Eish... You remember in Holes where Mr. Sir tells the guys at Camp Green Lake a story? "Once upon a time, there was this magical land where it never rained. The end." Reverse that, and you've got Durban in the summer time. If it isn't raining rain from the sky, it's raining sweat from your face. Yoh yoh yoh... Christmas day! Haibo... We got out of the car and were walking for only five minutes before my face was completely drenched. But it's ok... Other than baptizing (or playing soccer on a drenched field...more on that in a minute), that's about the closest thing you get to swimming on mission. Bring on the sweat and rain!
Christmas week... What a joy! The Christmas party with six of the nine zones in the mission was fantastic. Got to see the Herringtons one last time before they head home (speaking of whom...as of right now, they're GONE! And they came out just a couple weeks after me! Is time flying...? You better believe it!), got to catch up with a bunch of other missionaries, got to see Big Z in a Santa hat and reindeer antlers... And finished off with the end of year slideshow! Ah, mission is good my friends.
Afterwards, we organized with the Durban ZLs to have an Umlazi Zone vs. Durban Zone soccer match. We all brought our clothes and everything, but due to the aforementioned rain, we were a little bit hesitant. Thanks to some convincing from various members of our zones, we decided to press forward and play on. It ended up being one of the best decisions we've ever made. You don't realize how much fun slide tackling in the rain can be until after you've done it. I bear solemn testimony that rain soccer blows the doors off of sunny soccer. And miraculously, no one was injured! Hurrah for Israel!
Oh, and don't worry... Umlazi won.
On Christmas Eve we hosted our zone training meeting since everyone was in town for the Christmas party anyway. I think one of the themes for the week, and kinda the theme of President Zackrison's presidency has been personal conversion. You spend a lot of time as a missionary strengthening everyone else you meet, but if you're not careful, you'll completely forget about your own spiritual welfare. The Christmas season amongst the missionaries has been a great time to reflect on our own personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I had a lesson planned for ZTM, and then as the discussion got going, it kinda went in a different direction than I had planned, which ended up being super ok. By the end, the idea that we were all grasping is that if you're working your hardest to do everything that the Lord asks you to do, you'll achieve what he needs you to achieve. If He has a bunch of families that he needs brought to the gospel, that's great. But perhaps He simply needs to test and strengthen you. The only way to find out, though, is to work your hardest. Know God. Know His character. Find the path on mission (and life) that will lead you back to him. Do all you can to follow it. You'll fall short, but He's asking you only to try, and He'll cover the rest. You'll do what He needs you to do.
What else, what else... Christmas day was great. Fam, you know all about that. :) Missionary work slowed a little the rest of the weekend. We spent most of our time visiting members and investigators we hadn't been able to see during the week. We gave Sister Greeh and her kids a bunch of presents that they seemed really to enjoy. Great stuff.
Things started to return back to normal on Sunday. The elders in BB3 had a baptism, and what a humbling experience that was. Sister Mcanyana was baptized, with her children to be baptized next month. Everything went smoothly, and at the end when she was given the opportunity to bear her testimony, she was in tears at how happy she was that Elder Rowley and Elder Paige had knocked on her door about a month ago. That kinda hit me, because usually I bash on tracting as an ineffective way to do missionary work, and yet, there are still families other there that need to be gathered in by knocking on doors. "Any honorable way" as Preach My Gospel teaches us.
Later that day, we had a couple hours to kill between church and our lunch appointment, so we tagged along with Elders Wesonga and Larsen to go "church hunting." One of the most effective uses of times they've found is simply attending at other churches. Anything to turn the public's perception of the guys in white shirts and ties from something negative to something positive. We found a congregation that was meeting in a primary school, so we went in and took seats. One of the pastors came up and introduced himself, saw the name of our church, and asked if it would be ok if he introduced us to his congregation. Without missing a beat, he began telling them about uKhozi FM, and the trip S'bu Buthelezi and the other announcers had taken last year to Salt Lake City. He introduced us as the "youth from that church" and invited Elder Okeng to share a little more about us. Now, this was one of those "happy clap clap" congregations that will repeat "Hallelujah!" if you say it to them. So Elder Okeng started out, "This is Elder Wesonga, and he's here all the way from Uganda. Hallelujah!" And the whole congregation in a joyous shout repeated "Hallelujah!" Man... Okeng was a natural up there! So he shared a little bit about what we did as missionaries, and then closed with a quick testimony and a few more hallelujahs. We left soon after, the pastor invited us back for multiple services this week, so we're pretty excited for that.
...did I say things returned to normal Sunday? Woops!
We went to a lesson with Elders Wesonga and Larsen too, and they were teaching someone they had "performed an exorcism for" the previous day. Which kinda just means they gave a priesthood blessing to. The lady was healed, and a bunch of her YSA aged friends and a random gogo joined in on the lesson. By the end of it, we had given three more blessings, dedicated the home, and taught the Restoration to a bunch of people that were super prepared to hear it. And all of this because of a gogo that called the phone number on a pass-along card. Again, like tracting, I've never been a big fan of pass-along cards, and yet... Here are people who were prepared!
So it's been a week. Got some good things coming up this week. Most likely my last week with Elder Okeng, and then he'll be off to the PMTC for a couple weeks before he goes home... Gotta make it a good one!
uKhisimusi omuhle, sala kahle, stay positive, and love your lives my friends.
Much love,
Umdala Johnson
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