Feb 16, 2009

How's everybody doing? Hope everyone had an excellent week. Things here were intense this past week and i'll get to it all in just a bit. We worked hard and broke a few records here when it came down to stats...so we're pretty stoked about that....
Well the week started out well as we went to Cape Town to hike up Table Mountain last week on Monday. We got a late start but it was all good. The weather was nice and sorta cloudy so it wasn't too hot to climb, which was a blessing. First off, we get there and we're ridin with the ZL's in their car while other missionaries are in other cars. Well as we get to our parking spot anytime the car backs up there has to be a missionary behind the car at all times. So one of the missionaries hops out and directs elder Nyoka in his backing...i think Elder Nyoka wasnt even paying attention, and idunno what the other missionaries that were driving were thinking...but in short, Elder Nyoka backed straight into the other car. Totally dented both cars. At least my accident wasnt out of pure stupidity! haha. I just laughed. But as for our hike...it continued on a long step up all the way to the top. It was an intense hike...took about an hour and a half to get there...and i basically had to stop every 5 minutes after we had gone for the first half hour. I thought it might die...literallly...haha. Well once we made it there it was beautiful. You'll soon see the pics but it looked over Camps Bay and Cape Town on the other side. We just walked around for a couple hours then hiked back down. We hit Cape Town traffic on our way home and it was basically too late to do anything once we got back to Paarl. It was fun tho and i can at least say i've done it. Next time i'm taking the Cable Car...
One day this past week...dunno when exactly...but we were just walking in this neighborhood and we stopped to talk to this one guy. Well his name was Allon, not knowing it til he came outside, but he was handicap physically. and mentally i guess...But just more physical. He was a little slow but we started to talk to him anyway. As we talked to him we actually found out he was quite smart, and knew a lot, and believed in a lot of good things. I thought about how i think i might judge too quickly...cuz he even told us that he was just a little handicap and dont let his appearance bother us becuase he was fine mentally. Well we talked to him and he had a lot of interesting questions for us. He said that just 4 weeks ago he had talked to missionaries from our church and they told about the Book of Mormon and they said that we didnt believe in Christ...this was a surprise for us because we know we're the only missionaries in Paarl and we had never talked to him. And surely we would not, or any other missionary wouldnt, say that we dont believe in Christ when it is the biggest thing on our name tag. We clarified some stuff and we couldnt figure out who he must have talked to...Jehovah Witnesses? who knows...It was interesting.
O yeah i hope everybody had a good Valentines Day on Saturday...I know i did. Me and Elder Power had a date at La Romantica! with eachother...haha. We actually celebrated on Friday...and i wasnt too impressed with the place. Elder Power finished off my food...but we got to watch some good Rugby. That sport is brutal!
At church this past uh...yesterday we had a great speaker from the High Council in Cape Town come in. He spoke about Preach my Gospel...I dunno what's going on over there but they're stressing every member have one of these in their homes. You know it's what us the missionaries study from each day...yeah...well it was powerful. He spoke about the importance of the basics in our church and it's funny to think i probably couldnt have explained the Restoration to anyone before i came on mission...that's pretty sad....
Good news for the week...we have a Baptismal Date for Sydney which is going to be on the 15th of March. He's a great guy. So we're pretty stoked for him. Well all i can say is we stayed was busy...very busy...as it was the last week of the transfer. I hope everyone is doing good and thanks for everything!
-Elder Devenney