Sanbonani!
Sometimes I feel like Zunglish is my best hope for coming home knowing another language... I'll get all prideful every once in a while and think I'm talking Zulu really well, and then I'll try and say a sentence and all but two words of it will be English. Dang it. But it's ok... I think all the Zulus here really get a kick out of watching me struggle. As long as they're happy and learning the gospel, I'm happy too.
Man, what an incredible week! It's amazing what can happen when you heed the counsel of a general authority. One of the big things Elder Hamilton touched on last week was frequent short, powerful visits with your investigators. We kept that in mind from the day after zone conference and saw the blessings just as quickly! As far as finding new people to teach this week, we weren't as successful, but man... With some of our longtime investigators, we saw them make huge strides. Whereas normally we'll have roughly 5 or 6 investigators at church, we had 11 this Sunday! Elder Marumo and I couldn't have been more excited.
One of my favorite people we've been working with lately is Mongizi. Man... He's power. His family members are all members, and it's looking like the time is right for him to be too. He's worked with missionaries in the past and has had a desire to be baptized, but with his schooling and the hecticness of life, perhaps the timing wasn't right. But now that he's finished and on break, he's ready for the challenge. We've been teaching him the last few weeks, he's been coming to church and keeping commitments, and is truly understanding the changes that will need to take place in his life and the blessings that will come from it. Ah man... The Spirit is good, my friends.
So as Elder Marumo and I have been evaluating the jobs workshop... We're thinking it's a really good idea, but perhaps not for elders that are serving in town. We tripled our attendance this week and had three people show up!... Three people that we're already teaching! On the other hand, the oSizweni elders have been doing the same thing in the township and had 80 people at their first workshop. I guess it's more appealing in an area with an abundance of people looking for jobs, whereas the majority of the people in town are well off. They did a lot of good though. Sister Herrington mentioned that in oSizweni, a lot of people went in to the workshop looking skeptical when they found out they were not actually getting a free job, but left looking optimistic and hopeful. We're going to continue on with it until we've finished the course, but we're working on some new finding ideas too... Stay tuned.
At our workshop this week, we had an old investigator stop by and visit us. Nganiso. Man, how great it was to see his face! The first transfer I was in Newcastle, he was set to be baptized and was super powerful, but then, for reasons we're still not sure of, he just sorta disappeared off the face of the earth. But as he was visiting with us, you could sense that he missed the joy he had had in coming to church, having lessons with the missionaries, and that sorta thing. Looking forward to meeting with him a little later this week.
So Kindo, Melba, and Ayanda were planning on going to the temple with the Herringtons on Saturday, but had their plans frustrated when Ayanda learned from a friend in JoBurg that the temple is closed til later this week. Poor guys... But I guess it's good. They can learn a little bit of patience, hey? And we were blessed to be able to take Kindo out teaching with us on Saturday too. Haha, what a guy... We knew he was going to be with Melba's one year old daughter Milana all day, so we SMS'd him the night before and asked if she'd be cool coming with us also. His reply? "That will be awesome. Let it rock. Let it roll. We are in." What a stud.
Great week lies ahead of us. Most likely my last in Newcastle. Gotta make the most of it while I'm still here! President gave us a finding idea last week that we're giving a try. Instead of just tracting a street, he suggested announcing you're coming like the week before. So we made up a bunch of pass-along cards saying that we'd be coming by this week to give them a free DVD about finding faith in Christ and put them in a bunch of mail boxes on Saturday and will be following up this week. If they're interested, we teach. If not, we pass them by. I think if anything it'll at least result in less anger than normal tracting. We're also gonna make a lemonade stand one day and give away free lemonade and Books of Mormon. Marumo's idea. What a stud.
Deep cleaning today and then relaxing... Should be jolly good fun. There's something to be said about taking a couple hours or so to relax instead of filling your p-days with fun, yet tiring activies every week. Gonna enjoy this.
Sala kahle, stay positive, and love your lives my friends.
Much love,
Umdala Johnson
No comments:
Post a Comment