week 47

First off, the postal service here has pretty much collapsed. Don't send anything by USPS... if you really really want to send something you can send it by UPS or DHL. Send it to this address:

3 Phillips Ave, Discovery 1709, South Africa

Don't feel like you need to send anything. Also, as far as my companion is concerned, he has more money than me haha so he is fine. Not all Africans are as poor as people think, and his family seems very supportive.

Let's see, where to start. Hmm, as far as Ebola, it is not a concern. There has only been one person in South Africa to have it, so in all reality it is more dangerous in the States, and I doubt you have lost any sleep over it being there. 

I can not tell you how badly I want to watch Frozen. You broke my heart a bit with that and the news of red cups at Starbucks ;) and I'd be lying if I didn't say I miss our Walmart trips as well. However, I'm loving my mission, so I guess I can't complain too much!

This week was pretty quiet really. Now that I know how to get around, I've kinda started taking over and we are having more success definitely! We gained an amazing investigator on Sunday and in all reality it was the highlight of my week. Her name is Maggie and she is the cousin of a returned missionary. Though she is only 14 she is amazingly intelligent, and more importantly her heart is in the right place. She just may be the most earnest seeker of truth that I have encountered to date, but only time will tell.

I don't really enjoy church here to be honest. Testimony meeting turned into more of "preach what you want" kinda deal and I'm in the most stereotypical Elders Quorum you can imagine! It is all "do your home teaching", "why did you not bring your books?","home teaching", and then the lovely Elders Quorum president we have tends to get upset and yell at people. The lesson Sunday was on giving blessings. First off, anytime someone mentioned oil he would say "we are not talking about that today" then at the end of class he started talking about it. He was making it sound as if consecrated oil is not important in the slightest, so I quoted from a church manual the importance and symbolism behind it. To which he got a wild look on his face and went off on how we have no healing oil. how we do not worship the oil, and so on and so forth. I was so appalled by his ignorance that I had a hard time not leaving. He also taught that priests could participate in blessings, they just can't give them... oh boy, me correcting that false doctrine opened up another can of worms. Sometimes life is just hard.

Nothing all that fun happened this week to be honest. I'm good. Not sure what else to say, I've already used up my patience for typing today. Sorry. Had to send a few long emails to others.

Thank you for everything!

Love, Elder McClellan