December 1, 2008

Happy December 1st!
This week has been great and i'll get into it in just a sec...First off just to let you know, yes i'm still in Paarl. Transfers were on Wednesday but just as Elder Holt and i guessed...we weren't planning on leaving. So good thing we didnt.
The past week A LOT of stuff has been happening. A lot of good stuff. :) First off...There was this lady we had been seeing a few weeks back during my first transfer. We saw her the first couple weeks of it but she kept dropping our appointments or something kept coming up, so we kinda forgot about her. She had been seen by missionaries before just a couple times...before i got here. Her name is Sister Brink. Well basically we went to see her last week and she's made some major progress. She finished the BOM and has been feeling great about everything we've explained to her. She lives in Wellington, and has a couple member friends. Brother Peter Smith is our fellowshipper and lives just down the street, so he's been following up on her quite a bit. Anyway...if i didnt tell you she's like 40 or something, married, with a couple kids. Her youngest is like 18 i think. All girls. So yeah we met with her twice this past week, once to follow up on how things have been for her, how's the reading/prayer going, all that good stuff. Like i said she's made tons of improvement from what we could tell and what Bro Smith was telling us. Our second time we saw her we decided to teach her the Gospel of Jesus Christ, including Faith, Repentance, Baptism...etc etc. Well to make a long story short, Elder Holt and i planned for her that morning and decided to commit her to be baptized on the 4th of January. And as we taught her, things felt really good, and she accepted that committment and will be getting baptized and confirmed that following week. So that's pretty exciting eh! It was a very cool experience, even just asking her to be baptized, and even seeing her reaction to such a question. So that's the main news for the week...
We were out doing some finding...well we were actually looking for this guy Moses but ended up finding this lady named Brenda instead. We just introduced her to the BOM and got a return appointment...We met up with her, her husband, her neice, and her kids. This is the Bakala-Bidzedou Family. (Bee-Shoe) The husband is from Congo and is so awesome and humble. Brenda is Xhosa. and her Neice lives in Smarty Town, (like east of paarl). They have one like 7 year old boy named Puka, and another baby. Well we met with all of them and taught the Restoration. Things went great. After the lesson, Mr. BB walked us out and explained to us how he already felt what we were telling him was true. And how it all made sense. We left him a french BOM, and Sophie (Neice) one of her own.We went to see them like two days later but only caught Brenda and Sophie there. We taught them about prayer and also read a bit from Moroni 7 about the Spirit. It was funny cuz even before we started that lesson, Brenda was like "So when are you going to invite us to come and visit your church", This was pretty shocking i thought, having an investigator ask to come to church before we did. Even tho we were going to invite them anyway...i just laughed.We saw them again last night and watched the restoration DVD with them. They're a great family. Mr. BB has such a strong testimony already and he really just wants to know more about it. They're all planning on being to church this coming sunday. Exciting!
We've been doing these records for the church, updating them and visiting a lot of less active families...like i'm sure i've told you. But our sunday school teacher, sister Williams, is one that we went to this week. She's got like 3 older sons, but she's the only real active one. We started talking and she's done so much with her life already. She's been to the SLC Temple and took out her Endowments there, been to New York and to the Sacred Grove. She was telling us about all the Apostles she's met. She said she talked to President Monson in an elevator once. All a bunch of other crazy stuff. So many people out here can barely afford to do such things but she's made time and the money to do what's most important to her. It was cool just to hear all her stories...i wont tell you them all, but she's been around a lot of the starting of the church her in SA. But yeah...good family. She's funny.
At church our branch president, pres Kruger, came up to us and told us how much he's noticed our efforts in trying to get the branch more involved with missionary work. Even the little things he said. More than previous missionaries had done. That was nice to hear. We've really been working our butts off trying to get people more involved and giving us referrals. We've set up that sports night every saturday, set up a Preach my Gospel table at church with BOM's and handouts and Pass Along cards for people to take and give to people. (hopefully not just taking em for themselves). But it was just nice to see that someone had actually noticed our efforts and appreciates what we've been doing here in getting this branch going.Some ladies in our branch brought some random guy in off the street to sacrament yesterday and Elder Holt and I sat by him. He was a funny old guy that would shout "Amen" "Praise the Lord" things like that when he liked what the speakers would say. Well he wouldn't really shout, but he'd say it, and it was funny.
Paarl is getting ready for their big light show. There was one last week up in Wellington but we didnt get to see it. There should be some good shopping this week with some sweet street lights here in N. Paarl, near where we live. The same street where we do the internet and stuff.
O we played some touch rugby on saturday with a couple of guys for the sports night. it was pretty fun. I'm learning! the only dumb part was that we played inside the church cuz some of the guys were being dumb and didnt want to put shoes on. there were only like 7 of us. Guys more my age, it was fun. Kinda complicated tho...i like to watch it on tv, but playing it in a little gym inside the church just isnt the same.
Well i hope everyone had a good week! Reagan i hope things are good with the new baby! Send some pics when you get a chance! Love ya!I'll Keep ya posted...
-Elder Devenney