Umbhedula Area - Week 105

Baptism of Mfundo Nene - my final one as a missionary!

Well... my mission is complete. It has been a good ride. I could go on and on about how much I love South Africa and its people. But I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited to come back home and see my family!

This week I told Elder Cox I just want to be working as much as possible in our area. We had a goal to work more than 50 hours this week and we were successful! The sun was burning bright but we still managed to spend our time wisely.

Tuesday: We held an FHE @ the Masango's house and showed them how to roast marshmallows and make smores. They had never done so before. The smores were delicious!

Sunday: Day of Mfundo Nene's baptism. We arrived at church with everything ready and our branch president told us that we might have to postpone the baptism because Chatsworth was having their ward conference. We asked if we could do it at Pinetown instead and he called their bishop and he said we can do it. After church most of Umbhedula piled into their cars and we drove to the Pinetown chapel.

When we arrived, there was no water in the baptismal font! We turned on the tap, ran a separate hose into the font and began quickly filling buckets of water and dumping them inside. The members sang hymns while they waited. When the font was at a reasonable level, we started the service. Mfundo asked me to baptize him. When we stepped into the water, it was cold! It took 4 attempts to get it right because the water level was too low.

It seemed like everything that could have possibly went wrong did so, and yet everything worked out okay. The members were smiling, Mfundo's family was there, and the spirit was there. I can say this experience was like a parallel to life. Everything may seem not to go our way, but at the end of the day God makes it all work out.

I'll see you on Friday.

For the last time,

Elder LaHue