Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Drum Roll Please.....Transfers!

Dearest family and friends,

Transfer news came last night. Yes I'm leaving Margate. Any guesses? Although it's probably hard to guess a city in South Africa when most of you don't even know where South Africa is located on a map haha. Just kidding. So my new area actually is not in South Africa. No I'm not being moved to China or Europe... It's either Swaziland or Lesotho. So guess between those two...

Okay I'll just say it already, I'm being moved to Lesotho.

Let me save you the time of having to go to Google and research where the heck that is located! Haha. Lesotho is a little country in the middle of South Africa, it's on the outer edge of our mission boundaries. I'm in for a really LONG bus ride tomorrow. I guess President just wants to keep me in the "outer darkness" of the mission boundaries haha. Lesotho is an extremely poor area, they speak a completely different language from zulu (right as I'm getting to know zulu!) and they use a different currency. That's about all I know about this little country. My new companion is going to be Elder Kutley. I don't know where he is from yet (the name is African), I think he is new on mission from what I've heard. They drive buckeys (basically like trucks) in Lesotho because there are pretty much no paved roads. The whole mission is a driving mission for those that are wondering, there are only a couple of walking areas in the Durban mission.

Right now I'm super excited to move on past Margate but at the same time I'm going to really miss people here! Margate has been an amazing experience, it's a pretty tough area but the Lord has blessed us with success in my limited time here. It just goes to show that if you work hard and have faith in the Lord, all things are made possible. I really love our mission equation: Hard work + Faith + Obedience = Miracles. So true and I have seen it come to fruition! I'll go say bye to everyone today and it will definitely be tough. I'm not sure how most missions are, but here in the Durban mission you typically stay 4 1/2 to 6 months in an area. Almost every missionary here serves in between 4 to 5 areas for the 2 years. It's likely I'll be in Lesotho for 6 months since I was only in Margate for 4 1/2 but obviously anything can happen.

Real quick from this past week. It finally stopped raining these past few days! But man oh man was it hot yesterday, really the first hot day I've experienced here in SA. We challenged M_____, M_____ and L_______ to baptism this past week and they accepted! I can't believe the people we have found here in Margate. It's amazing to see that this branch only had about 4 baptisms in the past 4 years and we are on track for 7 or more in just the past 5 months since I've been here. F_____ is also scheduled to be baptized in beginning of December, along with Lw______

We had another amazing lesson with Ma E______ and I'm really going to miss her. She said that she feels like she is "about to graduate from lessons" i.e. she is getting close to baptism. She says she has learned so much from us teaching her and that her mind has been "opened." She was really sad to see me go and I hope I'll still be on mission when she is baptized. Such an awesome lady! I gave her a paper entitled "The 17 points of the True Church" which includes a little story. If you haven't had the chance to see that story, look it up! She really enjoyed it and she said it strengthened her faith in the direction she is taking with us.

I heard all about the election this past week. People here love Obama, I have to hold my tongue a lot. Life moves on and I won't say anymore with regards to that subject. Another quick story real quick that was kind of funny. The other day we accidentally left one of our lights on inside our apartment with all of our windows opened. Well since it wasn't raining that day and it's been warming up, these bugs that are attracted to light came all inside our apartment! There were hundreds of them, I'm not sure what they are called. They are almost like caterpillars but with wings, that's about how big they are. It took along time to clean up our apartment and I had to stomp on a lot of those things! Well we learn from our mistakes. If we aren't making mistakes then we aren't doing!

Best of wishes from Margate for the last time. Next week I'll be in Lesotho!

Love you all,
Elder Summers

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