For us, We are Missionaries

Area - Sunnyside, Pretoria
Companion - Elder Jenkinson
Letter #13

PRETORIA— Woot woot! Sophie is baptized! I got the announcement in the mail the day before it happened just in time! ;D It sounds like you all had a great time and that Sophie is very happy :) Thanks for the pictures too, my favorite is the one of Ollie and Sophie, I LOL'd ha. and then I got weird looks... What a nice spotlight Nate gave, you're too sweet brother :D

For me, I am a missionary. When I went tracting with my district leader, Elder Ngcobo, when we would get to a door he would say to the person "for us, we are missionaries" and then just wait for them to say something. It was super awkward but I guess it works cause most of the time they would say "oh come in, come in!" It was funny. I tried it on Saturday and it didn't work. The guy was like "and....? why are you here?" No worries though! We still got a return appointment!

Nonetheless, I have had another wondaful week! We were able to continue teaching lots of people and we found some more father led families again. There is one father that we started teaching last week that I think I may have told you about. He called us one morning and said he used to see he missionaries and now he is ready to be baptized now that his whole family is here from Nigeria. He says he wants to come to our church but he is a secretary at his church. He doesn't like his church and he is scared to tell them that he won't be at church for one Sunday. He doesn't want their service to go into disarray since he is the one that organizes the program each week. We told him that all he has to do is call the pastor on a monday to give him enough notice and then it will be fine. We are not too sure why he is scared but it reminds me of when I would always have to call people for my Eagle project or just something I needed done. Dad would always tell me that there is no reason to be scared cause all you gotta do is tell them what you need and 99% of the time people will help you out. Hopefully he will take our advice and be at church next Sunday!

This week we are going to be concentrating on teaching investigators about why church attendance is so important and we are going to make a bigger effort to help them attend. We had 7 at church yesterday but 5 of them were trying to get welfare... The ones we want to come to church are never there. This week will be different though.

Funny story. We were walking to the chapel the other day and this hobo lookin guy was walking towards us. We were preparing to tell him that we had no money ha but then the first thing he says (in a British accent) "Is it true that you used to not consider blacks human beings?" What???? NO. "well is it true that you didn't let them have the priesthood until 1978?" Yes that is true. "Doesn't that make you question your religion?" No. "Do the people in your congregation know about this?" Yes. He kept up like that for a while and eventually we just walked away. He says he was a researcher but he never read the Book of Mormon or visited LDS.org or anything of the sort. Elder Jenkinson hates it when people do stuff like that so he got pretty mad at the guy :\ At the end I was just like "Well it was nice talking to you, we have to be to an appointment. Have a nice day" I feel bad for the guy but there's nothing you can do when all someone wants to do is argue with you.

We are really excited for this month and next because we should be baptizing a father led family this month and completing another one by baprtizing his wife! Then next month we have 2, possibly 3, father led families that we are hoping will be ready! Next month I may possibly be training a new missionary so that will be a good experience for him :D I'm so glad that I am here doing the Lords work and each week just gets better and better and better! :D Thank you for all your support and I love you family!

-Elder Dirkmaat :D