Cops and Surgery

Well it sounds like he had an interesting week! From a couple interactions with the cops to his companion getting surgery on his eye. They will be staying together for another transfer because of the surgery. It has made it so they can't go out and teach much, but he sounds like they are making the most of it and they are just enjoying each others company. It's crazy that it's already time for transfers, that one felt like it flew!

"So funny story I forgot about two weeks ago now. I was driving down town and went to park in a parking spot, now this is Lesotho and I have never seen worse driving in my life.  Partly do to the fact that people buy their licenses from the black market because it can take over year to go through proper channels. So I crossed a solid line (which happens all the time) to get a parking spot. I didn't notice the cops that were there this day and they came up to me and talked a while as they read me my rights and said I was under arrest. Now in Lesotho they don't give tickets they just arrest you.... so we talked a bit more trying to see if there was anything we could do. He later told me I should buy some drinks for him and his colleagues. I of course said I couldn't and he said no as friends... he wanted a bribe of some sort... we continued to talk and then teach about the gospel and he then said that we could go. So I almost go arrested, that was fun. haha

Now more cop stories. We had to take Elder Leonard to the border so he could go to Bloem with some senior couples the get his surgery. As we went to our car after parking in town what I thought was legal we went back to our car to find a nice big clamp on it. eish... I picked up an new motto it goes "would it help" so when I come to my car and see a clamp and want to be angry I think "would it help" if not then why get angry I am only hurting myself so I just laughed as we waited for some other missionaries to take us to the border. we then get their and drive through the parking lot and let Elder Leonard walk across. We then realize that to go back we have to pass the immigration desk... we don't have our passports. We were quite worried that they would not less us back into the country even though we didn't technically leave. luckily we got back over the border then headed to the police office to get the clamp sorted. Now one of the high ranking officers is our district councilor at church so he got the clamp of for free which was very nice. He helps a lot when we get arrested for dumb things. Anyways that's Lesotho and the police haha

Elder Leonards cornea transplant went great! we go for a check up tomorrow. So needless to say we didn't do much this week because he was on bed rest recovery and needs eye drops every two hours, but it went good. We have been enjoying each others company and bum bum bum dah we are staying together another transfer. (In response to me saying to him last week I would be surprised if they changed him if his companion is having surgery.  hahaha)  The weird thing is we are scheduled to be staying in Bloem for 4 weeks. We will see if we end up being that side for that long but we will see. I am excited. I think its good because a change of companions after the surgery would have been hard. So today we leave for Bloem and plan to be their for about a month, we aren't sure why but oh well.

I love the scriptures! a lot a lot..... You can read them or you can READ them! See the difference. when we think about what the time was like, why people said what, why they were where they were. Things like that we start to understand and learn so so much!!!"

"Learned how to make battered chicken! Yum"

I'll also share all of his personal email to me because I loved what he says at the end. I've been struggling with feeling like I'm not progressing in the gospel, and his response to what I said was perfect! The day that I got his email I decided I needed to listen to a conference talk on my way home from Salt Lake so I just had my phone play a random one and it happened to be President Uchtdorf's talk from October 2014 "Living the Gospel Joyfully". It fit perfectly with what I needed and what Mikel said to me, so of course it was no coincidence. I highly recommend reading it or listening to it, it's a good one :)

"He is an awesome mission president, he is super excited to work and loves the outdoors and has a good sense of humor. I like him a lot. we still dont know him super well and how he deals with things but we will see.

 I was thinking the same thing. I will be with you next fourth of july!!! can you believe it! ah it sounds so good :) :) :) dont worry I am really good at relaxing (lazy) so I can help when I am back ;)

the house really looks so cute and perfect! how often do you practice with the rsl womens? I am sure you did great and I have no doubt the you will quickly become better than you ever were before :) you are becoming an adult... it weird... but I think I like it haha.

ah you are watching greys anatomy without me!!! sad news for an enamored heart haha. 

Going into tackles will probably be something that will take time but thats natural and 100 percent normal. dont beat yourself up to much babe I know you got this.

Life is full of ups and downs. but only good experiences. I dont believe there is such thing as a bad experience (I know ive mentioned this before) there are no bad experiences because we learn from them. they may hurt, be sad, and hard but they are for our benefit. 

sometimes we do find ourselves in a rut, even on mission. we do what we are supposed to but find not much gain. I am not sure on the answer to a lot of things. but I know that we can pray for desire, pray for the spirit. and I know our intentions and willingness and heart play a big role. If we do things simply because we think we should or we must then we get the same mediocre response from the performance but if we do something out of love, joy and excitement then we receive 100 times more. we need to find joy in what we are doing. for example if I go to practice and I practice hard but I do it because it is expected of me and I should as to if I go and love it and give my all. in which version do you think I would gain more from the experience. I think we can apply this to life and how we must find joy and love in what we do, especially the gospel. Reading my scriptures isnt good enough. praying isnt good enough. but love is always enough. I dont really know babe, but I am here for you. I love you!"

Conference!

Man sometimes the weeks just fly by and then the next Monday sneaks up on me and it's time for emails again! I'm going to post last week and this week's emails, so be prepared for a long one! Time is flying so fast. There's only two weeks left of spring season and three and a half weeks left of spring semester! So crazy. My freshman year is almost over, I can't believe it.

I'll start out with his mass email from last week, he had a lot of cool stories in it! "Elder woodland and I are doing well, and trying our best to find people to teach. We just had interviews with our mission president and he really wants the work here in Lesotho to pick up so there is a lot on our shoulders. We just hope we can hold it up, but we know we can with the Lords help. This was my last interview with our mission president, he goes home at the end of june and we get a new mission president. It was really weird thinking of it that way. I sure will miss President Z. I had exchanges with Elder VanWinkle this week and that was awesome, he is such a great missionary, I look up to him a lot and we had a power day. He goes home in June but he hasn't died yet, he is still going strong which you don't always see, so I definitely want to be like that when I am left with a few months. as for Woodland and I, we are doing grand. We have loved teaching at the EMT college once a week. we teach a two hour morals class full of about 60 women and 20 guys ages 18-26 so they are a blast. last week we taught them about the plan of salvation and how it helps to know where we came from, why we are here, and where we go after we die, especially when working in the medical field where you encounter many casualties. 

we also teach a family home evening with the senior couple at a gogos house and 10-20 kidos join us and they are fun as well. we taught them about honesty this week. it can be hard because they don't really know English so we rely on a lot of translation help from the adults."

EMT Class Staff

EMT class they teach

"On Sunday we had a great day, we didn't have any appointments at all, which is normal but oh well. but the great part was that we didn't go tracting like we do most days. instead we found many opportunities to do service. we helped some ladies carry a bunch of giant tent polls up a mountain, carried a young girls bag of rice to her house and helped take water from the pump up the mountain as well. It was really fun and we got a bunch of little kids playing and following us the whole time. sadly no pictures because it is a sketchy part of town and I dont want to get robbed. oh well. funny story actually, we were walking back to our car at night and it was dark, again this is a shady place of town. while walking to our car two guys were following us so I went around our car not opening it because I don't want to get hijacked, they then followed me around the car so I was just like, crap ima get robbed real quick.... so I put the keys in my fist and got ready.... they came up to us then just walked past haha. they were just pranking us but it wasn't to funny for me... well maybe it is now.... but ya I thought I was going to get stabbed so I am glad that didn't happen.

again we have just been knocking doors this week, not much has happens. we are trying to work with members but the problem is we don't know where any live so we are getting a list of people in our are soon I hope."

His tag is getting full!

I asked him about Lesotho and if the culture there was much different than South Africa, and he said in some ways it is. They are a shepherding culture that shepherd cattle a lot. They have some common South African traditions like greeting everyone in a room, shaking hands with women with both hands to show respect. He said people are nice for the most part but you still encounter lots of racism. He also said that there are a lot of Asians there, which seems kind of strange..

"so story for this week. my companion got deer johned I think.... It has been rough to say the least, it made me realize how lucky I really am, like really. I am blessed beyond measure! I talked with him about his girlfriend and stuff and theyre relationship dosnt even compare to ours. I love how we ended up falling in love and you are my best friend in the whole world and I just love you and I feel like I know who you are and I dont know what I would do without you. I hope he is okay, they only dated like 6 months, but eish it hit him hard. anyways just made me think about how much I love you and I have taken it for granted that past little while. I just always expect you to be there without a thought or anything and thats not right. I just need you to know I love you so bad!!!!! and that will never change, not even for a second! 

I hope you have a power week full of smiles and thought of me ;)"

Handmade Lesotho tapestry

"Not sure what these are called but I like them"

So I had a cool little experience with a little girl who plays for the club that I used to play for. We had our AGM, which is a yearly club-wide meeting where we have speakers come and talk to us and watch inspirational videos. I sat next to a girl that I didn't recognize at first, but I asked her name and she told me and said that she was the one who came up to me at last year's AGM after I won Player of the Year and told me I was really good and that she saw me score an awesome goal in one of my games. Immediately I remembered her and it was so fun to sit by her! The next day she followed me on Instagram and sent me this message: 

It made me smile so big! Cutest thing ever. It was such a big reminder that even if I don't think anyone is watching, they are and it's so important to always be the best example you can be. I told Mikel about it and this is what he said about it:

"AHHH!!!! I love this, Ah I love you, Ah I love whoever sent this! ah I love God for ansering my prayers. (be sure to thank Him tonight)

I cant help but notice how she said she was freaking out inside, like so many people do when they are around you but are to shy to say or do something so we just go without knowing. I have learned on mission that we rarely if hardly ever get to see the benefit or effect we actually have on someone and when we are blessed to see, it is a direct  blessing from Heavenly Father, I am telling you this was not coincidence, there is a reason why she sent this to you and the answer is because God LOVES his children, that means YOU!!! :)"

And then he told me a really cool story about having his prayer answered and about recognizing and being grateful when our prayers are answered:

"  I have always struggled realizing answers to my prayers and mistaking them for just thoughts or luck or pure coincidence. for example, there was this one day where I had to send in a baptismal form that day because we were updating the system for church stats and they needed all baptism records immediately. I had filled it out a few weeks earlier and just gotten the bishops to sign it off the previous week. I forgot to send it in on monday so we got a call saying we needed to do it ASAP and it was like a Wednesday or something, I cant remember. so I went to my folder and looked.... it wasnt there.... I went to my binder and checked.... nope nada..... went and looked fetching everywhere and I could not find it, tore up my closet and my bag and desk and dresser and the record could not be found. Now no it was not the end of the world but I hate when I was supposed to get something done and then I failed something completely in my power that now puts others through a head ache so I was quite frustrated to say the least. after looking once, twice and thrice my wonderful comp who had his head square on his shoulder just looked at me and said well.... you know what we have to do right?... pray.... so we knelt down a said a verbal prayer just asking our loving Father to help us find the missing record that we would be able to send it in on time and that everything will work out. now half way through the prayer I remembered that I gave a talk the previous sunday and I brought the record to church. so the thought came to me, maybe I put it in my note book while giving a talk. sure enough it was there and all went well. so I was ready to head to the email shop to send off the record when my comp stopped my and brightly said. " well we have to say thanks now" Now my original instinct was. " this was just my own thought. I remembered where I put it, this wasnt an answer to my prayer." I of course could not have been more wrong. it indeed was an answer to my prayer and pretty clear. the role of the Holy Ghost is partly to bring things to our remembrance. I searched for 20 minutes on my own and could not find or remember by myself where the record was. but as soon as I calmed down and allowed the Holy Ghost to remind me, he surly did. I learned how important it is to recognize the little and great answers we get to our prayers. and We must say thank you. No one likes an unappreciative person. I did in fact feel the warmth of the spirit as we gave thanks to God for taking the time to help us in such a minor thing in the grand scheme of things but so important to us at the time. If it is important to you, it is important to God. How often does a little child bring home some terrible looking painting from school and they are so proud of it and love it and give it to mom and dad. Mom and dad of course take the painting lovingly and hang it on the fridge because it is important to them. why? because it is important to their child. the same goes with our Father in heaven, he is a perfect Father and finds so much joy in our happiness and achievement, no matter how small and insignificant according to the world it may be."

I loved that story because it's so true! The Lord is always there to answer our prayers, we just need to be able to hear the promptings of the spirit. The most important part is showing GRATITUDE after the Lord answers our prayer.

Got his new Lesotho hat!

It was crazy because after I read that little section about his answered prayer, it struck me how mature he seemed. I know he has matured a little since he left but wow it seemed like he as matured a lot just in the last little while! But it all made sense when I read this in his group email: "So a couple weeks ago I was talking with our mission president and we decided that I wanted to work on being more mature, in my conduct, talk, attitude and all. So I'll share a bit about that experience as well. This is what I wrote to my mission president this week....

"What a difference! I decided I should reflect some more about our interview and the topic of maturity. I was honestly shocked to find so many instances throughout the day where I was considerably "immature".  I guess it was a bit of a humbling experience. It reminds me of the talk two conferences ago, and the talk entitled,  "What lack I yet?"  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/what-lack-i-yet?lang=eng  The spirit really does show and tell you what you lack and need to improve on and is not afraid of being blunt about it. I saw that I do indeed need to act more wise and mature in my conduct around other missionaries and even members. I hope realization will be the first step in changing to a more fervent servant. Thank you for your council and guidance. My parents have greatly stressed to me how important it is to follow the direction of our mission president as he is the one who can receive prophetic guidance not only for the work in our area, but I see now also for ourselves and individual missionaries. I am thankful for your persistent communion with the spirit that you can follow His guidance."

 It was cool to read that and see what a change it has brought in him in just a short time!

Now he sent a really long mass email this week, and I loved all of it so I'm just going to put it all in here :)

"So this week was pretty normal for the life of missionary work in Lesotho. We did though have one way powerful lesson. We met with a new investigator we tracted into named Ma Thapelo. She is awesome. So we went to her house for our follow up appointment and just started to talk with her. She all the sudden opened up about how her husband just told her he wants a divorce because she has been able to have children for the past four years. This was heartbreaking for us to hear. We have only know this women for a short time but have this incredible love for her and it broke my heart hearing this and other things that have happened in her past that I can't share. So emotions were high and I didn't know what to do. I wanted to just give this women a hug and just cry it out but that wouldn't work. We came to teach the restoration and about Joseph Smith but every time I thought about how I was going to tie her struggles in with it I couldn't. I was blank. I then remembered what  Elder Bednar said when we get in a situation we don't know what to do or say. Testify of Christ. This is what I did and boy did it work. The spirit came in strong and I testified that Christ is our brother. His love surrounds us, He died for us and so much more. I honestly can't even remember a lot of what I said because honestly it wasn't me speaking. The spirit had control of the lesson and steered it where it needed to go. She continued to open up to us and tell us more about her life, struggles and all. I then asked a few questions and she mentioned how she felt and knew we were sent by God to see her. And that she now felt relieved and so much better. We knew that was our que to leave because she was feeling the spirit and we want to leave her on a spiritual high. We closed and said our goodbyes with a final testament of our love for her, which was and is indeed a real and genuine love. It had been one of the most powerful moments of my mission thus far."

"adventuring in Lesotho. we got our bakkie stuck for like 15 min, I hope I didnt hurt the clutch at all coming out haha eish...."

"In SA people wash their cars religiously, they hate a dirt looking car, which is contrary to american policy, we love the dirty used looking truck. so we made our bakkie look american....."

"As for the area, things didnt necessarily pick up as I was hoping for this week but a new week comes and we can only move forward. I am anxious to see what the Lord has planned for the people here, Its actually quite exciting when you really start to think about it. I was listening to talk by some youth speaker and he related a story about his football career to making decisions to determine your destiny and at one point in his story president Hinckley, prophet at the time, came into the BYU locker room and told the team that it was the coaches last day and "dont muff it" I have been thinking as if the current prophet is saying this to me, I have come out on mission, to a new country, there is work to be done and work expected to be done... dont muff it. I dont know why but when I picture in my head the prophet or the savior pushing me to work harder it gives a sense of motivation."

Watching Conference

Now there is general conference. Soooooo all of you who have made it this far... Thank you mom, and Hailey and Amber..... (haha :) It twas grand! I'll speak brief on it though because of time. It was all fantastic. I loved all of it! as a missionary I think conference becomes more interesting. I felt like there was so much mention of God loving each and every single one of us. To me it seemed like countless times they talked about our individual importance and love from our Father in Heaven. Christ is the good Shepard and would not leave his flock untended and without provisions. We are all sons and daughters of the most power being in the universe and that makes us all royalty. We are kings and queens to be. Currently prince and princesses, in quite a real way. I don't know if we all completely grasp this. When we know for sure that God loves his children, nothing else really matters. It all makes sense. Things happen, but always for our good. We all go through many experiences in the life. some hard, some fun, challenging, depressing, sad, hurtful, painful, shameful, disgraceful, exciting, joyfull, and pure and more and more. I think you get it. We experience a lot of things. Now out of all of these are any bad? No! All experience is good. Although painful it is indeed good, most of us know by now in our stage of life that we learn the most through the hard times of life, that is good. There was also a lot of talk on family and temple, those go hand in hand. I love my family, and the separation because of mission has only made my love for them grow so much! I hope to be with them for eternity and know I can because of the temple. Guard our families, do everything in your power to keep a strong and healthy loving family and God will bless you with so so much. What makes God, God? Well he presides. over who? His family! What do fathers do? )Preside. over... their families. We are now preparing to become Gods and Goddesses. and we can! I love you all and if you did not get the chance to listen to general conference please do so! it will enrich your life, understanding, and love!"

"I love you so much babe, you are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me and you best believe I am on my knees each morning and night praising God for the wonderful blessing you have been in my life. So I finally sent some letters to you, sorry about that... some were written like 4 months ago. I still need to send your package though, I hope soon, but I wont make any promises. I was hoping to get it done like two weeks ago so it would be there for your birthday but it dosnt look like that will happen #cryFace

Always,

Elder Mookie"

Knocking on Doors

So on Monday he started responding to my email, but the place where they go to email closed on them so he wasn't able to really email me this week. But he got a little bit of time on Tuesday to write so he sent out his mass email and some pictures so I'll just post those :)

"Lets see where do I begin on this week, well first off I really feel like I have only been in Lesotho for about a week but yet we are going through my fourth week which really does just blow my mind.

We had exchanges with the AP's (assistants to the president) it was awesome Elder King came with us, sadly I forgot to take a picture to show yall, but he is such a power guy, We had some nice conversations about life and home and who we are so that was really cool. He is from Montana is a strait rancher type of guy, big, strong, and works hard. We contacted a lot of people and were able to even enter into their homes on the first visit and teach them the gospel. Now its just getting a second appointment and then getting them to actually come to church!"

"There is a member called Lucky who leaves for his mission in Botswana this week which is weird being a missionary already and seeing someone leave, He is going to be a good missionary though and I am way excited for him. We got to go to his farewell party which was interesting because it wasn't like the farewells back home, we played music and danced and it was like a normal party but then we all gathered round and each person gave their thoughts and last advice for Lucky's mission, and we recorded the whole thing so he could take it with him on mission. 

Still knocking a lot of doors this week and next and prob the week after just trying to get some of them to progress and I pray they do."

"We had a good DDM (district development meeting) I taught on Christ-like attributes and we played a kind of jeprody game with it so it was a lot of fun, we learned and just enjoyed so that was really nice. My district is awesome, I have Elder Vanwinkle and Odhiambo, Vanwinkle is from Arizona is a country man, loves his country music and so we get a long on that, too bad he can sing and play the guitar as well which of course makes me jealous! Odhiambo is from Tanzania, he says dang it all the time and laughs so loud, they are our zone leaders and they are the best. Then there is Elder Tsuma from and Sithole from Zimbabwe, they are fun, I have been around Tsuma before so we already know each other well and Sithole is still a newer missionary but not really green anymore because he is done with training. Over all its a good bunch of missionaries and seems to be all of us are working hard in the Lords vineyard.

Thank you all for your prayers and love!

Elder North"

9 Months

I'm a little behind on my post this week, it's been super busy! I feel like I'm constantly rushing from one place to another. There's only one more month left in the semester and then my team and I go to Germany! I'm so excited. I'm just excited to take a little break from school. I'm taking summer semester, so I really only get like 3 weeks off, but a break is a break haha. It's so crazy because he has been out for 9 months now! It doesn't feel like that long but looking back it feels like forever. I can't believe how fast time is flying.

Books of Mormon in multiple languages

Saying bye to Elder Kaitoo

Goodbyes with Elder Rakotomalala

RM???

Crossing the border from South Africa to Lesotho

I'm super happy because he got my birthday package this last week! It was just a little late but I'm glad it got to him somewhat close to his birthday :) He said he really liked it and that makes me happy. I did a bunch of "Open When" letters for him, like "Open When you have been out for 1 year" and he said it's torture having to wait to open them but he's excited to do it.

"It has been a fantastic flippin week if I do say so my self!   We have been on bikes for the past week and a half. This area has not had their bakkie for about four months because a previous elder drove it into a ditch.....Ooops. But good news! we got our bakkie back! Oh boy do I love it. There is just something fulfilling about driving a truck, especially a manual haha. It has helped a lot with the work because we can now stay out latter ( previous on bikes we had to be home around 6 because it gets to dangerous when we are out later than that) and we can work in rain or shine! We were able to go to a bit further places which seemed promising in tracting and were able to knock some doors done that side. I work in an area called ha tsetane or something like that and work in the neighboring towns and villages."

Pictures of their boarding

JELLO

"Cool story of the week is that we were approached by some guy in the mall who teaches at a emt college. He asked us if we would be interested in helping him teach a morals class. We gladly accepted his offer and get to meet all the students later today. We will be teaching a two hour class of about 85 students once a week about morals and ethics and of course Jesus Christ! We are stoked about this and think we will all learn from the experience. I am praying it all goes well!!!  The area is starting to pick up, we didn't have anyone in our investigator teaching pool but now we have a few and are continuing to make it grow. We hope to soon be so busy with appointments that we come home and fall asleep before we get to the beds." 

"Minions have invaded!"

"Trying to cool off after biking"

New planner

Trying to hide from the rain

Got soaked anyway!

The money looks pretty cool

"The branch that I am serving in is such a cool one, the members are nice. The only problem we have is a lack of priesthood holders. There are a lot a lot of sisters in the branch. We have an attendance of about 140 on average.

Elder woodland and I have been doing great, we already have so many inside jokes and its like we have been friends for a long time. I have been blessed with a fantastic companion that we both enjoy to work laugh and play! :)  Its a good thing I am off of the bikes now because sleeping was becoming a problem, not that I slept to much but lack there of due to stupid back aches.... (gents take care of any pulled/tore muscle now and dont hurt for it two years later...) It's getting pretty nippy at night where I actually need a real blanket and not just sheets like I have been doing in KZN. You can feel that winter is on its way but for the most part it is still hot, short sleeve weather. 

I wake up every morning with more and more mosquito bites. They are starting to really get on my nerves. the worst is when you wake up in the night because you can hear them buzzing right past your face and its loud! curse you infernal pests!!!"

Pictures of his area

Street signs are really short there!

This is a high school

"So Elder woodland and I are becoming quite the chefs, we don't get fed by any members here so you cook a lot. The other night we made some chicken and it was awesome. We put it in the oven put some garlic, lemon, and spicy chicken flavor sauce over it and flipped it every 30 min for about two hours. The chicken was soooo goooood!!! Lemony and a bit of kick at the end due to the perri perri pepper spice we put on it. ah to die for!!!! Well that is my week I guess. Lesotho has been grand thus far."

Cool cars!

"Had FHE at a Gogo's house and had a fun little wrestle party with the kids"

Haha!

Youth in the branch

They got to be part of a slaughter... gross!

"I love you more than ever and that is what I know for sure that I have done nothing but grow oh so much more fond of you! I love everything about you!!!! I love your mom and her talks, she is just amazing, give her a big hug for me. and then tell her that she needs to give you a hug from me :) :) :) (do it!)

Always ALWAYS ALWAYS never forget. <3 love you babe

Elder Mookie"