Happy Thanksgiving 11-24-14

One of our main fellowshippers, Bonga, got his mission call this week!  He is going to the England London South Mission

Elder Truscott with Bonga

As for me this week.....nothing new really. Life in Sada is honestly pretty boring. We just go out there and work/teach lessons...most of which are translated by our fellowshippers, and then come home for dinner after our day....and there were no exchanges this week to break things up.

Last P Day we ended up playing sports with the Queenstown Elders. It was pretty fun, we just played football with them, like 5 on 5, and had a nice time.....everyone says that sports is pretty much what they do here since there isn’t much around....so I'm guessing in my stay here you'll hear that I played sports a few times. Ha ha.

Well this week I was really focusing on learning my area....we learned this week that Elder Swacina is going to be leaving a week or two early so he can be home for family things, so he'll leave maybe this Saturday, and I'm guessing that Elder Chaparadza will leave at the end of this transfer, so I'm really just trying to learn the area. Not super easy since the streets don’t have names and are all dirt so they look close to the same. Ha ha. But I’m getting there for sure.

The tripanionship is alright I guess....but It’s still not too fun sleeping on the floor....but at least it’s only for about a week more.

This week on Tuesday we did have a really powerful lesson ....we saw a guy named Akhona, and he is one of their progressing investigators. Well we got there and we were teaching him the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we taught faith and repentance, and really talked about repentance and stuff, and then asked him to make the changes in his life to help him be more like the Savior. He started crying and told us that he is trying but the one thing holding him back is smoking weed, and that he wants our help to quit. It was pretty cool, we bore testimony that he can stop and that as he lives the gospel he'll be happy. We told him we would be there for him and if he ever needed anything, or got tempted, to send us a message and we'd call him to give him stuff to do or just talk until he felt stronger. Well Thursday we were supposed to see him, and we got a please call from him, I thought he was going to reschedule; Chapradza called and it was him saying he was being tempted and wanted to smoke and wanted help. So we gave him a chapter from the BOM to read and told him to do that and pray, and he said that it helped and he didn’t smoke that day! Pretty cool. We still need to see him to make another appt. for this week though.

Every Wednesday here we go to a place called "the village". It’s like a rural part outside of the rural area. Ha ha. And it’s super far from everything....but there is a member family that stays there so we go there Wednesdays. They are a nice family as well, and it is a good appt every Wednesday it seems like.

I guess another thing I can report on this week was that one of our main fellowshippers, Bonga, got his mission call this week! he was super pumped about that. The Stake President gave it to the Bishop, who brought it to Sada and Bonga opened it on Friday. He is going to the England London South Mission. Pretty cool for him! he's excited and it will be a big change from living in and seeing Sada every day.

This Sunday it was a special Stake Conference...so church was in Queenstown. Sada brought a bus down, and we heard from the Stake President that was broadcast from East London, and then a special DVD with Elder Bednar, President Uchtdorf, some other guy, and a lady that always speaks in conference. They pretty much just cracked down hard on Labola, which is the bride price culture here....Uchtdorf just straight up said "discontinue this practice" and the people were like laughing a bit,  It’s a huge tradition here....but the First Presidency and the Apostles frown upon it I would say.
We had a good turnout...and we had 2 baptism interviews, one for a girl named Nokotula, and one for a 16 year old boy named Mihlale, who is a stud. He's really cool and they are both ready! Again, I didn’t teach them that much, so it’s kinda like I'm just here for them, but it’s still cool for them :)

This week is Thanksgiving! I don’t know what I'll do...since neither of my comps are American...hahaha. But I haven’t really heard anything either, so we will see how the plans turn out!

I love you so much and miss you like crazy. Honestly more than you even know.

Love,

Elder Truscott