Here Kitty Kitty!!!!

Hello all! How did the week go? Sounds like Thanksgiving was a success and that makes me really happy!  My week has been a pretty good one, can't complain too much.  It's seems though that only yesterday I was sitting here emailing, but it's been a week! Time surely goes by too fast on mission!  

I'm glad to report that as of yesterday, I have brought two people into the Lord's fold.  Marlon Soza was confermed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as well as Patience Msimanga, it made me very happy and proud that I was part of their conversion!  We have a few others that we are really working on, so hopefully I will have more to report on in the coming weeks.  Here's a cool story that happened this past week:

A few weeks ago, we had a guy come up to us at Church named Corneille from the Congo.  He says that he is very interested in our message and wanted us to come to his home.  This isn't the cool part though, we get to his house (either wednesday or thursday) and sit down with him to begin teaching when he goes into his room and comes out with a stack of pictures and a Book of Mormon.  He tells us that his sister was the first Female missionary from Africa to serve and his cousin served also.  He goes on saying that he has known about the church since he was seventeen years old, has read the book of mormon from front to cover, knows it is true and has had all the discussions.  Oh and he's 44 years old.  Due to his job, he has never been around long enough to actually get baptised, but now he is ready.  We went over some things with him to see his understanding and he knows all about the church, it's incredible!  So now we are going to refresh some things and get him baptised!  Now I understand what it means when a seed is planted and it takes many missionaries to get the plant growing!  So that was a really cool experiance.

Here's a funky story:

Saturday night, it was really hot in our flat so we opened some windows to let some cool air in.  Everything seemed fine, even the window above my head was opened, I fell asleep quickly that night.  Then around two in the morning, I was awoken by a thump by my head. Startled, I looked around for the source of the noise...no luck.  Thinking that maybe it was just my hand hitting the pillow or something, I turned over to try to fall back asleep.  Seconds later I hear the frying pan in the kitchen start rocking back and forth...what the?  I lay still not knowing the source of this sound.  Finally I slowly get out of bed and peek into the kitchen.  What do I see?  I see two pointy ears on top of our counter, licking from the frying pan.  A cat.  Freakin heck, a cat is in our boarding.  I put two and two together and figure out what had made the thump noise by my head.  Well now what do I do? I go over to Elder Davenport and shake him "Elder Davenport" I whisper, no response..."Elder Davenport!"     "What?!?" he finally wakes up, not too happy with the distubance.  Now that he's awake, what do I tell him? "there's a cat on the counter"  He looks at me like I'm crazy, I have to tell him again.  Finally he comes to and sees it.  WE decide to chase it out the front door, as we close in on it, it runs under our legs, onto my bed and jumps up to the window and disappears into the night.  I climb back into bed and just start laughing...it has to be the strangest thing that has happened to me on mission.  We now don't open the windows all the way.

So here's the lesson: don't leave windows open when cats are around.

Well that was some highlights for the week.  It has been a pretty good week overall.  It's officially summer here and becomes very hot during the day.  I hope that you all have good week and remember who you are! I love all of you and thank you for my support!


Elder Naylor

KEEP THE CAMERA HIDDEN

Hello everyone!  This week will be short and sweet, there isn't much to report on really.

 

So I am doing quite well, can't believe another week has come and gone, it goes by too quickly!

 

I think that I have the hang of missionary work, it's my life now and couldn't imagine doing anything else!

One cool thing that happened this week was that we commited a couple to baptism, it was cool because the previous appointment, the wife wasn't too sure about all of it.

She liked us coming over and talking to her and sharing the things we know but she wasn't grasping the "authority" aspect of it all.

 

So we decided to watch The restoration DVD and when it was over, we talked about it and...bam...she understood and now we are working on getting them ready.

The only thing that will probably slow them down is Church, because they don't have much money, it's not easy for them to just go...I guess we'll have to make them

see the importance of Church.

So that was a cool experiance that i had...

 

Another thing that you guys might want to know is this:

 

The post that you send me gets sent to the mission home, which in turn is given to the Zone leaders, which is given to the district leader, which ends up in my hands

 

The trade off from Zone leader to District leader is far and in between....if it wasn't for a meeting this morning, I probably would only get post twice this whole transfer.

OH, this morning we had an optional meeting with the Mission doctor about strees, so elder davenport and i decided to go...we missed most of it because we got a

bit lost and then got stuck in traffic....but I did hear some nice things and I got some post.

 

So, if you send me things, it will take a while to get to me.  Today was the first time I recieved post this transfer and the next time I will get it will be in about a week on the 2nd of December and then again

the 13th...it sucks but I learn to live with it!  At least when I get post, I get a lot more than I would if I got it every week!

 

Keep sending me stuff...I love it!

 

I'm doing absolutly fabulous here and time is just going too fast!  Next week I'll be turning four months old on mission..I'm excited!

Once again, sorry that this email is short and simple....know that I love you all still!  OH and no pictures this week because i was a bad person and

didn't take out my camera all week (it's hard to in township because people like shiny, expensive things...you get my point)

 

Well I hope that you all have a wonderful thanksgiving and make sure you eat lots for me!!!

 

 

With much love and care,

 

The Elder Naylor

GOOD BYE ELDER MASEKO

Well, another week has come and gone, time just goes by too fast here.

 

This week has been a pretty good one, though there was some change that happened in my life.  As you may or may have not know, this past week was transfers.

 

Where am I you ask? Who am I with you ask? Well, I will tell you ok?  I stayed in Somerset West (Strand, you could say because that is where I mostly work) and I'm not in a threesome anymore which was clearly predicted.  Who am I with then you ask?  The only thing that really changed was that Elder Maseko went home to Joburg.  Elder Davenport went senior and I'm his companion...it will be a good transfer, I know it!  Elder Davenport has only been out for six months and that makes me nervous because that means that I could probably become senior soon in the coming months.  Another cool fact? this is my last full transfer of the year 2010...can you believe that it's ending already? didn't it just start?

 

Well, as stated above, I killed yet another missionary...Elder maseko.  He went home strong and well.  I hope that I am not around another dying missionary for a while because Brianly...whoops I mean Frankly :) I'm not a big fan of them! I want to see more young missionaries (even though I am one of them still). 

 

When I think back to the previous week, the biggest thing that happened would have to be that I brought to people to the waters of baptism...cool huh?

Yesterday we baptised a lady by the name of patience, she is from Zimbabwe and is very very nice.  The other person from our area is a 10 year old boy by the name of Marlon Soza, also from Zimbabwe.  His whole family is members but they went less active so we have been reactivating them and preparing this boy for "the dip"  Now on to getting them to the Temple! (which I miss ever so dearly, there needs to be more temples in the world!)

 

The baptisms went well, a lot of the ward stayed and supported the two future members which is good because the ward needs to support them all they can. 

 

It has been a little weird getting used to having just one companion again, but I'm liking it.  I'm driving more because of it and I can officially say that I am used to driving here now and it feels natural to me and I don't know what I will do when I come home.

 

Everything is well here, I'm doing fantastic each day...but don't think that I'm not missing home! I miss The fall weather(it's getting really hot here and our car's a/c is broken..reminds me of when I used to drive a certain car...) and wearing normal clothes...a collar around your neck does not cool you down!!!

 

My favorite part of mission is all the eye opening experiances I have...all the wonderful people I see each day and get to bring the Gospel to them, it's a great feeling! 

 

Well, I must go because I can't think of much more to say.  I love you all and I always think of you all!

 

Take care,

 

Elder Naylor

BLESSINGS

Dear All,

Here I am, another week.  Things just go by too quick here in South Africa but that's ok because it means that I'm having a good time right?  Well this week has been pretty good, each day brings something new each day.  Real quick, those baptisms didn't happen, they are being pushed to next week, which is ok because they weren't ready yet, hopefully they can be ready by Sunday!  Can you believe that this week marks the 7th week of my 2nd transfer or the 1st week of my 3rd transfer!  I'm pretty stoked to see what next transfer brings and what things will change my life.  

Today it is raining and a tad chilly...which is sad because yesterday was clear skies and beauty!  Oh well, it needs to rain once in a while so we know the joys of the Sun eh?  

A cool experiance that I had this past week:  We went and visited this older lady in the ward.  Her husband has had two strokes and isn't a member and, well, he isn't that nice to her.  She helps him 24/7 and he really doesn't appriciate her.  It makes me sad because she is such a wonderful lady and deserves a greater life.  So we are visiting her and she is telling us her life and it seemed as though she was expecting answers and solutions from us...Im 19, what do I have to offer her?  Something kept telling me to offer her a blessing but I kept ignoring it.  She continued to sit there, sobbing her eyes out, and we are hardly saying anything.  What could we say?  Nothing really.  Give her a blessing I kept hearing.  Finally, I ask if she has ever received one, she says no and then I proceed to offer if I could give one.  She allows.  We place our hands upon her head and I start giving the blessing.  I never understood what people meant when they would say "I wasn't speaking, someone else was." until that moment.  I said things that I could have never thought of, that a 19 year old boy could have said.  I was saying things that I wasn't thinking about, they would just come and I would just say them.  It was one of the most spiritual experiances I have ever had.  I walked out of that house in amazement.  The priesthood is real.

Well, besides that, not much really happened.  I am doing fabulous, little nervous about transfers though!  But I'll get through them!  I love you all, hope you guys are doing well.  Please, please, send more post.  I love letters!

With love,

Elder Naylor

1320 Times (Only Elder Naylor would know this)

That my friends and family is how many times the second hand goes around my watch in a day. 1320 times, cool huh? Thought that you would want to know that!  Wow, can you believe that another week has gone by already? I can't, just too fast!  Let's see, what can I tell you about this week that is happening in the life of Elder Naylor?

The work is going pretty well, we are going to be working with two individuals this week a lot in preparing them for baptism, I'm pretty stoked!  Someone that I have taught is going to be baptized! Yay for me!  This past weekend I finally was able to watch conference and it was very nice, but made me miss temple square!  My favorite talks were by Elder M. Russel Ballard in the Saturday afternoon session and then President Monson's talk at the end.  But they were all very nice and I enjoyed it all.

So as you know, yesterday was Halloween and this year I got the privilege to be a missionary and instead of going trick and treating, I went house to house spreading the word of our Heavenly Father....it was the best halloween in a long time I would say!

I have band-aids on my fingers of my right hand because I'm a dork.  The first one happened when I was putting something in the boot of the car and ended up punching something by accident and cutting my knuckle haha.  The other two are from cheese.  That's right, cheese.  I was grating some cheese on friday and two times I slipped and sliced my knuckles on my thumb...I felt stupid but laughed at myself nonetheless!  I think satan doesn't want my hand to be able to shake people's hands, but I'll show him!!!

To be honest, not much has happened this past week, everything went pretty smooth and no big events.  The companionship is going strong and we are going to be sad when it will change in about a week and a half and we all have to go back to just having one companion (and Elder Maseko gets to go home.)  Hopefully I'll stay in this area another transfer because I'm really liking it and though the work is hard sometimes, I am having a blast here.  

Well, I think that will be all for this week.  My health is fine and my spirits are high.  I love you all and hope to hear from you all very soon!  Please write me and let me know how you guys are doing!

With all my love,

Elder Naylor