Happy Easter

ps attached is bro malinga when we baptised him in march

Dear Family and Close Friends,

Hey! So easter is a really really really big thing in the country of south africa wow! especially the entire easter weekend. everyone celebrates easter in south africa! oh my sick shops are closed and its chaos! good friday is especially busy and hectic! everyone was askin us if we had church on friday and sat haha interesting people. :) Everybody has holiday from friday till tuesday. so we are lucky to be able to email today haha. everyone is closed. so yes, they celebrate easter haha. People were asking my comp and i if we had church on friday and saturday. of course we told them that no we don't we just have it on Sunday, the day where Christ rose again. they were all shocked that we didn't have services all 3 days. It was interesting. its the time where everyone goes to church, which is a good thing to remember Christ but 3 days in a row?! thats just too much for me haha. So our easter sabbath was alright, not too many members came to church which isn't new in mitchells plain. things aren't just going well at all. We had one speaker, bro Trevor Hartzenburg and we spoke on the atonement from Elder Holland's talk. i don't know why pres gordon didn't have someone else as well speak instead of just having one talk for 25 min! yo it was long. but anyway it was nice. in SS the teacher bro Tiara also did the light turn off thingy haha we were all very confused at first but then he explained and it got better haha and made sense. It was raining all day long yesterday so proselyting wasn't very good either. we did manage to see 2 investigators in the afternoon. Bro Mngomezulu and Sis Okonkwo. both are doing good.

Bro Mngomezulu is a powerful guy who is ready for baptism. he just has a few weeks left of coming to church and a few more things to be taught and everything will go well! Its always enjoyable to teach him and have him progress haha. :) We taught him yesterday about the atonement and having faith in Christ. it was really nice. especially since we are celebrating Christs Atonement and resurrection.

with sis Okonkwo we just read with her from the Book Of Mormon. She hadn't read anything since we last saw her last week. this is the family thats from nigeria. The father hasn't been around for 3 weeks cause he went back to Nigeria for a funeral of his father. so we've just been trying to meet with his wife. we read the fist 2 chapters of 1 nephi just to help her get started.

THe rest of the week was kinda ... appointments didn't hold as usual and people aren't serious. We even did some more tracting. for about an hour and a half. wasn't very effective tho... i don't know how to make tracting effective. cause no matter what i do we don't get invited into very many homes. like maybe 1 or 2 out of the 50. any advice? haha

So i woke up this morning and about 7:00 we got an unexpected call from the Assistants. They surprised me with transfer news! :) so i now know whats happening haha. I am getting transferred to the cape north zone so not too far away to an area called Milnerton. I think its a mix of blacks, coloreds and whites. its a ward so i hope things are working a lot better than here in mitchells plain. I didn't realize it as my time to leave already. I wasn't expecting it at all haha. i have mixed feelings about leaving. so my new companion will be elder Mukula from Kenya, he is in Elder Mantintos group. thats all i know haha. will find out more when i meet him on wednesday. I'll be the district leader there of a 6 man district, zone leaders included so they won't be there all the time so mostly a 4 man district meetings. i hope i'm ready for it. So i won't be here to find out who the new branch president is and all that here in mitchells plain. Elder Mantinto will be so i'll have to follow up with him in the future. :)

last night we four missionaries watched the priesthood session of conference. wow it was really focused on missionary work and preparing to serve the lord. I liked Elder Andersons talk and President Monson's haha. he has such great humor. :) all the talks were good.

Thank you for the support mom and family :) i couldn't do it without all of you. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. haha.

Well i love you guys and am grateful to be a missionary of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I know that He lives and that He loves me. I know i am where i need to be and that i am going where the Lord needs me hehe. I know the Lord will provide a way as long as i do my part in the bargain.

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

Blue Skies Again

Family and Friends,

Hallo! :) How is everybody in the cold and wet Idaho? haha sucks for all of you who have to deal with that! i am enjoying the sun and the cooler days. its getting kinda chilly at night when the sun goes down, oh krista i loved your best two years quote haha we haven't been having rain just sun and wind. Had a big smoke overcast the other day, saturday after conference. i guess the mountain bottom weed burning went out of control and homes were burned over in somerset west. so it was a brownish sky this weekend. its cleared up now. "blue skies are shining on me, nothing but blue birds all day long" do you know that song dad? its a barbershop song. the week was alright we were really bold with a few of our investigators and asked them what they expected from us and what not. Rose, just basically couldn't answer us and said that we could come if appointments fall through, so i guess she basically just wanted us to come have bible study with her. We then were bold and said that is not why we were there and told her our purpose as missionaries. it was fun haha. my companion and i are tired of all these not serious investigators so this week we focused on telling them our purpose and everything. Rose then said ok well i'm comfortable where i am fellowshipping but i would like to know more.

Bro Burger on the other hand was not so nice. we have seen him 3 or 4 times and he still doesn't accept the Book of Mormon as Scripture. he doesn't believe that the Priesthood was lost and says that we are going to waste his time. so we did everything we could with him so he still has the Book of Mormon and said that he would still read and pray about it. Its dumb to think that most of our investigators are looking for "signs" to their answers, but little do they know that the Spirit doesn't always work that way. We of course explain to them but i really don't think they understand. its irritating!

Speaking of Conference :) YO! i loved it haha. Especially President Monson's talk on temples. i miss the temple. I also enjoyed Elder Scotts talk on eternal families. it was sweet to see him speak about his dear wife and family. the words of " dad, i love you, your my best friend" struck my heart :) the wonderful comforter was definitely there with me. that was the most spiritual experience of the week. I also thought Elder Henry B Eyring's talk was good too about the Teton Dam and how one couple lost their own home because they were helping others and then when they found that out they went to the bishop and said what do you want us to do. touching experiences. :) didn't get the chance to watch the priesthood session yet. i think the branch wants to make a priesthood activity out of it later in the month i'm not sure. i'm disappointed that we didn't watch it when we were supposed to. but oh well i read it if i don't get to watch it.

We had a really nice experience with Andre Abrahams on wednesday. He asked us what makes us different from all the other churches. SO we explained about the lack of authority in all the other churches and went back to the restoration. we also watched Elder Packers talk from April conference 2010. it was fabulous. he really understood how the authority was brought back and how we now have it in the church and most importantly it presides in the family he really liked how Elder Packer focused on the family. He is progressing. hasn't made it to church yet tho..:(

Well the mountain that the picture of me is table mountain. thats when we climbed it last transfer. cool huh? :) i liked it too. yes i was contemplating hehe. great spot to do so :) Well i love you all and hope things start to dry out soon so dad and russ can get the crops in. when are you branding the calves?

Well loves to ya all!
Elder Robert S Rigby (SACTM)

Learning Process

Dear Family and Friends,

hey everyone! I'm doing good and it was a better week than last week, even tho we still didn't have very many teaching appointments. Its the ups and downs of missionary life thats all i can say. about details, there isn't much to detail about. we don't teach much cause people aren't ready to see us or they don't want to see us. So the 3or 4 investigators that we do have are the Mngomezulus, Abrahams, Mrs Stoffles and Ivan Mabela, who is leaving to Joburg for the next 3 weeks so he won't be around. Its tuff guys, it really is. My companion and i have never struggled to find people to teach like this. Its a learning process i guess.

Bro Mngomezulu and his family are doing really well. Stephen came to church yesterday and enjoyed it but then i asked him where his family was and he said that they were home cause they were tired and lazy. so its not just me who was lazy and tired back home sometimes haha. we moved his baptismal date to the 22 may. give him plenty of more time to get converted and know what he needs to know and start coming to church more often. we always have fun teaching his family. they always have stories from the day or week and they want to share it with us. Stephen is also sharing with his friends and work colleagues about what he is learning. so hes doing missionary work himself :) so thats good.

The Abrahams family is doing ok. still haven't made it to church. we only meet with the father now Andrew. because of the busy schedule the rest of the family has. So we have taught him about the plan of salvation and he had remembered what the past missionaries have taught about that in the past. so that was a plus. He always has lots of questions, questions like why did the Savior pray on the mountain. yeah, its the kind of questions that really aren't that important but they do have answers. we asked president probst on friday about that after we had the opportunity to teach Pres and Sister Probst. and he said that in the olden days it meant that it was the only place where he could get alone in a quiet place and feel close to God so that was a good enough answer for me. So with the teaching with Pres and Sis Probst, yes we taught them as investigators, for more training. the original plan was to have the Probsts come with us to a teaching appointment but our appointment fell through at the last minute so we taught them instead and they played one of our investigators. it was nice and a really good learning experience haha. its kinda of nerve racking when you have the Probsts there. but they played our investigator Dudley. he was born a Muslim but isn't active in that religion. so they played him and we had to teach them just like it was a normal teaching appointment we focused on prayer and getting him to pray. at the end of the lesson they gave us feedback on what we did good and what we could improve on so we took some good things from that.

Sis Stoffles is a non married women with 3 kids. her boyfriend, been living together for 6 years, works out at sea for months at a time so we haven't met him. but she is a Anglican and we have taught her the restoration and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. really haven't gotten further yet because lately her appointments haven't been keeping. she still wants to learn and have us come teach her, so its just a matter of doing so.

THe funniest thing that happened this past week was on Saturday when my companion and i were going to do some tracting. and before we were implementing the colored accent into our voices haha and so the entire day we were talking with each other like the coloreds talk haha it as fun. and we just meet lots of interesting people that are nice but don't want us to teach them. People always ask us where we are from and how countries are and what what. interesting questions. we met a Muslim chick that is now 3 years Christan and well she is what you call the happy clappy religion haha. very enthusiastic and everything. it was interesting to sit with her and try to share with her our message. she kept wanting to preach to us. haha.

SO yeah the week was interesting thats really all i can say. church was good. had only one investigator at church on our side and then the other elders had 1 as well so we did have our gospel principles class, we spoke about the Atonement. it was nice.

i cant really remember a specific moment where i felt the spirit direct me or anything. at church during priesthood we were talking about charity and and the principle of love came up and a brother mentioned somethin about how kids don't know what is wrong or right and then when we tell them that it is bad and they get sad they will come back to you in a few minutes. it reminded me of Brady back home when i was working on the swather one day and he was there "helping" me and i told him no that he is going to get hurt and i scared him and he went off behind the tire and started to sob. i felt so bad and then i picked him up and gave him a hug and said i was sorry. i miss my family. i miss you guys. i've been missin home a lot, i don't know why. i guess its because i really didn't know how good i have it till now i'm away from home. I love you!!!

I know this gospel is true and thats its the work of the Lord to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. they are our fellow brothers and sisters and we all need to reach out to them and help them feel of our Savior's love. I love the people of south africa even tho we meet some who do not like us and don't care. I love my companion elder mantinto and am so grateful to have him here to help me with the work, i couldn't do it without him. i love my investigators, and my recent coverts, like bro malinga. we spent some time yesterday at their place and visited with them and then of course they fed us hehe. i love them. i love this Gospel and i know my Savior lives and that my Heavenly Father loves me. I know we have a living Prophet who leads and guides us under the direction of our Father in Heaven and his Son Jesus Christ. I know families can be together forever through the wonderful power of the Priesthood. I had the opportunity to give bro Mngomezulu a blessing of comfort this past week. he has been struggling with work and he wanted a blessing to help him. so thats when i felt the Spirit direct me to say the things i needed to say. The church is true the book is blue :)

LOVE YOU ALL
your missionary,
elder Robert S Rigby SACTM

Hiya!

Dear Family and Friends,

Hiya! :) How ya all doing back in Idaho? sounds like its finally becoming spring there after a very long winter haha. The weather here has been sunny and nice. was a bit chilly the other day but then when we came back for lunch i had to change into a short sleeved shirt haha. don't like sleeves too much. So winter is coming, starting to cool down. my comp is always complaining how he is cold and i am still fine haha i enjoy the cooler weather lol. makes it feel somewhat like home haha. still no snow but its alright.

So the week was really challenging. It wasn't the best week thats for sure. we have appointments set up or plans to go see these people and then we get there and they are not home or they come up with reasons why they can't sit with us and have us share the message we have. so it wasn't fun this week. My comp and i were quite bored trying to figure out what to do cause we couldn't tract cause it wasn't the best time for it and we even looked up potential names in the area book. luckily we did manage to find a few people home and got return appointments. most of them didn't remember who the missionaries were and didn't know us. So it was basically like finding anyways. It was tuff.

But Bro Mngomezulu is doing well. we did see him and his family a few times this past week. he is still very excited to be baptized. its gunna have to be pushed back, he hasn't been making it to church and there is still a lot we need to teach him. We taught him about the word of wisdom and the law of chastity. he doesn't have any problems with it and was willing to strive to live both commandments. He is a funny guy he always has things to tell us about work and about people that he knows. He works shifts and so he has to work night shift and well lets just say he really doesn't like it haha. of course i wouldn't like working from 11:00pm to 8:00 in the morning. so he was really tired when we saw him and he was telling us that he needs to change with somebody else so he doesn't have to work at night. He really has the desire to come to church but his working schedule is getting in the way of that!

We didn't get the chance to meet with our RC bro malinga this week. he had a busy week at work, the navy. getting ready for the navy festival this past weekend. so he was there at work all week. didn't make it to church either. speaking of church it was as really nice fast and testimony meeting. members bore their testimonies and the spirit was just wonderful. i felt like i wanted to cry. i love that feeling. its a pity that we didn't have any investigators there. Then we had gospel principles class on the life of the savior, i taught. the other elders had investigators there so we did have the class. then priesthood was also nice, had a good lesson on the priesthood.

I did get the letter with my pictures of my pickup and what what. thank you! haven't really shown it people yet haha except my comp and the other 2 up stairs. they thought it was cool. liked the fact of all the snow on the ground. all i know about my release date is that its on the 4 january 2012. don't know if that will change with the new mission pres or not. we'll see in the future.

WEll i love you all i hope you have a good week love your missionary,

Elder Robert S Rigby (SACTM)

Learning Continues

Dear Family and Friends, Hey!!! :) been a good week! how is everyone doing? sounds like you are all doing good and enjoying the mud of spring haha. Its been really warm here with some cooling breezes. So its been quite nice. been cooling way down in the evenings. about time to start wearing my suit coat. Its been good being a district leader again. good learning experience and good serving my fellow missionaries. I'm not as stressed about it as i thought i would be. its simple, all i have to do is use the training plan and implement it into my district meetings and practice it. Its good. We had zone conference on friday and it was really nice. we talked about the accountabilities and getting our investigators to come to church to receive their own revelation. I enjoyed it a lot. we had pizza for lunch and the Herberts made some good desert haha. The afternoon session was role playing and testimonies. President and Sister Probst truly do love us and care about us. I am in good hands. They are also preparing to go home in a few months. Its going be different when pres Woods comes to SACTM. We had good teaching lessons this past week. Bro Malinga is now a member and he has definitely seen and felt the changes in his life of the restored gospel. he got his scriptures yesterday and a few books like true to the faith and the gospel principles book. So he is fully prepared to move forward in the gospel. we are going to take him fellowshipping with us this week. he is excited about that. We had the opportunity to do some service on saturday for 4 hours. We painted a house :) Ivan Mablela, one of Bro Malingas friends. it was fun haha my comp and i thoroughly enjoyed it and we had good discussions on the gospel with those who were there. Ivan is also in the navy so he likes to tell us all the stories of outings he has on his ship, he is a navigational officer. so he is pretty important. really good guy who wants the gospel in his life. Bro Mngomezulu is doing really well. he has been reading the Book of Mormon and actually been studying it :). he understands everything which is big plus. his wife has now been joining on the lessons well at least she did on friday night. last night she was busy so she didn't. but we have moved on to in his progression and we taught him the plan of salvation. he was quite wowed by it haha. it was awesome. he hasn't been able to come to church tho cause of work. he works shifts so its difficult. he really wants to come tho. he has the desire and he is always disappointed when he can't make it. He is so looking forward to his baptism on the 17th of April but we told him that it might not happen cause of his readiness. he didn't like the fact of pushing it back. he said i cannot delay my freedom haha. we all just started laughing. but it is so true! when we are baptised we are literally making it possible for us to be free in Heavenly Fathers kingdom. the homes here are really nice. i would live in them haha so i guess that can answer your question mom. They are good living conditions but the crime is horrible. so lots of security on the homes. its not really a town ship. its homes. made out of brick and stone mostly. so yeah. i might use some funds from my home account today mom. MSF isn't in yet this week. its delayed again. and i need some milk haha and other things. The week was good but people are still not serious. we do more finding and teach one lesson but then its hard to go back, or we get a return appointment and find no one there. people really don't realize how important the Gospel is to them if they just listen to our message and implement it into their lives. but they all have that choice!! Well i love you all and hope things will continue to be good. have a good week guys! YOUR MISSIONARY, Elder Robert S Rigby. ps yes i got that package! thank you! i got my st patricks card too.

Post Card!

We got a post card from Elder Rigby today. In his email on March 14 he mentioned they were going to hike Table Mountain for P-day and last week he said that they did. On the post card he said, "Hey! Guess what I'm on top of Table Mountain and writing this here post card ha ha. It's so beautiful up here and I love it. :) It's nice and sunny! Ocean view is so much better than it was a year ago. One of the wonders of the world. :)" If you can see on the card he drew two lines pointing at the top of Table Mountain. The one of the left says Hike up and the arrow on the right says I am here! (click the picture to enlarge) We were surprised it only took 9 days to get to us.

District is Mine!~

Dear Family and Friends,

Hey everybody back in Idaho! :) how is everyone doing!? I am doing great and enjoying my mission even tho some days its hard. We had a baptism yesterday of Bro Malinga. He was truly touched by the spirit of the Lord and i felt so happy for him and for his wife, who is already a member. so it was a very exciting day for them. later that day we went to their home to have dinner and oh my goodness haha i had some gooder food! must've been a great day! haha. gotta top a baptism off with a good plate of food :) The other 2 missionaries were invited too so it was very nice. Enjoyed being with the newly baptized person and his family.

So as it was transfers last week there were some changes made in the district. Elder Mhkize as you know is now home enjoying himself surrounded by his family and friends. So i am now the district leader and its going alright. i was/am nervous to take the district and to lead. but as president told me to just put my faith and trust in the Lord and let Him lead you and guide you to where He wants you to go. So i am hopefully taking that advice and well things are not as bad as i thought it would be. district meeting was good as i got feedback from the zone leaders and they said everything was good. so i hope i continue to do that well. Elder Morris is still here and his new companion is Elder Vilikazi. He is from ladiesmith just north of Durban. he is an interesting fellow. he hasn't used computers his whole life so he doesn't email or anything. I had to help him order some stuff from the office using his email. i helped and it was done. He is funny, kinda like elder Opolot was. he is from the African culture for sure so he wasn't privileged with technology and stuff. so its all new to him. he has only been a member for 2 years now. so still learning!

I am still with my wonderful companion Elder Mantinto! :) we are so enjoying working together for another transfer hehe. we laugh and teach and have fun in the area and in the work. so now we are good and are ready to work hard and smart to help the branch grow! :) Which it really needs to!

Bro Mngomezulu had to work yesterday so he didn't make it to church. :( he wants to be baptized and all but his working schedule is getting in the way of that. we saw him twice and read with him and then taught him about prayer and scripture study. he is reading but he was reading the stuff that he already read. so we couldn't exactly move on with anything new. He needs to read in advance so we can go further. he was disappointed on tuesday when we told him we hiked table mountain and that we couldn't go again on wedensday like he wanted us to haha. he wants to go to "the mountain with the Elders". which would be fun but we can't go without permission, and we just went so to go again just wouldn't work. he likes running and hiking.

Other than that no one else is progressing. We are busy sifting out our teaching pool and trying to find new investigators to teach. The ones that we have just aren't serious and won't keep appointments. So its a struggle there. and then when we do tracting we never find anyone home cause they are at work or are busy with other stuff. when we try them at night they tell us they are busy or tired and that we should come on the weekends and then we go and don't find them. its really annoying! So as i said before, Mitchells Plain is a tuff area! haha

well i don't know what else to say since i didn't get an email from you today. :( what happened there?? not exactly sure what we are doing today for pday. might go to muizenburg and play some mini golf and get ice cream. its a beautiful day :) as most days in south Africa haha. hows the snow??

This week we have zone conference so i am excited. good learning from the leaders of the mission! :) well have a good week and i will keep you all in my prayers. I love you!

your missionary,
Elder Robert S Rigby (SACTM)