Way to go Red Devils!

We had another baptism this week. Boipuso Mogale was baptized. She was brought to church by a friend, and wanting to make a change and make her life meaningful this year, and she chose the right way to do it. She is great. She was so excited to be baptized. She has such a strong and sincere testimony. We started teaching her beginning of this year, and she progressed so easily, and was more than ready to be baptized yesterday. One of those "golden" investigators as people call them. But once again she proved to me, that we do nothing as missionaries, and the investigator who let the Spirit teach them, and recieves that witness for themselves are the ones ready to make the commitment. With very little help of the missionaries. I wish all investigators were like that, but unfortunately most are stubborn and hard hearted. So, I am grateful when the ones like Boipuso come around. It is just wonderful to see. So, that was the highlight of the week. But another wonderful highlight of my week, which has kind of distracted me ALL week and held me in suspense, was whether or not my basketball team, the Springville Red Devils won the state title, and I was so happy to find out this morning through my sister, that they DID!!!! So, I just want to say congratulations to all of my Red Devils!! I am so proud of you! I wish I could be there to celebrate your hard work with you, but nevertheless, know that i am celebrating over here in Africa, and that I am very proud of each one of you! so congratulations!! You guys earned it! RED DEVIL PRIDE! and Thank you for letting me be a part of your program!

Live Up To YourPotential

So, I am sitting here trying to remember something great that happened this past week that I could share with you. But I can't think of anything out of the ordinary. It was a good week. We worked hard, and we were blessed for it. We have a good teaching pool, and we get to meet lots of great people daily. Such is the wonderful life of a missionary. But actually one thing I focused on this week that really made it a good week was trying to become more childlike in my service as a missionary. Not childish, but child like. I really focused on becoming more like the Savior in my thoughts, words, and actions. Towards everybody. It really made a difference. The week went well, and we met lots of great people. Focusing on becoming more trusting in the Spirit, as a child trusts their parents, really is something. It is not easy at times, but if I just trust the Lord to lead me in this work, guess what? Things go better, and it is a lot more enjoyable. Imagine that? Something I have always heard but never really understood until mission is that we need to be independently dependent on the Savior. Does that make sense? We are in charge of our salvation, completely, independently, but there is absolutely no way to gain salvations without the Savior. I think, or what I have learned is that to be totally independent and free and in charge of our lives we need to be totally 100% dependent on the Savior, and His gospel, and His teachings. Without Him we are nothing. Literally nothing. But with Him we can become everything, even Gods and Godesses. Well, anyway, those have just been some of the thoughts floating around my head this week as I have been striving to become more childlike in my service. So do something for me, think of a child and all the ways they really trust and dependent on their parents, and then try to emulate that in your dependence on the Savior. It will make a difference. Try it. The Lord will bless you for it. This life is much easier if we have divine help along the way. Well, hope that helps some of you out there. Thanks for your prayers. Have a great week. Remember who you really are, and live up to that potential.

Truly Committed

This week we had a young woman, named Tshwanelo Ratsatsi get baptized. She has been coming to church for about a year now, and she was finally ready to be baptized. :) she was very excited. She was so happy afterwards. She is a great young girl. She lives far from the church, so in order to make it to church on Sunday she saves the little money her father gives her for transport to school, and walks to school, which is also very far so she can make it to church on Sunday! She sacrifices so much to make it to church. I know the Lord will bless her for that. I was excied to see her baptized. It was a great feeling. For the rest of the week, it was HOT! I know i've said it before, but this week was extremely hot. I think it is the hottest it has been since i've been here! I'm not sure the temperature, but trust me, it was HOT! We were just sitting in lessons, in the shade, nonetheless, and sweat was dripping down my legs, uncrossed, just dripping. it was nice, just kidding, it was miserable, but while you are teaching lessons, you really don't realize how hot, it is, but once you are done teaching you realize that it is so hot, and wonder why you are not in the air conditioned apartment. But then you teach another lesson and remember why you decided to leave the apartment, teching the gospel is worth it.
Ok, so update on the book of Mormon from Elder Watson. We did give it away this week. It was a powerful lesson. We gave it to the family that first popped into my mind when he was giving away the book of mormon. The Kgosietsile family. The rra is trying to quit smoking, and is doing well, the mma just broke her leg, and is at home for two weeks, and they have two daughter in school. WE jsut felt like this was family that needs this book of mormon because they are each struggling with different things, and the Book of Mormon will help them. they really appreciated and were blown away by the testimony of young eight year old April. the spirit was very strong as we shared her testimony and ours with them about the book of mormon! The mma is very big into religion, but she has come to realize that the bible is incomplete, so this was perfect because the book of mormon fills in those gaps...she is excited to read it, as is the rra, for he believes and has the faith that this will help him to quite smoking. He said he would take it everywhere with him and when he has a temptation he will read from it! so, it is looking good so far. they just have to read it, and pray about it, and then come to church. i am glad we gave it to this wonderful family. i pray and hope you will continue to pray that this book will change the lives of this family. They are a special family, and i love them very much, and want the best for them. One more thing about this family. Kgosie, in setswana means royalty, and so this rra is the leader of his tribe, and he will be able to influence his whole tribe as he becomes converted to the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
I hope you all have a great week, thanks for reading, and thanks for your prayers. Love ya all. Oh, and way to go springville, keep it up, you have lots of fan over here in Botswana as well, I keep telling everyone about my team and how well they are doing! So keep up the good work.

Sorry it's late this week

So this week was a little more exciting than last week. As far as the Jo'burg mission news, there are great changes. Like I told you last week, two zones of our mission are going to now be in the Durban mission, which is great, and with the changes, there is going to be another zone in Botswana! Two zones in Botswana now! With right around 40 missionaries in the country! The changes I have seen in Botswana since I have been here have been miraculous. I have seen three new areas open and the number of missionaries in Bots doubled!!!!! It is very exciting for this little country of just over a million citizens!! With two zones and so many missions in the country I am hoping to see Botswana becomes a district, if not a stake before I leave. That would be amazing, and the greatest miracle of all. Right now, Bots is part of a Johannesburg stake, and they only get to see the stake president like every three months or so! It would just be wonderful for these saints to have local leadership! That is our goal, is to have bots be a stake in less than two years, and so far, it looks like our prayers will be answered. I talked to Elder Watson about it at dinner and he said it was close. So, it is close, and I can't wait for that to happen.
As far as our personal missionary work goes, it is great. My mom asked me this week if we had given away the Elder Watson Book of Mormon yet, and we are prayerfully planning to give it away this week to a wonderful family. The Kgosietsile family is their name. They have two daughters. The Rra (father) works very closely with the president here, President Khama, and the Mma (mother) is an accountant. The rra is trying to quit smoking, and is doing very well. The mma is very strong in her church, but this week she broke her leg, she will not be going to work for two weeks, and we went and sang hymns with her the other day, and both sister odongo and I feel this family may be the one that needs the Book of Mormon with the testimony of the eight year old. I feel it would greatly help both the mma and rra to accept this gospel. So, pray for that to happen please. And I will keep you updated on how that goes, and if the Book of Mormon will help to convert this wonderful family. So that is the news on that.Thanks for your prayers in my behalf, they are greatly appreciated. This work would not move forward without prayers. So, we all thank you here in Botswana.

No email from Sister Barber

this week.....but I did get a link to her Mission President's website where there are lots of pictures of the mission and some of Sister Barber. To check it out go to:

http://www.johannesburgmission.googlepages.com/

Enjoy! Until Next Week -

Mission Tour

This week was GREAT! We had mission tour this week. Which is basically a zone conference except a general authority presides. We had Elder Watson who is in the area presidency and 1st quorum of the twelve with us. Monday night the sisters got to go do dinner with President and sister Poulsen, and Elder and sister Watson. It was fun. I got to sit right across the table from Elder and Sister Watson, so I spent Monday evening chatting it up with a general authority. Haha...It was fun. He is pretty funny. Then tuesday was the conference with him, which was also amazing. At one point he said he had a "test" for one companionship. He took out a book of mormon and said this copy was special. His eight year old granddaughter who had just recently been baptized had written her testimony in it, and he wanted one companionship to take it and give it to a family that would then be baptized. My companion and I quickly volunteered for the "test". But now I am a little worried about finding the right family for this Book of Mormon. So, if you want to pray for my companion and I to find the family that that Book of Mormon is supposed to belong to, we would greatly appreciate it. We know that Book of Mormon is meant to convert a whole family. Now we just need to find them,a nd we need your prayers to help. So thank you for that. Also this week we had two baptisms. Gomolemo Bantshang was baptized in the family ward. He is 14, and his mom is a member. He is a very bright 14 year old, kind of how I imagine Joseph Smith was at that age. While bearing his testimony he said he was hesitant about being baptized for quite a while because he thought he had to know everything, but then he decided that that was not faith. He was very happy to be baptized, and we were happy his father came! The other baptism we had was in the Singles ward. His name is Thuto Motshwarapitse, yeah try and say that one :) He has been coming to church since he was 12, for like 10 years now, off and on. His older brother used to bring him, but now his older brother his less active, but Thuto finally decided he was ready for the commitment. It was great to see him make that covenant. He was also really happy. It was great. Then yesterday we also had a fireside for the ward. It was wonderful. We have been really concerned about the unity in the ward, so the ward mission leader got us a fireside, and it was great! Everyone really enjoyed it, and we had a great turn out! We were expecting no more than 30 families, because we were going to give each family a BoM to give to someone, but the BoMs ran out before every family got one! It was great! We based our fireside off of President Hickley's talk "Feed my Sheep". You havn't read that talk, you should. It is very good. It says how every member needs a friend, a calling, and nourishment. So that is what we talked about, and everyone seemed to really enjoy it, and the bishop was really pleased and asked if we could do a follow up fireside ina couple weeks. So, that is good progression. This really should help the ward, which is what we have been praying for. So this week was great. And I am looking forward to another great week. Thanks for reading, and thanks for your prayers. We hope to find that family that needs Elder Watson's Book of Mormon very soon!!! I'll keep you updated.

It's up to you....

The first week in my new area was successful. It was great actually. I miss my old area like crazy, but I beginning to already love this new area. We are teaching great people. We also met a lot of great families this week. I love teaching families. The best lessons are always when we are teaching families and both the mma and rra (mother and father) are interested and feel the spirit. This week I was working on having the right attitude when it comes to the work. I get frustrated sometimes when it is like over 100’ outside and people don’t keep their appointments with us, and our back up plans aren’t home either. It is hot, and I get a little frustrated trying to think of what to do. So this week I decided to change my attitude no matter how hot it was. And the results were amazing. I decided when that happens to turn it over to the Lord because there must be someone He wants me to meet, or something He wants me to do. So whenever that happened this week we would pray and ask God where we needed to go, and we always find someone who needed to hear our message. There was one day, I believe it was Wednesday we only had 2 appointments scheduled all day, which meant a long day in the sun, but it was a great day because we kept the right attitudes and looked for the opportunities that were put in our path, and we ended up teaching some great people who really needed our help. Then on Thursday we had a full day of appointments scheduled, one lesson every hour all day, but guess what…not a single one of those people were home! Should be frustrating, right? But it wasn’t because we met some people who really really needed to hear the message we were sharing. So it ended being a wonderful day. It really all comes down to our attitude. We can be positive and look for the good in every situation, and allow the Spirit to lead us, or we can get frustrated and annoyed, and not be as productive all day. I am choosing to be productive and to follow the Spirit, and to find the good in every situation. That is my choice. I hope all of you will choose the same. Know that God has a reason for everything. It is just up to you to turn to Him and allow Him to show you that reason, or you can complain and miss the opportunities that are being presented to you. Well, those are my thoughts this week. I know without any doubts that Heavenly Father is aware of us, and is willing to lead us in this journey through life. We just have to allow him to. I hope you all CHOOSE to have a great week this week, no matter what.