Bittersweet

The Johannesberg Temple

Well we were supposed to have three people baptized on Sunday, but then something happened. One of our investigators tried to kill herself. She tried to OD on some medicine that was for her dad. She didn't even get close to succeeding but she still went to the hospital. So the day that we were supposed to interview her we went to her house. She had left a note on why she wanted to kill herself and she said it was her family. When we went to the interview she was at her Aunt's house. So instead we just had a talk with her family. Now you have to know that by family I mean that she lives with her Uncle because her father died and her mother can't support her. She also has a brother from another father(same mother) that lives in this house. Then there are two daughters of the uncle who live there. The oldest daughter was baptized about 3 months ago and has an illegitimate baby, the younger sister and the brother were baptized last month. So you'd think that some Christ-like love would be over-taking the atmosphere of the home. This is what was so frustrating. The younger sister who lives in the home has something against her cousin, Johanna, our baptismal candidate. Anyways, we tried breaking down some of these barriers but all this little sister could do was laugh. Her cousin (who she calls her sister) just tried to kill herself. We asked her how she would have felt if she had succeeded. She just said "awe she would been buried, it would have been fine"... this made me very angry. All I could think was to pull out the pride card and shambock her with some scriptures. It didn't seem to have any effect on her. I'm not sure what to do. So that was very frustrating, but the week ended happy.

We baptized two future priesthood holders.
(L-R) My companion, Elder Brown, Wandile, Ernest and Me

They are both very smart, one of them even used to be a Jehovah's Witness(who know their scriptures very well). They both had a lot of issues with the gospel at first. It even took a while but eventually they came through. One of them was taught by the older couple missionaries that work with us. So we owe that one to them. The other, Ernest, was originally taught by my companion and his previous companion. I simply got to reap the reward of all their hard work. But still it was an amazing baptism. Their testimonies are so strong and they are going to be huge additions to this ward. We have 10 people on date for next month. It's going to take a lot of work to get them all to go through. We'll see how that works out.

Here are a few other pictures:
The township we are working in.


Another picture of our flat!


Love, elder robinson