Service, service, service!

Area- Pretoria, South Africa

Companion- Elder Coon

Letter #93

Hi! 

Can I just say really quick that I cannot wait to just talk and tell you all about South Africa instead of typing. Maybe if I could type like Dad it wouldn't be that bad but this'll have to do for now. 

Nate is such a powerful guy! I haven't been able to hear his testimony or anything gospel related from him for a long time, let alone anything for the past couple months, so that was really cool to read his talk. I didn't get to listen to it though. He is really going to be a powerful missionary! Those were some great thoughts that he shared. I think I need to be more like him. Humility is tough! Pretty please tell him to send me at least one email before he leaves in 2 days. 

This week went by really fast and I am having a hard time remembering what we did! We did tons of service on saturday! We started off the morning by going to a spinnathon. Our stake President loves to cycle. He is sponsored by a team. The spinnathon was for charity and there were tons of people there. There was a huge canvas with probably more than a hundred cycle machines. The stake president and his friend cycled for 10 hours straight for 410 kilometres each! Stake president broke a record and raised R50,000 cause he broke 400 k's. He organized a team from our ward mostly of the YSA but we were at his house for lunch when he was organizing it and they needed 2 more on the team so he asked us! Since we were on a team we showed up at our appointed time and each cycled for an hour and then switched. Wow it was tough! I don't know if you have ever been in a cycling class at the gym but it was a lot like that. There was an instructor at the front telling us to up the resistance or stand up or what not. I was beat at the end! After that we went to the Josephs house. They are a member family, the same that had us over for my birthday. We are doing lots of projects for them. In the past we have built and mounted some cupboards, finished a coffee table and hung lights around the gutters of the house. On Saturday we built a brick wall around a drain in the corner of their yard so that they can raise the level of the grass. It's nice to be able to help them out. We usually go help them for like 2 hours every week. 

Leshego was confirmed this week since last week was stake conference. He was late to church but Stake President told us to confirm him during priesthood and he will be sustained next week. He is still continuing to make new friends at church and loves it! He will get to go to a YSA convention at the end of the month. 

The success with the members is getting better! We didn't get to teach many member lessons the past week but some came to us at church asking if we could come on certain days so now they are getting excited for us to come! We are also going to start a pretty sweet program involving PMG. We are gonna teach them a principle from it and give them chapters to study or an assignment. For example we will teach them lesson 1 and then they will study it and next week they will teach it to us. We will do it with 4 or 5 members at the same time and it will take like 2 months to complete. 

Wow, Sara is awesome! She one upped me! My turn, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! :D I hope it was a day to remember. I love you I love I love you! I'm sorry that all your goodbyes have to be so close to your bday(me going to college, Nate going to college, Nate going on mission) but you are gonna have the best birthday ever 2 years from now! ;) 

Till next week,

Love ya fam bam! 

-Elder Dirkmaat :D