More Success & Some Wild Animals!

Area - Sunnyside, Pretoria
Companion - Elder Jenkinson
Letter #10

PRETORIA— Elder Dirkmaat here with the weekly report! :D  I am so jealous that you guys are going to all these musicals and I don't get to! Just when I was starting to kinda like them too ha. I hope that CATS was super good and that you had lots of fun! Jim Snow is second counselor eh?? Now all these stories about his taser etc are gonna have to end with "oh and he's in our bishopric!" hahah.  Good luck with gyming program! There is a guy in our ward who is a bodybuilder so he's been giving me some tips ;D We shall see who can win an arm wrestle when I get back. I apologize in advance.  Thanks for the words of wisdom Dad! I will do my best to take heed. It's tough but great rewards only come from hard work! Cant wait to get some letters from you mom! :)

This week has been pretty fantastic but also kind of a bummer at the same time. We have continued teaching many lessons and have been able to feel the spirit strongly in most of them. And even though I am still a terrible teacher, I am improving :D  We met a couple new father led families again and are going to follow up with them this week and also the ones we met last week we have been able to get second appointments with like 2 off them. It's been great!

I don't know if I told you about one of the ladies we teach. She has been seeing the missionaries for three years and her whole family are members. She has a very strong testimony and knows more about the church than most of the members in the ward but she still won't be baptized! Well, we have been able to become better friends with her and through conversation etc she has finally opened up a lot and I think she cold finally be baptized in the next couple months as long as we don't mess up with her. She goes back ten steps for every small mistake (in her eyes) a missionary makes so we just have to make sure we dont offend her or pretty much be dumb teenagers like she says some missionaries in the past have been.

We have a golden opportunity! Another family we are teaching found out that they are married but in a traditional way which is also acceptable and so now they are going to be able to be baptized as soon as his wife attends church, since she has been sick. He has also been able to get some money (he was unemployed) and so he can now support himself somewhat making him able to get transport to church and for his wife. I dont know why i told you all that but yeah, now he is close to baptism as well! So despite all the good things happening of course there are bad things. A couple families we have been teaching, we are scared that they are only in it for the welfare since they only come to the last hour of church and then meet with the bishop and come out with food stamps and this sunday they started bringing friends :/ They also never remember anything from the lessons we teach them so we are going to have to dig deep and find out how much testimony they have and try to help them understand what we are teaching.

Thats kind of how the work has been going, especially with all the good families we have and that our stats are improving every week.  It has been super hot this week though! I'm not really sure what it is since it's all in celsiusso I have no idea what it means but it's been hot. Random rain and thunderstorms too! They are so crazy. You thought Utah thunder storms were loud???

Today for pday we had a zone activity so we went to a members home who lives out in the bush. We got to do a scenic hike to the top of a mountain and on the way we got to see some baboons!! They were makin crazy noises and climbing all over the cliff side, it was so cool!  Then afterwards we had a braai which is the same thing as a bbq but "much better" ha since they only do big meat stuff and not wimpy hot dogs and hamburgers. So we had some steaks and sausages as big as my arm haha.  THEN after that we went to a place called chameleon village where they sell all sorts of cool stuff and you have to barter for it. I bought two sweet shirts handmade and all that for R210.  He originally wanted to sell them one for R200!!  Score! ha

This week has been great and next week will be the end of transfer one! Already! 6 more weeks and I get a new companero.

Well I ope you are well this week and don't get into any trouble!
Love ya!
Elder Deekmaat (as the africans pronounce it)