So this week has been very good! It's gone a little slower because of the new transfer, but I'm sure that things will speed up now!! Especially since we have lots to do all day every day! We literally can't make it to every appointment that we have because things are moving!
Anyway, so the big news: Training!!
I only found out who I am training on Tuesday, his name is Elder Harris, and he is from Cape Town! My third South African companion!
He is a great guy and a very good missionary! I am enjoying my time with him a lot, and it is good to be able to impart my wisdom to him!
He also is helping me a lot, reminding me of the thingss that I miss out to do, and in a non-direct way, motivating me to be better, and to set a good example for him. So it is a good way to finish the last few weeks of my mission!
The training is going well, we work well together and he is a good teacher. There is of course a reason that he is being trained, he he. It's also quite funny because I see a lot of the greenie habits in him, which is common to every new missionary, and most of it I remember that I was the same. For example he will occasionally comment that something isn't the same as it is back home. It's something that he will adapt to.
It's crazy to think that now I such a short time left. I am pretty much 90% finished! It's really weird to think that it has been a whole 2 years!! It's surreal. It doesn't feel too much like 2 years for me, what about you? Does it feel that long for you? ;) (YES)
One of the great things that we learned this week was while we were teaching KB. KB is a young man, who's mother is a member (same place where we found that she is growing, legally, a marijuana plant in her garden, but that's another story) He wants to get baptized and he really knows the gospel well, only problem is that he hasn't been able to quit smoking yet.
So we started to go over repentance and quitting smoking, but just that morning I had been studying about the qualifications for baptism, particularly in Moroni 6. So while pondering this the impression came to me in the lesson that we were focusing too much on the actions, and not enough on the repentance. Because repentance isn't simply just changing our actions, if we change our actions, but our nature remains the same, eventually we will fall back into the old habits, and have not repented because we have not truly forsaken them
Rather we (I) changed the theme of the lesson to move away from the thought of quitting smoking, and told him that what he actually needed to do was to repent. To change himself and allow the atonement to cleanse him, then his actions will change by themselves, because he has changed. It made a lot more sense this way and the spirit was really present in the lesson, it was great.
This links to something that I learned while studying for the qualifications for baptism. We have this 8 year old who wants to get baptized like next week, and so I was looking over the requirements, particularly studying in Moroni 6. Something that came to me is that often people are too concentrated in the things that we should be doing, rather we should be focused on the people we are BECOMING. This is something that I think was the problem when I did my Duty to God, I was focused on the what I should do, rather than trying to become the person it was moving me to do. I see now why they changed it a few years ago!
One of the things that I almost missed! On transfer day, right before we were about to leave, one of the security guards is running across the car park, shouting for us to come help, the whole of the field behind the mission office had caught fire!!! So we all ran out, grabbing rubbish bins and whatever buckets we could find to try and put out the fire.
All in all we didn't manage to do much, it was too big, the fire hose didn't reach, the people using the fire extinguishers weren't using them properly, they didn't know how, and it just burnt out anyway. The fire..... pickup truck, didn't arrive until it was almost all gone, and by that time all there was to do was to save the trees from burning. In some places the flames were like 2 or 3 meters high.
So it was a very exciting first day for my greenie!
The last thing that I can mention is that yesterday we went to a members house for family home evening, and sitting right there in the living room was this stranger that I didn't know.
Turns out they didn't know him either, he'd just walked in and asked for a cup of tea. And then refused to leave, saying that he needed somewhere to sleep for the night.....
it was really weird
Thankfully the father came home later and kicked him out, he isn't homeless, just wanting to be somewhere else
The worst part is that they even offered him food, and he rejected it, and then started to shout and was trying to impose his own rules in their house,
it was all very strange.
Something that I've been doing a lot is encouraging as many people as I can to go on mission!! Ha ha. It's great, to try and ask people if they want to serve, they say no, and then you ask if they've prayed about it........ then you commit them to ;)
It was quite funny in the trainers meeting, Elder Adams, the AP was saying to the trainers that they are the future of the mission, then he catches my eye, and says: Except you Elder Jorgensen. ha ha.
So that was my week
