Man, isn't technology great? If I was on mission twenty, maybe even ten years ago, it would have been a while before I could have found out the Utes beat the Cougars 20-13. But! Thanks to a beautiful thing called the internet, I woke up to a call from Elder Francom Sunday morning celebrating the victory! ¡¡¡VIVA LOS UTES!!!
Elder and Sister Carlile weren't too happy about the outcome...but it's ok, they're still the best senior couple out here. Huge shoutout to them! They went to JoBerg last week to do something with their car, and I had them do some shopping for me at the Distribution Center while they were at it. Having had the same set of scriptures since I was baptized, they've been through a lot, so I had them get me new scriptures, and an awesome case as well. It has elephant skin on it. ELEPHANT! South Africans do scripture cases better. Sorry, America.
But man...this week was a good one. Last Monday we had our zone activity. All Elders Francom and Stengile would tell us in the morning was that we were playing volleyball, soccer, having a braai (barbecue), and watching a movie. They wouldn't tell us what movie it was, only that it was rated PG-13. HUGE shoutout to President Zackrison for approving it! Anyway, soccer and volleyball were sweet. My soccer footwork is still super gringo, but I'm working on it. Volleyball brought back memories of DHSV, and our intramural team at USU... Good times. But we finally got settled in the Bloemfontein to chapel to watch the movie, and lo and behold it turned out to be Forever Strong! Man...I forgot how inspiring of a movie it was. Either that, or I just haven't seen a PG-13 movie in two and a half months, but it was awesome. It's crazy how many of the things Coach Gelwix used to help the rugby players grow can be used to help missionaries turn into men as well.
We had ZTM the next day, and a lot of what Elders Francom and Stengile shared could be related back to Forever Strong. I'm seriously blessed with some awesome zone leaders. They gave us plenty that we can use to help hasten the work in Kimberley.
Wednesday it was back to work. We'd kinda been struggling with asking members and investigators to turn off the TV while we're at their places, but ZTM inspired us to be better about that. And it's been good! Not only us, but the members and the investigators both have been more focused on the message we have to share with them without the TV.
Thursday was absolutely crazy... Days where there's wind, the township gets really dusty, and Thursday the wind was terrible. There were some points during the day you couldn't see ten feet in front of the car! But lo, it did come to pass that along with the wind, along came the rains! Only for about ten minutes, but ten minutes was all we needed to put me in a fantastic mood. There was even thunder and lightning! Something I haven't seen literally for months! We were planning on tracting that day, but that ended up being a no-go unless we wanted every crevice on our persons filled with dust. We saw Patrick again that day though. The rugby player. He was playing a game in Cape Town, so Elder Kruger took him some stuff to take to his family. Remember how huge I mentioned this guy is? Cool. So you know those Superman t-shirts you see people wear? And sometimes the people wearing them have a pot-belly and the last person you'd say they remind you of is Superman? Quite the opposite with Patrick. The Superman shirt he was wearing was bursting at the seams from his muscles. I honestly wouldn't have been surprised to see him fly away and go rescue a cat stuck in a tree or whatever. Yho...he's big.
Friday, the weather calmed down, but it started getting a little cooler, which I was ok with. I want heat during the day, but we don't have air conditioning, and I'd much rather sleep in the cold than the hot. If it's cold, you pile on blankets and you're good. If it's hot, you can only take off so many clothes til you're at your magic underwear...it's brutal. But we taught, we played hockey a little bit with the young men, and man...they crack me up. Fad pulled me aside, and went into this whole ordeal about how he's addicted to stealing. He asked me to pray for him, and not being able to tell if he was serious or not, I did. Afterwards he pulled his shirt over his head and started crying. Again, couldn't tell if he was serious or not til he pulled his face out and started laughing his head off. Haha...crazy kid. I told him he should consider a career in acting.
Saturday...holy fetch. We found a spider in our room that was fetching huge. I sent a picture of it, but man...that thing freaked me out. I now go to sleep paranoid every night. But it's ok, no spider's gonna stop me from sharing the gospel! #BRINGITON. We had met someone a couple days before that we were going to go teach, but the address she gave us didn't exist... So we stopped by the bishop's place, which may have been a mistake, because he asked me to give a talk. Ah...I went for about two years before mission without giving a talk in sacrament meeting, and in the two months I've been out so far, I've talked twice now. But it's ok, I honestly felt like that was one of the best talks I've ever given. I've been reading the New Testament lately, so I talked about becoming true followers of Christ. I felt the spirit super strongly, and I even mentioned the Foo Fighters and the Los Angeles Dodgers in my talk. Gotta keep it entertaining right? ;)
I think that's about it for this week. Oh! One more thing. We've been focusing a lot this week on the power of the Book of Mormon in conversion. Because really, if you find out that the Book of Mormon's true, everything else falls into place. Jesus is the Christ, Joseph Smith was a true prophet, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. It's powerful. So, we've been reading chapters with the investigators, and lo and behold, it's working!
Take care this week. Stay safe, have some fun, stay positive, and love your lives!
Elder Johnson
PS...do you think the Lamanites called their brethren with red hair Flamanites?
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