Jan. 19, 2015

Elder Truscott and Elder Mariner

Bro. Badi and his daughter "Nana"

Elder Truscott in the Xalabile's family room

Baby "Nana"

Bongo - a ward member in Sada

This week in Sada was a pretty good one for Elder Ratema and I!  It was just a pretty average week of missionary work honestly.....we have been doing lots of finding, and with that new "testing the promises of God" thing that the mission is into right now it’s been cool. Honestly I had big doubts the first time we did it with Elder Manzini last week, but it worked, and Elder Ratema and I have been setting goals in our free time, like maybe seeing a less active (we did that yesterday, said a specific prayer and the first less active we tried was home and had us right in) or getting 2 return appts, or teaching a discussion, and so far we haven’t ever set a goal and prayed specifically and failed. We have always reached our goals. It’s been pretty good and it’s made the work lots better!

So it was a normal week of missionary work, and then we had zone training and interviews on Thursday. The training from the zone leaders was nice, it was about retaining recent converts, and then how to rely and recognize the spirit. We pretty much decided that recognizing the spirit was the hardest thing and that it was one of the reasons we were even on earth....still looking for someone who can give me a solid answer on that one. And while the zone leaders were doing their training President Merrill took us out to do our interviews. He told me that Elder Ratema and I were staying together, which I was assuming so it wasn’t much news....and then just said how I'm doing a good job. Basic stuff honestly. And then President gave his training, where we listened to a talk by Pres. Uchtdorf about hope, faith,  and diligence type of thing. It was super powerful, he explained the morning of Christ's resurrection super well and it was pretty good....and then we ate....and back to missionary work! haha.

We taught a good amount of lessons this week, and Sunday was super good for church attendance! When we walked in there were more people in sacrament than I've ever seen in Sada. We had 9 investigators, and around 5 less actives that we've been working with or trying to work with that came!! And then we had scheduled to do Noluthando's baptism interview with the zone leaders that night. Well after church we decided to go and run through the baptismal questions with Noluthando...she didn’t know them super well, and when we asked her if she was honestly ready to make that promise, she said no...and that she needed to sort some stuff. But we rescheduled it for Feb. 22 (same date we'll try for for Iviwe) and she said she would prepare herself...so it sucked for us but it’s better than being baptized and not being ready.....

I'm glad that things are picking up here....it makes it lots more enjoyable! But I will probably be on exchanges in Ilinge this week cause they haven’t been having the same success we have here....so we'll see what we can do there.

I love and miss you.

Love,

Elder Truscott