Umbhedula Area - Week 95

Mxolisi & Sandile

*If you want to see me when I arrive home, come to the Orlando International Airport on November 2nd at 11:30am. Now to the important part of my email this week.

I had one of the best days of my life yesterday. It is like my whole mission has led up to the point where I am seeing many blessings in the work. We had 2 baptisms!! Mxolisi, a 23 year old guy and Nkanyiso, a 15 year old boy. Mxolisi's less active older brother Nduduzo came to church! (he hasn't been this year). Nkanyiso's whole family came to support!! He has an older brother named Fundo, who we have been teaching and is on B-Date. The most exciting thing is that his Mom and Dad came, both for the first time! They loved the baptismal service. Almost the entire branch piled into cars to Chatworth to see the baptism. There ended up being 60+ people there from Umbhedula!! We invited the Shange family to fellowship Nkanyiso's parents but pretty much the whole branch ended up welcoming them.

The cherry on top was when Nkanyiso's father told us, "who knows, maybe you will see me here soon as well". I am so excited to be teaching a full father-led family!!!! I didn't sleep very well last night because I was very excited haha. This has given me much motivation to work hard to the end.

On Saturday we attended a Mormon Helping Hands event with our branch. We were scraping old tiles off in an old age retirement home. It was quite interesting.. good for a first start. We didn't have the proper equipment so the process took a lot longer than it needed too. Then the Young Men's President came in with a blowtorch and tried to heat the tiles to make them easier to scrape off. Didn't work. Smoke filled the room instead! I almost burnt my hand when I grabbed a hot scraper by mistake. Hopefully next week it goes smoother!

I think it is pretty funny that now when we teach about prophets people get Russell M. Nelson confused with Nelson Mandela. Especially when we say, "President Nelson".

Well I hope you all had a great week as well. My mission is going by too fast. I was up late last night thinking about it. Enjoy every last moment before it's too late!!

Love,

Elder LaHue

Nkanyiso, Pres. Mdabe, Mxolisi

The Nene family!
Baba, Nkanyiso, Ma, Mfundo

The Mzizi family!
Nomfundo, Nduduzo, Mxolisi, Ndumiso (Shakes)

Elders Maughan & Merritt (MTC Group)

Elders Cox, Kumar, Maughan, Cobinah, Kamara, Russell, Bir, Bodnar,
Abel, Phillips, Liechty, Nielsen, Ntaka, B. Christensen, Moyo
(and President Thompson watching over us)

Elder Maughan took my camera!