week 3

Part I (letter to Shannon)

To start with, I Elder McClellan, Master of Baptisms in the Africa South East Area, do not have a big heart. Good try though. It was great to hear from y'all on Christmas, but in all honesty hanging up was extremely hard haha... Oh well, I'm made of steel so I got over it after 4 days of deep depression. Not really, but yeah it was hard.

So for a spiritual though I got this. Don't wish you were someone else, don't wish your circumstances were different. If you're faithful, God makes you exactly what you need to be to reach the full measure of your creation. ( Alma 29: 3,6). Not much, but I'm having a hard week haha.

I've been told 3 times now I should do everything in my power to get married within a year of my return... Don't know how I feel about that, but hopefully I can end up going to BYU-I so that I can follow the advice of church leaders. Isn't it just terrible when they tell you to do something you want to do anyways?

I've been sick again this week, it's hard to stay healthy meeting so many people. All four elders in my flat are sick. Okay so this blows! Our money ain't here, I ain't got no food, and I ain't got no way to buy food. I haven't eaten in nearly a day already haha, and Salt Lake isn't sending the money until late this evening or tomorrow! Those flippin' chumps. I want to pimp slap them with a Book of Mormon right now. (Not sure if that's appropriate for a missionary to say, but hey I'm food deprived... what can I say?)

We went to Tzaneen (click here for info on Tzaneen) on Friday from Zone meeting. It is beautiful! But it rained like crazy and there were at least 15 fatal accidents on the way there. I'm going to try to upload pics. Most excitingly I saw my first baboon! It was bigger then I thought. On the down side I saw like my 30th dead body since I got here. People are dying like crazy here. Walking to the shop I'm at right now I walked across a pile of about 50 AK47 shell casings. I'm glad we have a gate and electric fence around our flat! Gotta love Africa!

Our investigators are kind of being chumps. Don't worry they don't have computers so they can't read this when you put it on the blog. The will not keep their commitments, I'm going to do some serious fasting and prayer this week so I can know how to get them motivated.

In other news, I keep out-smarting my companion through use of my superior logic and intellect. He doesn't like it, he has gotten in the habit of changing his original statement once I prove him wrong so that he can say he is correct, haha. Oh well.

The church is true, look to the Prophet for guidance, and endure to the end. If you do that and don't suck you'll probably be fine until we talk again. Miss everyone a ton and can't wait to hear back from everyone.

Love,
Elder McClellan

Part II (letter to Kurt)

Adjusting to mission life is fairly easy, I love it. The work is easy really, just have to put in the effort. The days are long and the weeks are short. I've discovered it's easier to look back on how fast time has gone than how much time is left.

I'm excited to get home already, but at the same time it hurts my soul to think of leaving. Two years really isn't much time to serve the Lord. I've made it my personal mission to get our area book in order, it's in terrible shape. Making progress though.

By the way, if someone offers you cow intestines, don't accept it. It's a mistake, I promise you it really is. Same with biltong that has cockroaches cooked into it. May be the two biggest mistakes of my life, and that is saying something haha.

If Shannon wants she can put this on the blog too, I forgot to send her some of the stuff I put on here.

Tell the basketball team to do better also. I don't know how they're doing, but I'm an Encouragement Master now, so that should do the trick for sure.

Love,
Elder McClellan