For Christmas mail, use the Discovery address, DHL or UPS. Since it is a private courier I don't have to pay, and there is no risk of it getting stolen, so all is well.
Alright let's see here. Hmm, basically I got transferred because my last area was not for me. I went and accomplished what I needed then President Dunn, being the great and inspired man he is, sent me packing, and for that I'm pretty darn grateful. As for Hammanskraal, I completely love it, but it is not doing so hot. There have been definite improvements over the past two weeks though. We have about 10 solid investigators. Not terrible. The problem we face is that the chapel is forever away from our area. It costs about R40 ($4) to get there, which seems pretty minimal, but when you are talking about people who only have enough for the bare essentials at times it is pretty hard to get them to church, and by extension to progress and become converted. The branch is well staffed as far as leaders go, the Elders Quorum president (at least I think he is...) is absolutely outstanding! Best elders quorum lessons I've ever had by far. The area has only had 1 baptism this year, but we just may get 6 next month.
However, I have had 15 baptisms in the past year, so I'm pretty darn happy with that. The mission standard is 24 before you leave, so hey, I'm doing good. South Africa really isn't all that easy to baptize in. The problem being that this is the new Sodom and Gomorrah haha. People love what they are doing, and most never act enough to find a reason to change. Oh well, I love this place.
Man, Joe looks darn good in the Senior pictures you sent.
Dropbox is being a tad bit difficult, so I'm not sure if these pictures will ever upload, but hopefully! (note from Shannon - file was empty, sigh. Hopefully we'll have better luck next week!)
Life is going good, oh and hey, I found a new internal evidence that testifies to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. When Nephi and his brothers head out to get the plates from Laban they say that they are going "up" to Jerusalem. It kind of just annoyed me to be honest. Just because you go north does not mean you're going up. So I investigated, and come to find out, Jerusalem is at a higher elevation then just about anything else in the middle east. Then again, I'm sure a young farmer from New York in the early 1800's would have known that.
Also another thing I found was the over use of the word "and" in 1 Nephi 2:4. ("And it came to pass that he departed into the wilderness. And he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness.") I know the guys translating this were by no means rocket scientists, but it doesn't take much intelligence to know that the verse is written so poorly it hurts. I looked into it and discovered that when translating from ancient Semitic languages to a modern tongue the over use of the word "and" is impossible to avoid because of their ancient writing style. Then again, I'm sure you would learn that over the years while feeding chickens and milking cows.
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