We teach daily

The landscape looks like Rwanda almost exactly, just the red dirt and hills all over the place with vegetation of sorts mixed in all over. I don't know if i would call it a suburb or what exactly it would be but its like a town, kinda like Dewinton to Calgary, its sorta that same idea.  We do teach people every day, a lot of them are goofballs and don't really listen and stuff like that, but we do teach daily.  Apparently we have more than 2 baptisms scheduled for this weekend, but they aren't related but they're both pretty young. The one guy's name is Mfundo and he's 15, he's a good kid, he introduced his dad to the church, and his dad got baptized a couple months ago, we spend a lot of time at their house, their mom is so super cool she rocks but she refuses to get baptized because she switched like a million churches in her life  but she's awesome and just loves missionaries. 

The other girl is named Thando and she is 9 and her mom is a member but isn't active and her dad is not a member but basically knows everything in the church better than I do, he's going to be a bishop some day mark my words, anyway the parents aren't married so thats the only reason the dad isn't baptized because he needs to be married first, but they're great people and they as well love the missionaries. They're both fairly ready minus their attention spans being kind of small while we are teaching them but they want to live the gospel so thats good. There's a lot of baptisms in the mission but then they become less active right after because they just hurry into it because they like the missionaries and don't want to disappoint them so then after those missionaries get transfered they don't go anymore, which is sad. Pday consists of shopping laundry emailing and soccer and thats about it, one of these days we might get to go to a soccer game which would be cool. Well that's all for now. 

Love you 

Elder Eric

 

First email from the mission field

He seems to be doing well his first area is Marionhill. Not on the coast it is a little more hilly.

Here is the first email we received

Hey hey. That sounds pretty crazy. Ok so lots of questions so I'll just answer those. 

My Comp is Elder Mashava, he's from Zimbabwe, He's been out for 7 months and we have a lot of differences but thats ok. 

Serving in Marionhill, climate is pretty warm, humid, rained a little but mostly hot. 

I use my ipod in the car, which I had to drive the second I got to Durban so that was freaky, everyone here is maniacs so I sorta fit in minus the wrong side of the road. A day consists of studying and training till 11, then going out and teaching people in set appointments, there's almost no tracting because we work strictly with the members pretty much. The branch we are serving just broke an attendance record this last week of 125 the week before it was 52, so that was pretty cool. 

The spirit has taught many many people already and has 2 baptisms on July 26th, that we will be performing. 

My area consists almost entirely of Zulu so I stick out quite nicely, and when we begin teaching I always lead so I can kickstart the english but however hard I try they go back to zulu which is extremely difficult to experience because then I have no idea what the freak is going on and then I start counting how many bricks are on their walls. 

Uh, my life is a funny story sooooo... But my first Sunday we were at church and the branch president didn't introuduce me but then someone asked me to help with the sacrament so after I finished with it someone got up to the stand and in zulu said something to the effect of ' thanks for this random white kid who helped with the sacrament'' then it was later explained that I was a missionary that had just been transferred in. 

UH well for the most part we don't study scriptures for ourselves we do it for the investigators, even in personal study, so I mean I read lots but they all pertain to the same lessons, but I like Alma chapter 40. It's been a good one in teaching people.

Yeah all in all its been a pretty good week, pretty fun, very hard. But lots of love from your favorite Greenie.

Love, 

        Elder Michelson