November 17, 2008

Hello Everyone!
Paarl has been good this past week. Actually, it isn't only Paarl that we work. Our area is actually Paarl, and up into Wellington. Wellington is a beautiful city full of old buildings and famous for it's wine vinyards. Everything is getting so green now and it'll be beautiful once all the grapes get on the vines. There are different sections of the city that we work also, some inbetween here and wellington. Different parts of the city are named different and it's quite funny. Some names are Chicago, New York, New Orleans, etc. So yeah i've been to places in the states quite a bit. Haha. Our complete area is quite large. I couldnt remember if i told you that but now you know...and have a little better idea of how big our area out here is. Plus it's just the 2 of us when it used to be a small zone back in the day...
This week was good. We had a bunch of DA's, which is always nice. ;) We've started seeing this really old lik 86 year old woman that one of our members took us to. She's in an old rest home and i'm pretty sure she cant even get out of bed. but she realizes she needs to get baptized...or soemthing like that. We've been teaching her but it's just hard cuz we know she wont ever be able to come to church. And how are we expecting her to progress without coming? It's just a weird situation.
This past week we had a couple good days of rain and lightning. It was nice to see. We'd had a few night rains before, but nothing that stayed for a couple days at a time. I got to bust out my sweet rain jacket, and it worked quite well. So thanks! I tried taking some lightning pics one night...it was a little difficult, but i managed to get a couple good shots.
When we were walking around we saw a house with a couple of Huskies. Man those dogs are so pretty. they have white eyes and one of them is going to have puppies in about a month. So we hope to go back and check them out. But the lady we talked to loved her dogs and told us a bunch about them. They're pretty rare down here ya know...everyone has Pit Bulls, or little crazy dogs. Unfortunately whenever i ask if they've heard of a dog like ours, (Chaka), they havent. Some have, but i'm yet to see one. Man i miss that guy...hope he's doing good.
We had a sweet object lesson with this one family that we're again going to see tonight. They're a part memeber family and we did the lesson on faith. We used my skateboard and blindfolded them and built a half pipe and made them drop into it. K not really, but we did blind fold them and we did use my skateboard. It was just a fun activity with them standing on my skateboard and while it gets lifted off the ground, with their hands on my shoulders, i start going to the ground. It's supposed to feel like they're getting really high off the ground when in reality they're only like 6in up. Then eventually they fall and realize it wasn't that bad, it's just funny. We even had our Elders Quor Pres there with us. Good times! I think we did that type of game at some party many years ago...so i suggested it and we tied it into faith...something like that. it was good.
Friday we had a Lekker Braai! We had been planning this for a couple a weeks now at Bro Chris Davids house. That is the guy that ran at Weber State. We got there and ate and everything, it took a while cuz you cook everything over coals. Mainly all the meat and stuff. Braai's are really big down here, every weekend there's a party at our flat. And even saturday night we had another Braai ourselves at our flat. mmm so good!
We've been teaching those two guys from Zimbabwae. Raymond, Teacha, and they had another guy this time, Chris. They're awesome guys. Raymond knows his Bible, but is so stoked for the Book of Mormon. All three of them are wanting to read and have that desire. It's awesome. They just love church, God, the scriptures, everything. Plus they're way cool with us and want us to come all the time if it were possible. Hopefully they'll be coming out to church next week cuz it's the Primary Program and we're going to have a Lunch after. That is very rare and we've been telling everybody about it so they can come. Elder Holt and I also just started this new thing that'll happen on Saturday Evenings. Every Saturday we're going to have a sports night where we can have our investigators, YM, Priesthood, just anyone that wants to come can. it should be a good time. It was announced yesterday and this saturday will be our first time trying it. There are just so many people here that dont come to church, so we're just trying to involve them more and get them to come to these activities. We dont expect it to be big at first, but hopefully it'll get people coming out to have some fun. Plus there will be a snack after, and people only come for the food it seems like. Basketball this week, we'll see how it goes...but i'm excited.
We got told saturday night that we'd be filling in at church again. We both gave talks in sacrament meeting. mmmm it went alright i guess. haha. Since i've been here i've had to give talks at 50% of the sacrament meetings, lets hope that percentage goes down a little...haha. Nah it went fine. i talked on missionary work cuz we're really trying to get the branch and people involved in the work.
Everything else is going pretty good, hope that gives you a glimpse of my week!
-Elder Devenney