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)