Wednesday, December 29, 2010

1 Year Today...

Wow how time flies! Crazy. Since Elder Rigby left one year ago today I thought it would be fun to post some pictures. Enjoy. (click on the pictures to make them bigger)










News From Africa

Elder Watson's son lives in Hibbard and they forwarded this email to us.
"Elder Rigby is one you can claim and be proud to have from Rexburg - He is doing well and has the respect of his Mission President." (Elder and Sister Watson – area authorities in South Africa)

Monday, December 27, 2010

Merry Christmas!

Dear Family and Friends,

HEY! haha it was so much fun talking to all of you! :) i loved it very much. Christmas was so much better than i thought it was going to be. I am truly blessed to be here in Port Alfred with the sweetest couple in the mission they really do love the missionaries and the people. Elder O'Dell is a very emotional person. He loves the Christmas season and every time he bears his testimony he cries. Its heartwarming :) They are so good to us. they gave us all golf shirts so we can go golfing on new years day and play 18 holes at the Port Royal Golf Course, which is a really nice course. Elder O'Dell paid for all 4 of us and even renting a cart. So i can't be more thankful than that. they are the best! We had a good brai (BBQ) in the afternoon and had 4 different kinds of meat haha south African style :)..we just had fun playing cards and enjoying being together. New Years will be fun too i hope haha. we can't work at all on new years since everyone will be drunk and won't be thinking straight so we are going to go play golf haha. :)

We really don't have any investigators that are too serious at the moment. The Hola family , family of 4, have a baptismal date for he 15 of January but i don't think they will make it, they haven't been coming to church and haven't been reading. we have barely seen them this month. been busy with their son in the "Bush" guess. thats crazy stuff! yo!... another investigator is Luleka. She is an interesting one....she has seen missionaries before and has even gone to church a few times when it was near the township but now that it moved she hasn't had the urge to go. so its been a few years. She just lives with her little girl in this shack and really doesn't know much. she says that she is going through a really ruff time in her life and she wanted to know why God is letting it all happen to her. We taught her the first half of the plan of Salvation, it was a difficult one to teach to her, she zones out a lot so we ask a lot of questions so shes "there" its going slowly.

We have a part member family that we are really focusing on. the daughter Delsie, is a member but her mother and 3 other half sisters are not so we are striving to get them all baptized. also going slowly. they had concerns about the BofM so we had a nice lesson on that this past week and then we started teaching one of Shadae's (sister) friends Jillian. She really wasn't that interested at first but said last night that she will start reading the Book of Mormon so hopefully things will work out there! all of them need to come to church! haha

Well I love you all :) Have a good week!

YOUR MISSIONARY,
Elder Robert S Rigby SACTM

Monday, December 20, 2010

Christmas is Coming

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings from hot south Africa haha....yes it is very hot! like having Christmas in July for me sheesh haha. NO snow or cold, which i don't mind not having the cold hehe but i do love the snow! :) So it was a good week. I got transferred to the other area in Port Alfred haha so i'm now working in the township with Elder Lebala. He is so funny! i love him. haha Its like we aren't even companions cause we have been living in the same place for the past 6 weeks. its great! :) I'm doing fabulous though i love having people to teach and that will listen, the only problem is that they don't come to church like they should....but i do what i can do!

So the 2 new Elders in the District are Elder Moorcroft from Joburg and his greenie Elder Bangerter from Centerville, Utah. they are both cool missionaries. Elder Moorcroft is the DL and i am finishing training Elder Lebala so you will be getting a letter about that from the Office. This transfer is going to be very joyful haha! Christmas with the O'Dells and i get to Call home!!! :) :) I'm excited! hehe

Well it is the Christmas season. Even tho it doesn't feel like it at all cause there aren't any decorations up like there is back home. We did put up a Christmas tree last night at the O'Dells and decorated with lights and balls and tinsel :) so it does make things a little better hehe. I got a nice poem from President and Sister Probst in my email today. I'll attach it to the email so you can read it :) it cool, president wrote it i think.

I know my Jesus Christ is my Savior and redeemer and that this is the special time of the year that we celebrate his birth. Heavenly Father truly does love each and every one of us, He sacrificed His only Begotten Son for us. I don't know where i would be without my older brother, Jesus Christ, in my life. I definitely wouldn't be on a mission in South Africa that for sure. I truly am grateful for the time i have to serve as his missionary here in this beautiful part of the world that He created for us. One day i hope and pray that i can go back into his presence and live there with my family. I love you guys!! i miss you and am thinking of you, not too much tho haha. and yes dad, i am striving to stay focused! :) don't worry. i hope and pray that Heavenly Father is helping me, in fact i know He is.... I wouldn't rather be anywhere else in the world then on a mission. I am needed here. i need this and the people i teach need me. its by the Lords servants that they come into the fold of Christ. The Missionaries do the finding and teaching and the Spirit converts people. I have felt of the spirit so much this past year and i am grateful for the experiences i have had. they have been learning ones! I know why i am here. To teach the Gospel and increase my own testimony. the people i see every day truly love us as we teach them about Jesus Christ even tho some of them don't realize it, and reject it. they wouldn't be on earth if they didn't accept the plan of Heavenly Father so they accepted it but still have their agency. dang agency haha.

So last Monday we went to the game reserve in bathhurst. i got to pet a giraffe! haha you don't get to do that every day back in Idaho! it was cool. also saw some zebras and wildebeest and springbok. it was fun!

Well i don't know what else to say. Glad everyone is doing well! Well i love you all and am excited to talk to you all on Christmas! have a great week!

LOVE YOUR SON,
Elder Robert S Rigby (SACTM)

Monday, December 13, 2010

Yebo!

Dear Family and Friends,

Yebo!! :) how we all doing in the Freezing snowing part of the world? hehe i'm doing good good good gooooddd!! hehe :) SO anyways! I have not really seen any south African recipes. i've tried a few such as pop and tribe and the other interesting meals that us Americans wouldn't normally eat, such as the intestines and head. but yeah haven't had that for a while now since i'm in a white area. Oh and milktart is really good by the way :). Sister Dell, sister in the branch made us a custard dish thingy with bread and jam. it was yummy it was bread with jam on it then she poured custard on it and warmed it up. it was quite nice hehe. you know me and deserts haha i love them!!!. i even make muffins now that i can eat in the boarding at night before bed, like i always had my sweets back home, nope i haven't changed there haha.

ok zone conference, it was really good. We traveled to east London early Tuesday morning left about 6:15am and drove 2 hours well an hour and a half. and were there early :) haha took a big 3 zone, East London, Mdantsane and Queenstown zone picture with pres and Elder and sister Watson and then had the meeting. Elder Watson talked to us about holding on to our recent converts and forming a auxiliary circle around them that they can't get out of. it was cool. Sister Watson spoke to us about the articles of Faith and how each and everyone of them has doctrine in them and so we can use them to teach with quite easily. it was cool she had Elder Austin, AP, mark down on the board how many doctrines are in the Articles of faith. and there were 72 at least it was interesting. and then president spoke about the importance of the holiday season and how we can continue to work and find those that need to more about the Savior, perfect time for it too, its what Christmas is all about. yes, many people leave but there are lots that come in too so we can teach the holiday comers.

the next day, Wednesday, we again drove to east London for the 3 zone Christmas activity. we first watched a movie called "gifted hands" its about a brain surgeon who in his first years in his life he wasn't very smart and then he put his mind to his studies and now he is the best brain surgeon in the world and now is head of Johns Hopkins Hospital. it was really good. has a really good message, if we put our mind to it we can accomplish anything. its all up in our head. :) We then had a gift exchange, well candy bar exchange and had pizza for lunch and then sang hymns for the remainder of the activity and focused on the meaning of Christmas. it was so much fun singing all of those hymns. the Spirit was so strong and then later on Sister Probst thanked us for our singing and the Spirit we brought. it was very good. made me kinda home sick, i miss singing with my dad... made me think of how i was 12 when i started singing with him and now Jared is now starting to sing. So Jared, keep it up and take my place for a while :) then we came back to Port Alfred.

The rest of the week: We did some service on Thursday morning in the new chapel. We hung up all the new blinds and white boards. it was fun! it really looks like a chapel now haha. Then Friday we had district meeting and then worked. We had a good few lessons with some families. Grant and his Girl Friend Jade it was fun teaching them. they are interested but Grant says that the ocean is his church, he likes surfing and then Jade belongs to the grace of god church or whatever its called. Grant is a construction worker and Jade works at a furniture store. Jade was more imputive than Grant but its alright, grant kinda zoned in and out of the discussion haha it was funny. he randomly asks us if we know his neighbors haha it was funny. the other family, the Van Startons weren't that excited once we got into the Restoration part. the wife really didn't believe that at all. So we left them to pray about it and then we will check on them next week. i hope.

I gave a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. it was good, or so i was told afterward. I spoke about how we can receive happiness by applying the principles of the gospel into our life. mainly lesson 3 in PMG haha. So i guess it was good. Had a Baptism on Saturday for the other elders investigator Sister Gloria can't spell her Xhosa name. she was really excited to be baptized it was great.

Well i know its been a tuff transfer and its been fun at the same time! Transfers are this coming Thursday so i think i'm staying here but only the Lord knows that! Well i love you guys so much! have a gooder week and stay close to the lord! Cheers!

your missionary,
Elder Robert S Rigby

Monday, December 6, 2010

Never Alone

Dear Family and Friends,

I loved the email mom haha thanks long ones are nice so i will try and do my best now to do the same! :) week- lots of tracting with little success. Things just aren't happening here in town. My comp and i are getting very tired of it too! People just don't like what we have to share about the Restoration of the Gospel. They think that if they go to church and believe then they are "saved" its common to get that response from people.

So glad to hear that my SD card got there safely! :) thats a relief haha i worry so much when i put that thing in the post box wondering if it'll get to you. But it did so we're all good! We're good! hehe. I knew you would enjoy the pictures and videos i had too much fun with some of them, as you have now found out haha. Well things are good other wise. i know why i am here! to preach the gospel and to strengthen my own testimony. One thing that Elder Holland said when he was in Capetown last month, "i can only promise one convert and that is YOU" i thought that was very profound and that it makes a lot of sense and its definitely true! I am becoming more converted as i do the lords work with all of my heart. I am trying my best to do it. some days are really hard tho, people don't let us in, they rebuke us and tell us we've been deceived and so forth yeah I'll tell that story....

So we had an appointment with a wonderful Afrikaners family. The father was very nice and let us in, we had previously met with the mother and the son but not the father. So it was a bit of a shock at first for him. So we introduced ourselves and told him that we had spoken to his wife and so forth and so he let us in. we sat down all around the table with the family and started to teach the restoration. it went really well at first...but then we got to the part about prophets and oh my goodness, they didn't like the fact that we still need prophets today. So it pretty much ended up in a argument that i didn't want to start. at one time we said that the bible has been interpreted in so many ways, and then the dad shuts his bible and says "well if you don't believe in the bible then you are not welcome in my home" i was so scared at the moment i didn't know what to say. my comp just restates his reply saying we do believe in it and so forth but we believe that prophets are there for us to interpret it and we need to follow them. well it didn't get anywhere. So i bore my testimony on what i know to be true and we left with that. they commemorated on what we were doing and that they felt sorry for us cause they claim that we have been deceived by the devil. Yo my faith was tried in that lesson. So after we got back into the car we drove to our next appointment and i felt the impression to pray, so i told my comp and we prayed together, i said it and as i was praying....i felt the Spirit so strong.... that i KNOW, that i haven't been deceived and that i am doing the work of the Lord. I love my Heavenly Father and know that He loves me! I know He is guiding me and looking after me as long as i am doing what He wants me to do. My comp also felt of the spirit. I am where i need to be. We didn't get anywhere in the lesson but we told them the truth and what we know to be true.

So my faith is definitely being tried and tested these 2 years and i know i can do this! I have the power of God on my side! I know this gospel is true! I know the Book of Mormon is true and contains the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I know i have the power of God the priesthood and can use it to bless people around me and to help in my work.

The rest of the week was just tracting and finding. we have been joking around and watching the ocean when we have the chance. Its Chuker fishing season (aka squid) so we see lots of Chucker boats along the shore. they fish all day long and all night. and its really good money R45 for one kilo thats crazy haha. they all have big bright lights on them at night to draw the squid to them so one night we were wondering what all the lights were on the ocean. and so we asked someone and they told us chucker boats. we are like what? haha squid boats. they come in to the rivers and lay their eggs and then go back into the ocean and die. its like a bee, once they sting they die. so same with squid. they lay eggs and then they die. so its good fishing for them now as they are going back out to sea. it was cool.

Well we have zone conference this week in east london and then we have our Christmas thingy the next day together with 2 other zones. i'm excited to see my old companions and missionary friends :) So we get to drive early in the morning to east london and then come back that afternoon and then go back again the next morning.

I got my Christmas package!! :) and the letters! THANK YOU so much! haha i loved it and my comp enjoyed his presents too, yes we spoiled it and opened it haha. My comp says you are the best haha

Well have a wonderful week! i love you all and i am having fun serving the Lord in south africa! thanks for your love support! talk to ya all next week! HAVE FUN, BE GOOD AND WHAT?
don't do anything i wouldn't do. hehe love you!
your missionary
Elder Robert S Rigby (CTM)