Farm Visit!

Dear Family and Friends,
Hallo!! it was a busy week, we were very fruitful in the vineyard of milnerton this past week i think. we got some new people to teach. they mostly are the ones that came from referrals of other missionaries and a few from Bro Teddy, our ward mission leader. I apologize that you woke up yesterday with no email. i was a little pre occupied yesterday out at the Mayburgs farm!!! :) it was so fun to be out there in the country. South Africa is very beautiful once you get out the cities. wow! haha We drove to Malmsbury about 60Ks our of milnerton. and then we met up with Peirt and His Wife Caroline and 3 kids. and rode out with them about 35more kilometers. quite the drive out there but oh it was fun! :) reminded me of home. I loved it. We had a brai and then Peirt took us out on a farm drive to see all of their farm. about 700 acres. pretty big. all dry farmed wheat. its really green now. so in a few months it'll be yellow and harvest will be around the corner. On the drive out there we saw lots of Canola farms as well and vineyards of grapes and fruit trees. really pretty, yes i took pictures. its probably been the most enjoyable pday so far haha. so yeah thats what we did yesterday for pday.

Sunday we had 5 investigators at church, Jacob and Pumla only stayed for sacrament meeting and then had to leave to go see family, guess they had a death in the family or something. and then we had Eugene and Anele and his friend Ayanda. Church was nice, the talks were on hope and the Book of Mormon. Gospel principles was on work and personal responsibility, bro Teddy taught the class. it was good. and then priesthood was on Eternal marriage. Got me even more excited to go back to the temple. Then the afternoon we went to the Beattys to have lunch, we had tacos! and they were really good, sis Beatty makes all of their food from scratch. Shes a trooper. they hardly eat meat in their home tho, they eat alot of raw food, veggies, fruits and nuts, the taco meat was even made from walnuts and still tasted the same. she healed herself of breast cancer 2 years ago from just eating the right food! i thought that was a miracle... did you know that green spinach salad is really good if you blend it all up and add a few more things to it? it tastes like a smoothie and is a smoothie! its incredible, i never thought i would like spinach till i came here.! they are Americans originally from Florida i think well thats where they lived before they came here. Bro beatty works for a nuclear energy power plant in melkbostrand. bout 30ks out of milnerton. they have a really nice house out there. we really enjoyed being in their home. Then that night we went to see the Mbambus briefly they are doing good. J.J. and Candida didn't make it to Church tho. :( guess they woke up late and Bro Levus wasn't going to wait for them so he left without them and he was there early! it was cool to see him there on time. but then he also left after sacrament meeting to go sort out something. but they are doing good.

Jacob and Pumla are still scheduled to get baptized on the 28th so i hope they still progress and make it to church the next few weeks and they keep their appointments. they haven't been keeping them this past week. we still need to go over some things with pumla, and we need to have their interviews this saturday. I hope we can meet with them every day until they are baptized. daily contact!! ha. Pumla was really happy that i got her a Xhosa Book of Mormon, she understands much better now and has been reading. jacob is ready.

Eugene is awesome haha. i love how he prays. on wednesday last week he opened up with prayer and he said "thank you for this awesome day" it was funny but thats how he is. hes a colored! he really has been reading alot out of the scriptures. We hope to even move his BD up a few weeks if he can abstain from his addictions. he just got work at spur so thats good for him, i hope it doesn't interfere with his Sunday tho. he needs to be at church every Sunday.

We found some new potential priesthood! John and Simon. John is originally from Burundi and has been here almost 2 and a half years and then Simon is from Zimbabwe been here about the same. they work for this guy that make all the props for movies. so they have a lot of old stuff in their house and are in charge of looking after it. pretty cool stuff there. they have a moose sign that my comp wants to buy from them haha. you don't have moose in south africa haha. we thought that was funny. we taught them the Restoration and about the Book of Mormon and they were very receptive to it. they want to get baptized, English is a bit of a problem tho but we can manage around that for now. good guys tho very humble.

the Hill family (LA) are doing good, haven't made it to church yet but we know they have a testimony of the gospel and of the restoration. We have made serious progress with them and getting them to open up and tell us how they feel. they just need to let go of whatever is keeping them from going to church and they would be a great strength to the ward. Peirt was even asking about bro hill last night when we were driving back to Malmsbury, so members do care about one another. i just hope the unity of the ward will get better and home teaching will improve.

haven't eatin anything unique other than the tacos that sis Beatty fed us on sunday. they were really good tho!. and we had ice cream that she made with coconuts they even make their own cheese, without milk!!! i was surprised! kinda offended coming from growing up on a dairy farm... what do you think about that dad?? cheese without milk that tastes the same. no dairy in the beattys diet. it shocked me!!

Well that was the week for you! I am glad everyone is doing better, send my love to grandpa and everyone else.

well i love you all and hope you have a fantabulous week in Idaho! :) LOVES!
your missionary,
Elder Robert S Rigby SACTM