taste of it haha. No worries about not emailing last week and I'm also sorry for not emailing you. I'll keep it short today cause I wanna email Nate. Thanks also for the bday wishes! I didn't get the package yet but I'll probs get it tomorrow at zone conference. I'm super excited for zone conference cause we are finally going to get to watch that missionary fireside broadcast from like 2 months ago. I think it is gonna be very helpful for all the missioanaries here in SA. 

Pretoria is doing pretty well. I wish I could say that we are rockin it but not so much. We are doing okay but the work is pretty slow. So far the 40 day fast is great and the members have been doing super and don't even need our reminder calls. We are getting close to receiving some referrals. One family has a friend that is studying to be a doctor and he's 19 years old. They say that he's golden I just don't know when we are gonna receive this golden referral haha. Leshego is struggling with his decision to be baptized. Every time the day comes closer he postpones and says that he is not ready. He has a tough time understanding everything in the BOM so we are gonna read with him a chapter every time we go before we start the lesson. He is really changing a lot so much that his parents can tell that he is a better person and he says that he wants to be baptized but that he's just nervous he'll mess up afterwards. We shall see what we can do this week. 

I think maybe I need to step it up a notch and maybe I'm not being as faithful and diligent as I could be. I have seen a lot of missionaries when they are going home, they "die". They just get lazy and don't work as hard. I really don't want to do that but I feel like maybe I am a little bit. I always feel so much more excited about the work and have lots of things to say when I am working 100%. This week I will be 100%!   90% is not good enough! One of my favorite quotes from the movie Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration is when he says "Remember, only the best for the Lord. We are not just building a temple here, the Lord is building us." Only the best and that's what I need to give! 

We got to do some exciting service this week. A sad reason though. An investigator that the Elders teach in Mamelodi came home drunk one night and burned down the shack he stays in and the one next to his. The next day we went to clean up all the mess and we rebuilt one of the shacks. It was super fun to do and we got to something that probably so many south africans have never done! It took half the day from like 9 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon. The family was so grateful that we helped and they even tried to call the local newspaper to come and report it ha. The guy who came home drunk said he knew exactly why it happened. He had just been taught some of the commandments and he went out and disobeyed. It was great that he recognized that and hopefully that will set his repentance in motion! 

Have a great week!
Love you!
Elder Dirkmaat :D

No comments:

Post a Comment