Testimony Touches

dear Family and Friends,

:) hiya! hehe well its been a good week. we have worked hard but smart in the vineyard of milnerton. we've gotten some more rain this past week. it rained all day yesterday so church attendance wasn't the best. but we still had a good turn out of members and we had 3 investigators there. Jacob and Phumla and then Eugene. So that was all for us. so many commit to come but then don't show up. We followed up yesterday afternoon on a few of them, Monica and Shadrik said they didn't know where our number was or the church address so they couldn't call if they got lost so they didn't even bother leaving their home. so it was a shame for them. gave them a copy of the Book of Mormon to start reading until we go again on tuesday evening. nice congo people. really don't have that much of a religious background so we basically had to start from the very beginning about God and Jesus Christ and what our duty is. and how we are so important to them and following the Savior. Good potential.

well first of all we have a 3rd companion again. Elder Nkala from Zimbabwe. He just came down from Nam on thursday evening. His visa expired as well as the other 2 missionaries that were up there, yes there were only 3 elders up in nam where there are supposed to be 10. the Namibian government isn't approving our visas and not extending them. so no missionaries are up there now. :( its very sad. 2 awesome mission branches and no missionaries to help. so i guess as elder Nkala told me that they have called a few branch missionaries to be full time to continue to teach the investigators that the elders were progressing with. but its still not "full time" its a shame that Satan uses anything he can get his hands on to make the work of our father be in the pits. but we can also look at it this way, what does the Lord have in mind for the missionaries in sactm?? maybe there is another plan in store for the ones that were called up there but haven't made it.

On the other side of things! Jacob and Phumla passed their interview on saturday!! YAY!!! haha i'm so happy for them. 2 more baptisms coming up next sunday! haha. they were/are really excited. you should have seen the smile on phumlas face when she was done with the interview. so good for them! I also did 3 other interviews in the district on saturday. 2 for the bellville elders and then 1 for panaroama, ZLs. all passed so there are gunna be lots of baptisms in the district next sunday. i actually think i'm doing 2 more on exchanges tomorrow in bellville.

Eugene is doing really good! he came to church yesterday as i stated earlier. He is just so committed to his baptism date that he wants nothing to get in the way of it. we taught him the law of chastity and the word of wisdom this past week. we came to know that he also smokes so its gunna be another battle for him to quit smoking. he smokes like 4-5 a day. so its not too bad but then he told us that since he has been doing the training at work he didn't have the chance to go out and have a smoke so it'll be a bit easier for him to quit. we told him that prayer and continuing reading the scriptures is his best source of help. so i don't think he will have a problem. Pray for him.

Taylor didn't make it to church yesterday, he had a death in the family yesterday morning so he was tied up with that. he really wanted to come though. we gave him a baptismal date for the 16 October. he is a really nice guy who met the missionaries when he was in London. he met with a few times, read the Book of Mormon and went to church. On friday night we watched the restoration dvd to review the restoration with him, since he had already heard it in London. So he remembered everything and KNOWS its true! :) i was shocked haha a golden investigator. he feels that he has done some bad things in his life and wants to change. he definitely wants to get baptized. so we'll work with him closely. single guy 26 lives in an apartment with another guy. he really isn't involved in the lessons yet. but taylor does volunteer counseling for ex- drug addicts. which is pretty cool. he helps a bunch of people ages 19-25. and does that basically 24-7 and then also works monday- friday as something, oh i can't remember. sorry. haha. anyway we are really excited about taylor. We met him as we were driving down the street in Maitland and then all of the sudden he waves us down, so we stop and roll my window down to talk to him and he asks us if were from the church and then we saw our name tags and knew we were and then he told us he met us in london and so forth. pretty cool tho. If we hadn't been in that place at that time we probably wouldn't have found him.

thats basically the main people that we saw this past week. it was a gooder week. lots of appointments and good people to teach and share the gospel with. yesterday at church sacrament meeting was nice, had a the Mthembus baby blessing, then elder Nkala shared his testimony and then the man that gave the blessing shared his testimony and then bishop shared a few things on lifting others up and helping them out of tuff situations. and then we had a high council man speak on home teaching. it was good. Gospel principles was on service and then priesthood was on the law of chastity taught by bro Mayburg. he does a really good job at teaching priesthood. they were even on time yesterday :) i really had a fun time out at their place last week. i liked your comment mom. its definitely true in my case haha i love the country!...

I love you all and am so grateful for you love and support to me and even the people i teach. I love this work and i know it brings happiness to those who share their testimonies with others. I know God loves us and wants us to be happy. I know i am where i need to be. these people need Elder Rigby, my testimony. we had a lesson yesterday that ended up in an almost bible bash with Justin and Nelly. they don't believe that we existed in the pre mortal life and that God and Jesus are the same being so we used scriptures to explain but in the end the just didn't want to be wrong. So i ended the almost bash with saying that we came here to share what we know to be true and that God sent us here, that we didn't come here to argue or bible bash. but to lift you higher than you already are. and i shared my testimony of the Godhead and of the restoration and then we left with a prayer. So i know that my testimony is what touches the hearts of others. I KNOW its True!! i cannot deny it. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer, Amen.

love your son, brother and missionary,
Elder Robert S Rigby (SACTM)