Sweet Week

This week was sweet. First of all, Wednesday, was transfers and I got to see Phil Hall. Transfers was sweet. My first transfer not being a greeny! ha, but anyways, that night we went to Sister Johanna's place for dinner. This week she was trying to make lasagna for the first time after my companion taught her last week. Man, it was some of the best lasagna I've had! Her oven is one of the tiny microwave size ovens. It was awesome. But the real highlight of the week was Sunday. Sunday was baptisms! No, I didn't get to baptize anyone but it was an experience.....

So we started off going to church. It was a cold day but we still had 11 investigators and a good amount of members show up. When Africa gets cold, Africa stops. Anyways, our branch is growing. Then after sacrament meeting my companion and I went to bake some breadstick things for the baptism. Once we got over to the Kwa-Thema Chapel (the neighboring township, where the elders we live with work), I thought the branch president would actually take care of something. Nope. My companion was getting ready to baptize and so I had to make sure everything was going right. Man it was stressful. I pulled out my camera and ten black hands reached for it trying to grab it saying, "borrow me borrow me". It was frustraing just to take pictures! Then when the service started we still couldn't relax. I had to lead the music and my companion had to play the keyboard. Oh and something funny... after pictures we walked into the room to find everyone sitting there with our elder's quorum president siting up by the keyboard playing the preset tunes on the keyboard "When The Saint Come Marching In" with the horns and everything...I was just thinking how spiritual this is going... haha. But anyways it ended up all working out and they made it through. Finally we were able to relax. When we were eating the refreshments one of our investigators came up to my companion. So this investigator used to have the missionaries teach him but he was just a Jehovah's Witness who wanted to bible bash. He was dropped by the missionaries and stopped coming to church. But then a few weeks ago he came to church and became interested again. We taught him for the first time in a while just last week. Then he came to the baptism and afterwards asked my companion if he could be baptized. It was awesome. That makes 6 people we've made baptismal dates for this week. All together that's 9 people we have on date for Oct/Nov baptisms with like 3 more on the way to be on date. The work is going great. We are blessed so much and it only motivates us to work harder.

I hope everything continues to go great for you back home. Sounds like you are doing well. We're trying so hard to get the members involved with our teaching. Since they don't give us referrals we'll just take them along with us. Hopefully with all the baptism zeal they'll get into it.
Love you, hope your doing fine!

Love, elder robinson

Say Something

The backyard where we stay. The flat we stay in is above the garage of the house you see on the right.

I am going to see Phil Hall at transfers this week. He's leaving Sandton and my companion has never missed a transfer meeting and doesn't want to break the tradition... haha. I'm going to buy a camera no matter what today because we have baptisms this Sunday. Three actually. The weather is really weird right now. The rains were supposed to come like a month ago but haven't and its supposed to be getting hot. Instead it just gets really cold and on Sundays no one will come to church. Yesterday it was freezing in fact. When Africa gets cold, Africa shuts down.

So for this week... First of all last Monday we went to a tri-zone p-day where we played rugby. That is a fun sport. Then we went to a buffet where i had tongue(I think cow) for the first time along with crocodile. That was not that good, in fact the whole buffet was Africa at its best. Not that great. Then on Wednesday we went to this former investigator's house who just started coming back to church. We were going to give her a baptism date. Then she told us she had gotten pregnant recently and wants to have an abortion. She was crying. I had no idea how to handle the situation. My companion was the same and tried to say something that didn't really answer the problem much. Then I felt as though I should say something. As soon as I started talking it was like I was overcome and just kept talking. I didn't know what to say but the Spirit did. I even went to a scripture, Alma 39, thinking this isn't a good scripture- all it does is condemn. But when I got to it there was a great scripture in there of hope and relief. I think I helped her to see what the right choice would be... Well, the Lord helped her see. Man, it was a sweet experience.

Right after we went to our dinner appointment at Sister Johanna's house. This is where my companion cooked lasagna. It was so fun. Before my companion and I Sister Johanna and her family didn't really like missionaries. The two daughters who live there don't even eat with us usually. But this day they did. I think we've opened them up to missionaries. This week one of the daughters, Larotto, is coming to an appointment with us. Missionary work is fun.

On Sunday something awesome happened, or really someone. Mom you know that article you sent me in my package about Elder Watson just being called to be a Seventy in Africa? Well I read it and thought it was cool. Then I get to church and guess who walks in the door...Elder Watson. It was so cool to see him there. He took a few minutes at the end of the meeting to speak and I love how General Authorities are so good at taking simple doctrines and making them profound. It was sweet. I talked to him and he told me that he'd take my greetings to President Monson when he went back for General Conference. Yep, Elder Robinson is going places... hahah. Everyone keeps saying that I'll be AP which i hate. I don't want to be stuck in an office all day. But our (me and my companion's) prophesy is that I will open Francistown up in Botwana. We'll see if that happens.

Here I am with a local.


Well that is my week. I'm going to get a camera today whether my Pakistani friend, Solomon, has one for me or not. I hope everything is going well in stockton and it's great to hear from you with the update! Oh and keep sending me pictures. Especially older pictures from family renions, pole vaulting, hikes. Time to go now. Tsakane sends its love!

love, elder robinson

ps. i have been leading the music in church for the past while and my comp plays the piano. thanks mom :)

Missionary Days

So for my typical day. Well, we get up at 6:30am and shower/eat/get ready. Then we study until about 10:00am, then we usually head to our area. Then we usually have appointment's all day that mostly fall through so we'll go check on people or just tract. Then we are fed dinner Monday through Thursday at 7pm. Then we head back to the flat after. It's a pretty full day usually. When we're in the area we work hard trying our best to find people and teach. It really isn't that hard. I mean this place is just ready to explode. I mean we are always teaching, the hard part is finding people that are actually interested or getting them to be committed. That is hard.

This week we taught 27 lessons. That's a little above normal. But it is usually around there. Once we get a chapel though, man, we are going to have 20 investigators at church every Sunday. This week we had nine. That's still pretty good. I mean the members were even saying how we are working hard. They notice. That means the previous missionaries were lazy. We've heard how they used to go to a member's house and watch movies. Lazy! But we're working hard. Pretty soon we'll be out of the school into like a portable chapel, and then some missionaries will eventually get to see them move into a chapel. I think it will be a stake center. We'll see though.

Nothing too exciting happended this week. Today we're having a tri-zone p-day. We are playing football and then going to a buffet. It should be fun. I miss you all and I love you.

love, elder robinson

Spring Week

Quite a bit happened this week. Well, really this weekend. So this past week is called Spring Week with Spring Day on Saturday. It's some stupid excuse for everyone to waste money and get drunk. In some townships they throw water on everyone. Luckily not ours.

Anyways, on Saturday we drove up to this street to check on some people. We saw this guy being chased and having things thrown at him. Not a rare occurence in the township. So we went and taught our lesson. When we came out we looked across the street. Now everyone has a fence or wall around their yard so we couldn't see what was on the ground but we saw these guys kicking something and smashing something with crates. As we walked up, a guy was sitting on the ground taking all this abuse. My companion decided we were going to help him and I knew it was the right thing to do, so I followed. As we came closer one guy picked up a brick and rushed at the guy but someone else stopped him. The mob stopped when they saw unfundizi's (that's us) coming up, but this guy was already badly hurt. My companion took out his first aid kit and bandaged him up. All while they were still yelling at each other to the point where the father of the house came out with a machette. That's when things got intense. Now anyone reading this do not fear for my life. You see, Africans respect pastors and stuff so our white shirts and ties protected us. Plus when we walked up these guys who were beating him were really nice and just wanted us to help get him away. That was the whole problem. You see this guy owed the old man of the house some money. Instead of paying he always wants to come and fight the old man. This time some younger guys from next door came to help the old man. The one who got beat up would just not give up and their anger got away from them. Anyways, so the bobba is sitting there with his machette threating this guy's life, swearing and whatnot. It took too long to get this guy off the property and we finally got him back to where he stays. But it wasn't over. We assumed where he stays would be like his family or something. We walk in with him and everyone is sitting around the kitchen table. They just stare. we ask if the guy lives there. The Grandma starts yelling in zulu, so we back out. A man follows us and starts yelling at this guy in zulu. He tells us he'll take it from here..... whew. Later we hear more yelling. We go back to this house where we took him and everyone is just yelling at him. Finally after some yelling and some slapping of belts he goes out and sits on the curb. A guy from the house comes out with a huge bucket of water and dumps it on the hurt guy. Supposedly that is a symbol of rejection. We end up finding out that this guy is from Mozembique and has no family in Tsakane. He's also been doing some drugs which made things worse. Oh and to top it all off we called the police at the beginning of all this. They are worthless. Man, it was a crazy experience. But that man would have surely died if we didnt help him.

Just another disclaimer: Mom, never were we in any danger. In fact our being there is what kept more fighting and stuff from happening. So we were paying attention to what was going on... don't worry. But yeah, that's my crazy story for the week. Hope you enjoyed.

love, elder robinson

p.s. This week I found out that Tsakane and the greater area of Tsakane has somewhere around 2.5 million people. Who'da thunk?

Getting IT

The usual has been going on down here this week. Actually it was pretty busy. On Tuesday we had my first zone conference where we got to see all the other missionaries. That was pretty cool. Then we went to Pretoria on Thursday because my companion was asked to teach some of the youth there, the haka. He's Samoan but he's from Salt Lake City, Utah. Anyways so that was cool. Plus we went to the biggest mall in the Southern hemishpere which is in Pretoria. It was pretty cool. To be honest I was a little annoyed that we wasted a day and a half in Pretoria just to teach the haka. The real reason was that my companion was trained in Pretoria and he had area sickness bad. But we still did good work when we were in our area.

On Saturday I had a cool expereince that reminded me why I am on a mission. We have been teaching this lady that lives way away from the church building and hasn't come to sacrament meeting yet. We'd taught the whole first and second lesson and she always gave the typical "yes, yes, yes, i love jesus" response. She just didnt get it. To top it off she always had this friend there who was a sangoma(witch doctor) which was kinda weird. But then on Saturday we went to see her expecting to tell her we'll make another appointment when she comes to church(our way of dropping people). When we walked in she was sitting at the table with her Incwadi kamamoni (Zulu Book of Mormon) open, all marked up and she was smiling. We sat down and asked her how the reading and praying was going. She got so excited and told us that she felt so happy and peacful whenever she prayed to know. She said that she did know that its true. To top it off she said her friend, the sangoma, had felt the same and was excited to talk to us. I felt bad that we had to leave to go to a dinner appointment, but man it felt good to finally see someone get it.

Well that is all from TSAKANE. I hope everything is going well. I love you all and miss you.

love, elder robinson