Training with Elder Rasband was awesome

So this week has been another awesome week! Lots of cool things have happened!!

I can't believe that I am already half way through the transfer now! Things are just speeding up so fast!! It's crazy!! 

So last week Monday we had a really nice family home evening and dinner appointment with the bishop of Centurion 1!
He's a really cool guy, don't know exactly what it is that he does but we know that he travels a lot!

One of the great experiences that we had was teaching some of our investigators!!

So one of them is a lady called Franzelle, might have mentioned her before, but quite simply, she came to church by herself after being referred to the church by a member who is less active! Anyway, we'd taught her once before, and even though she works a lot, she was very willing to come to the church after work and still meet with us to have a lesson. And during the course of the lesson, we discuss the Book of Mormon, we even then give her a baptismal date on the second lesson! And she accepted, she is very excited for it! She told us that she has been to many churches before but all of them felt a bit weird and not right but when she came to our church she felt that this church was where she belonged, that this was home! So we are very happy to be teaching her!

That was on Tuesday but Tuesday was a pretty hectic day!! So what happened was that we were on our way to check up on an investigator but we get a call from some of the other missionaries telling us that they had popped a tire and then the spare tire as well! And so they needed us to go and pick them up! so we dropped what we had and went over to them. Picked them up, waited for the tow truck which took ages! But it was to be expected because we were stuck in traffic trying to get there too! Took us a while. Anyway while we were waiting we talked and just as the tow truck arrived, Elder Wilcox was ambushed by this old coloured woman!, It was pretty funny because she assumed that none of us could understand Afrikaans except both my companion and Elder Wilcox's companion, Elder Mbaki, could but we hear her and she starts saying stuff, now I only understand one word, it's a really offensive racial slur, so as soon we hear it all 3 of us excuse ourselves, apart from poor Elder Wilcox who doesn't know what it is and ends up talking to her for like 10 minutes :')

We take them back and then run to our last appointment, and THEN we were meant to go on exchanges with them that night too but we resolve, since we have to go down in the morning anyway, we would just start the exchange in the morning, which I was very happy for.

So we had an exchange on Wednesday, I was able to go with Elder Mbaki, he's from Cape Town, only been out 4 months, but is a really cool guy! He's awesome and a really good missionary! Anyway I get to go back to Rabie Ridge!!! There's only one area now that covers both, but it was awesome because I got to go back, see some of the investigators that I used to teach and introduce Elder Mbaki to them so he can continue teaching them, I also got to see the twins, and it was their Birthday!!! Which was awesome, I got to see them on their birthday, they have grown up a lot in a year. And then we also got to go see the Mokalka family (not the right spelling) They were one of my favourite families and it was quite amusing because they are very funny, in the sense that they are quite sarcastic sometimes. Anyway, we knock on the door. The teenage daughter opens the door, takes one look at me, I'm like "surprise", and she just says "Hell No" and shuts the door (shocked) :') It was hilarious, but it was great to meet with them and to see them again!
We had a great day that day, but the only problem was that the other missionaires, Elder Mpiyakhe and Wilcox, broke the cord for the GPS, and so couldn't find their way back to Rabie Ridge to switch back and got super lost!!! He he he, it ended up being 11pm by the time we got back to the flat! Ha ha , it was quite funny, I just took a nap in the flat until they got there

Apparently they had an interesting day and Elder Wilcox learned a lot. He's been on mission 3 weeks. Something I have come to learn a lot is that as you come from different backgrounds, different cultures etc. you can still like and appreciate people.

Thursday we had interviews at the mission home! They were awesome. President Leavitt is a really great guy. But the interview was quite different. It was actually very short! Just asked me about some of the missionaries in the zone. The best part though was that Sister Leavitt made cookies and they were delicious! He he! But also she handed out some of the mail and I think a couple of people got one or two pieces of mail, and then I got like 6 pieces :P he he! Letters from you and then also I have got a couple of birthday cards as well! I looked at them and was like, why do I have these? And then realised that my birthday is in like 2 weeks!
I've already opened them and they are on my desk so....
Package not here yet, but I'm sure that it is on it's way!

Not much else, apart from on Sunday we also went to go teach a Recent Converts sister, who is like 9 but understands a lot of what we teach her, it's great! Anyway, while we are there, it is actually the home of this guy, his name is Mike Mayfield. He's originally from America, like Carolina or something, moved here like 10 years ago, has a wife, (The recent convert) etc. But he's a really cool guy, super nice. Anyway, he is getting baptised on Saturday!! So we are very excited for that

The only other big thing was that we had our training from Elder Rasband! It was awesome! And well worth the sacrifice! It was a mission wide activity so it was great to be able to see all the other missionaries there, ex-companions etc. But the training itself, it was kinda short, only about 90 minutes, but it was amazing. He's a really inspired guy and I learned a lot from what he said! It was amazing. We all got to shake his hand. The funniest thing though was when President Leavitt got up to say a few remarks, before Elder Rasband came, he commented that we were very happy to have the missionaries from the MTC there, but also that the missionaries from our mission were very happy to have some female missionaries there as well! (There were 4 of them). All of us roared with laughter!! Simply because we didn't expect him to say something like that! It was hilarious!
But the training was great!

The other thing as well though was that we had to have an additional MLC meeting (all the zone leaders and the assistants) to discuss and talk about how to integrate Social Media more into missionary work here! So we are all now on different councils to determine the details of how to do it best! So looking forward to that and then we all went out for dinner together for nice restaurant burgers, which was awesome!

But that's about it!!

Love you lots!!

Jack