March 30, 14 - Week 28

Dear Mom and Dad

This last week has been great, and I am really adjusting well to the new area. I hope that I can answer all of your questions. Just like you said Secunda is a smaller town.  The Sasol's Secunda complex that converts coal into oil is the main industry here. Not sure how to describe the size of the city. I am sure it is the size of Cedar. There is secunda, kinross, Embalenhle, and Evander. I work in Emba, and Evander. They have all the same stores here, so I am still able to shop and get all the same food. It is just like the same as my last area.

I feel pretty safe, but I feel safe in some pretty scary places. Emba is a township, and Evander is a town with mostly white people. I can definitely see the silos from the Sasols factory.  It is really cool to see them. There is like flames coming out of these pipes all day because the conversion of the coal and stuff. It is like the center of the area, and most the people here work for Sasol. The branch is very small. There are like 20 people that come to church every week. We have some good investigators and have been finding a lot of new people. 

 Elder Cazier my new companion is from the United States, but his dad is in the Air Force, so he lived in Germany for several years before he came here. He was in this area before. So normally someone stays in the area at transfers so they can show the new person around. He has been out 2 more transfers than me, so like 3 months more than me. I will be here at least 12 to 18 weeks. So after this transfer Elder Cazier will probably leave, or he could stay one more. But he will be first to leave, so I will at least stay for 2 transfers. I am doing really well with him now. We get a long well, and we joke around and have a lot of fun. He likes to work really hard, so we have been going non-stop since I got here. When I say straight he just likes to follow every rule with exactness.  But other than that we get a long really well. We teach great together. 

Like I said we have been working really hard, and teaching a lot of people. He has really motivated me to work hard, and it has been good. I have been really tired lately, but somehow I keep moving forward. We taught a lot of lessons this past week. We have also found some really great families to teach. It is still hard because I am trying to learn all the people here being new. It also makes it difficult because all of there African names!! I have really enjoyed it here in Secunda. 

On Friday we were on our way to zone conference, and our car overheated. We pulled over and had some water in the car, and some antifreeze dilute. It cooled it down a bit, but not enough. We were in the middle of nowhere on a highway. We made it to a toll booth station, and pulled over again. We put a bunch of water in our radiator, and got it cooled down. Then our car wouldn't start. So we sat there for 5 hours while we were waiting for a tow. So our car got towed and some other missionaries took the four of us from secunda back to our flats. On Saturday Morning  we got a brand new car that one of the senior couples brought out to us! It is a Nissan Almera and it is really nice! I don't know if we will get to keep it, but it is exciting for now. so that was something exciting that happened this week!

Well we do have a nice meetinghouse here in Secunda, but it does have a small chapel. We do email here, and I can send pictures, we just have limited Internet data, so uploading pictures uses a lot of data.  All my mail still goes through the same address. I just put mail I send out in a local post office drop thing. We don't see our zone leaders much, so I don't get mail too often. We saw them this last week, and I didn't get a letter from you

 We wont be watching conference this week. We will watch it in a couple weeks as a recording. So i was a bit sad I wouldn't be watching it live at the same time as you. 

I am adjusting to walking pretty well to not being in a car every day, and it is nice to be walking. My feet are doing well, and I don't think I need new shoes yet. We do go door to door, or gate to gate I could say. We knock on peoples gates and hope they hear. 

That is really cool to hear about all the mission calls that everyone is getting. It is especially good to hear about Levi. I didn't know that he had put his papers in. That is really cool to hear about Nathan and his cool baptism in the Ocean.

We should be going to the temple at the end of this transfer, and I am really excited because I have not been since the first of January. 

It is wonderful to hear from you each week. Thank you so much for you advice, and help. I hope you have an awesome week, and know I am always thinking about, and praying for you. 

Love Mitchell