Monday, December 12, 2011

Time flew!

Dear Family and Friends,

Hey! Well its my last pday in PE. next week i fly to cape town and spend the day and night with President and elder Bagenzi and Elder Andri. I'm pretty excited. I haven't received my flight itinerary yet, i just called the office about that and they are sending it. so i'll know soon. haha i do know that i'm going to the temple on tuesday next week during my big layover in joburg and then i fly out that night. I'm really excited to go to the temple, been two years. that just sounds weird, its been 2 YEARS... time flew by like a rocket. i don't know what to do other than just continue to work hard this last week, i know i have to. We are going to George and Knysna for exchanges so lots of work. and we get back on saturday and we have reservations for Admires restaurant haha its a nice all you can eat buffet. so that will be my farewell dinner with the district. :)

I got my new suit last week monday, its very nice. or so i'm told haha. and zone conference was amazing, my last one, i cried.... and when we were bearing testimonies, President got up when it was my turn and stood next to me and just looked me in my eyes and i lost it, the Spirit was so comforting. He told the elders that i've been a good missionary and that we are gunna miss him... It feels so wonderful and comforting to know that my mission president is pleased with my work ethics as a missionary. so i bore my last testimony in zone conference and i know my Savior lives and that God loves us. the conference was focused on the Savior of course and we had singing of hymns and training on teaching that God is our loving Heavenly Father. and we had a small gift exchange. and the food of course was amazing haha. i love Christmas time.

Wednesday i went on exchanges with Elder Ncube in Lorraine. we had a good day. did some service of wrapping presents at the mall in the morning, that was fun haha. then went to wimpy for lunch and spent the rest of the day working with less actives and members and we did some finding in the evening with no success, granted it was for only 30 mins. every door was closed on us or they wouldn't open the door. wanted nothing to do with us. but i liked Elder Ncubes attitude as we were tracting, he calls it lifting and he always laughed at the fact that the people didn't want to listen to us, he taught me something. they have agency and they aren't afraid to use it. they don't know what they are missing out on but we go and try and do our best to inform them. we can't help if they don't want to listen. we "just smile and wave" smile and wave boys. :) haha.

The rest of this week we have done service as usual :) i love doing service. we helped our elders quorum pres lay some bricks to build a wall and we did some service for a non member friend of Michelle in Blue water bay that was in desperate need of her yard cleaned up. we had fun doing that. and we've been working with some less actives too. we saw roderick on saturday evening. he said he would come to church but didn't pitch. don't know why. he says that his sundays are usually busy with helping people in his community and that people always come to him for help. so he is being Christ like he just needs to come to church for 3 hours and partake of the sacrament and then he can go and serve people after church. We also saw the Goosen family last night, we've cut their grass a few times and now its grown back real quick. but they are doing great they wanted to come to church yesterday but over slept so they have a goal to come next week. we will do service again for them soon.

on our investigator side Noxolo is doing awesome! we were going to walk with her to church yesterday morning and we go and walk with her to the chimuties and then she was able to get a ride with them so we didn't walk very far :) haha i must say i was excited to walk to church with her tho. she has been reading like crazy and feels that this is what she has been looking for! So she loved church and she made good friends with Wendy. So thats good she has great support. she leaves town this coming friday so the elders will see her when she gets back in January.

Tolla is not progressing like we thought he was. he didn't come to church again. and he now knows that he doesn't' want to marry Susan so now they need to separate so he can get baptized. the only reason they are living together is because its financially better. so i hope and pray that things will get better for him. hes a nice guy.

we don't have any other investigators that we've seen this past week. its low i know but we manage to stay busy with visiting less active members and active members and getting them excited about missionary work. We had lunch with the parkers yesterday and it was really good. rice and curry and then a really rich caramel desert with biskets. i was really full when we left haha. sis parker was always asking us if we were full or if we wanted more and that there was plenty. yo, they can feed missionaries haha. i love that family.

Well i don't know if i'll email next week, probably not but who knows. i fly to cape town monday morning so i don't know what exactly i am going to do there. I'm excited to see all of you next week! :) I'm stressing about my talks that i have to give. i'm giving one on sunday here my last sunday in SA and then Bishop sent me my subject for when i speak at home. on the 1st of Jan. SO i have plenty of time to think about it but i'm still worried... oh well i'll buck up and do a good job i hope. but i love you all and hope you have a wonderful week! i'll see you next week! :)

your dieing missionary,
Elder Robert S Rigby (SACTM)

Monday, December 5, 2011

Love the Work

Dear Family and Friends,

Goeie More! (good morning) :) I had a great week. My comp and i have been trying to work hard. We have been working really close with our members and been giving them nice papered family mission plans to set goals and help them do missionary work. its great fun. the parker family filled it out right there with us it was awesome haha. and then we have continued to work on finding more people to teach. we did some tracting on tuesday and found a few to go back and follow up on. we had exchanges on friday with the APs and elder chatora and i went back to one home and we were able to sit down and teach Sinazo and Kuhle. both students. leaving back home in a few weeks. but will be back. we just started out with asking them about their beliefs and so forth and then they made the comment of us being "saved" so we discussed the term of being saved for a while and then came to a conclusion. We are still running the race to get to our Heavenly Father and we haven't crossed the finished line yet. so we can't say that we are saved. they agreed. after a while of discussing it. then we introduced the restoration and gave them the pamphlet to read and set up a time to come back. we felt good about Sinazo, she really has good potential to progress. kuhle on the other hand is a bit timid and doesn't care too much. but we'll see how she turns out. it felt good to teach a lesson like that. so in all i enjoyed my exchange with elder chatora and we were also able to teach Noxolo our baptismal date. she is a power house haha. very excited about learning the gospel, she didn't make it to church yesterday tho, confusion with getting a hold of a member to walk with to church and so she didn't come. but we went there after church to say hello and see how she is doing. she appreciated us coming and checking on her. she's been reading the Book of Mormon like crazy. its so cool to see her excitement.

we didn't have any investigators at church yesterday. it was a very powerful fast and testimony meeting. i even went up and bore my testimony. i felt impressed to and it was my last fast and testimony meeting in SA. the people here are so awesome i don't know what else to say. they really love the missionaries and the work we do. i love them so much and its so cool to see how the gospel has influenced their homes and the Spirit is present. We did a lot of service this past week for some members. we helped the furies move some old flooring out of a bathroom and then we helped the Verbasts move on saturday morning and then helped Bro Sweiglar move some stuff into the crawl space. in the rain haha yes its been raining a lot lately.

Michelle is doing awesome. she came yesterday and then we were able to visit her and her husband Andy on thursday again. we just went over the plan of salvation for her and andy just listened and shared a few things on it. it was nice, they even fed us :) yo this past week i swear every day we got fed something from someone haha. Luthando fed us lunch on tuesday and wednesday. out of the goodness of his heart. he was leaving to go back home to queenstown on thursday so we wanted to be good to us and say goodbye to me since he won't be back before i leave. Yo i'll miss him haha. but back to michelle we went there yesterday and the parker family came with us. we had a really nice visit with michelle and the parker family really helped fellowship. it was a good afternoon.

after that we checked on a man we met while doing service last week at bro mikes place. Chris, and his family, they stay in blue water bay as well. they are 7th day Adventist as we came to know yesterday. the wife, oprah really wanted to tell us that we were wrong for worshipping on sunday and not the so called saturday as their "sabbath" she was just telling us that the Bible says, the Bible say this and this.... we just listened and then before it got too upwary we calmed it down and said a prayer to invite the Spirit and then the only thing that came to my mind to answer her question on why we worship on sunday, is the fact that the short answer is a boy walked into a grove of trees looking for answers. thats all that came to me. and really thats the only reason why we do worship on sunday. we believe in continued revelation! God and Jesus Christ Live and they speak through our modern day prophets! we believe in the restoration of the gospel! that sums up everything. in time we left them a copy of the Book of Mormon for them to read and pray. they said they would. they would be a awesome family to bring into the gospel.

well that sums up the gooder week i had! :) we have zone conference this thursday. i'm excited for that. i am working hard everyone :) i can't just sit around in the flat all day that would drive me insane haha. i love talking with people and sharing my testimony with them about the Savior. i can't deny that He lives and loves us and wants whats best for us. I really love missionary work! :)

and yes its starting to feel like december, Christmas decorations have been up for a while now and more and more are coming up! still no snow as i would love haha 2 weeks and i'll be in it haha.

Well i love you all and pray that the Lord will be with you. i love my Savior and this work that i am still called to do. i can't give up :) still people to come to know of the truth! i love you have a great week!

your Son, brother, and friend,
Elder Robert S Rigby (SACTM)