Dumelang!
Ah... I have felt better these last two and a half weeks than I've felt in a long time. In response to my email last week, the Z Man said, "I'm glad that you are finishing strong in a good area, even if it is far away and new to you. It feels like it might well be the "cleansing" you needed to finish your mission with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment." Those words couldn't be more true. President's vision for us as missionaries from the beginning has been for us to become humble, consecrated servants of the Lord that can "speak with the tongue of angels." And this last week more than ever, I've felt that be fulfilled.
You may remember Barend that I mentioned last week. Yoh, he's a character, but he's a good guy and a lot of fun to teach. One of the times we visited him we found him outside playing chess with a neighbor. He wouldn't start the lesson until I played him. There's definitely something not right in his head, and I was worried it was going to be one of those things where he's just randomly crazy good at chess. As the game got started, I was surprised when I was able to take his queen pretty early on. And eventually, one by one his pieces started disappearing. And lo and behold, I was victorious! Perhaps joining the chess club in grade 2 ended up coming in handy! But then he challenged me to a second game, and with a new sense of confidence I gladly accepted. And then he beat me in three moves and my ego was shattered. Ay... It's ok though. We had a couple good lessons this week, and aside from a couple random outbursts, they went well. (Random outbursts meaning asking, "So you want me to join your church?" during the Plan of Salvation or, "Do you believe in ancestors?" while we're reading the introduction to the Book of Mormon. That question followed with, "Dead people... Like Osama bin Laden? Do you think he's really dead? He's still alive. It's just American propaganda.") He lost his mother last year, and I think the Plan of Salvation is really bringing him a lot of comfort.
Elder Brimhall came on an exchange with us this week, and man... That was power. He's in my MTC group, so we're going home together in just a few weeks. We got to catch up on a lot of stuff and try to keep each other from being too much trunky. (And we had some powerful teaching moments too, don't worry!) We're teaching a brother named Mokie who's getting baptized at the end of the month, and he's one of the best non-member missionaries out there. He's invited almost all of his friends to learn about the gospel, and we were teaching one of them with Elder Brimhall named Tebogo. (We call Tebogo "Laman" and his other friend "Lemuel." Our hope is that they understand the significance of that when they start reading the Book of Mormon.) Anyway, Elder Brimhall's a powerful teacher and he brought the Spirit in amongst lots of loud laughter and a lack of seriousness, and their interest in what we were sharing skyrocketed. Pretty cool what the right spirit in a lesson can do.
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