I had a George Costanza moment this week... You know that episode of Seinfeld where he runs over the pigeons because we have a deal with them? They get out of the way of our cars, we look the other way on the statue defecations. Anyway, a pigeon flew in front of the car, broke the deal, and lost his life because of it. RIP little guy.
But man...I think if I could sum up the week in one word it would be service. We doubled our service hours from any previous weeks, and it was awesome. We couldn't even fit everything we wanted to do into our schedule. Serve serve serve...that's what us missionaries do!
So p-day last week we went to this place called Emoyo. It's over by where the Carliles stay and has a driving range, a game reserve, and a big airplane that just sits there. So we golfed a li'l bit, saw rhynos and other cray cray African animals in the distance, and then I tried to touch a warthog... I touched it once, but Elder Francom wasn't filming at the time. By the time I tried again it either ran away from me or started snapping at me. Darn warthog. But after that we went and did what Mormons do best...helped a family move in from Kroonstad! They're staying at an apartment complex on the fourth floor, and you guessed it...no stairs. So after dividing the angle of the velocity over the quadratic equation and integrating the time space continuum into the derivative...we decided we were gonna have to use our strong missionary muscles to carry the furniture up many flights of stairs. Tough, but rewarding.
Tuesday after DDM Elder Kruger and I helped the Carliles and the ZLs hang up a giant banner for their chapel openhouse on Saturday. Again, we had to use our strong missionary muscles to drive the stakes into the tough African soil. I'm probably making this sound a lot cooler than it really was. But we drove back to Kimberley after that and had dinner with some members. They served us mashed potatoes, and I forgot how much better those are than the South African alternative, pap. So good. Never take Thanksgiving dinner for granted because we won't get to celebrate that here. :/
Wednesday we woke up and helped Sister Mosegeleng in her yard. We assumed we were gonna be cutting the grass, but she wanted it taken out. We were confused because the grass looks nice...but the customer always knows best, right? Haha, it ended up looking pretty good. We'll be helping her again next week. I'm gonna be so good at gardening once I'm home. Watch out, weeds.
I read my Patriarchal Blessing this week for the first time since the MTC. Man...it's just so crazy cool how different events from my life, even just in the past three months, have changed how I look at different things in my blessing. If you have yours, go read it right now. If you don't, work on getting one right now. It will help you so much.
So I found a paper I brought from my mission prep class at the Logan Institute that outlines a gameplan for reading the Book of Mormon in 30 days, so I'm started that this week because YOLO. Also because the Book of Mormon is true, and you can't ask your investigators to read every day from it if you're not doing the same.
I propose two new stats to start including on the weekly report... Number of times you see people peeing in public (and how many of those are father led), and how many times the little African children feel my arm hair. Enough said there.
Friday we usually play soccer with the young men, but this week Smalls taught me how to skateboard a little bit! I can ollie now, so I'm on my way to be the next Nyjah Huston. Watch out, world! When we went to bed that night it was 77 degrees in our bedroom... Lack of air conditioning is brutal. We're heading into summer now, so it's only gonna get hotter. And Utah's getting snow now, neh?
Saturday was awesome. We helped clean up Sister Mpho's yard for four hours. But man, it looks goooood. We took out a couple trees, cleaned up trash, weeded, raked... Missionaries go hard, man. And then we started our fast after that, and it was brutal, but spiritually awesome. Going without water and then proselyting in the heat after that was hard, but really helped us to focus on the reason we were fasting. This was really cool...we fasted as a ward all for the less-actives in the ward. It's really cool, because that's what Elder Kruger and I have been putting a lot of our focus on this transfer. And then Sunday, we broke the fast as a ward after church and had a lunch and social. You could feel the Spirit so strong. And out of nowhere...a man that's been inactive since at least the time I've been here showed up to sacrament meeting. No one told him to come, and a lot of people didn't know who he was, but he was there. Some people could see that as a coincidence, others would see that as an answer to our prayers and fasting. Whatever it was, it was so cool to see him there.
Conference this year was powerful though. I haven't gotten to listen to Priesethood session yet, but there were some powerful talks. I think my favorite was Uchtdorf's from Saturday. Holland's is up there too, as is Ballard's.
Welp, that's it for me this week. Enjoy your weeks, stay positive, and love your lives.
Much love,
Elda Dingus
(Sister Mpho's new nickname for me -____-)
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