Elder Mikel North: Bonus E-mail

Searching for people to teach in South Africa

Date: September 11, 2015
Area: Kimberly, South Africa
Companion: Elder Jena

Well I have learned a lot in the past two weeks :)

Something that I really liked and would like to share with you all is that it is a blessing to be loved. Some people go through life without a family, friends or anyone to tell them they are loved. It is sad to think that they believe no one loves them. God loves you! What an amazing blessing it is to know that simple truth that God is our loving Heavenly Father who loves you as an individual! Never think that no one doesn't get you, that no one is there for you, and especially that no one loves you. Those thoughts are not true and simply are not good for you physically, emotionally and spiritually! He loves you! He loves me! and how blessed are we to know that!

A quote I enjoyed was "if you cant stand it, kneel it." We all go through things that just seem unbearable, if you cant stand the trials you are going through, kneel down and pray for the strength. Something my companion Elder Jena likes to say is "Don't pray for a trial or struggle to go away but rather pray for the strength to go through it. It is from those challenges that we learn and grow." If we pray for them to go away then we will never learn.

We got Dominos pizza!!!

It was a big group of us but they left and we put the boxes together.

It was so good I almost cried.

So this week has been quite rough with getting to our appointments. Its seems that people just don't want to let us in their house or something. We had a day that was especially difficult as every single appointment we had set didn't happen. People just weren't home or didn't actually want us to come and teach them. It honestly sucks when all day you get bunked from your appointments. We ended up doing about 5 hours of tracting which really isn't that fun for the most part. Tacting means going knocking doors and contacting people in the street. We did that all day.... I thought to myself what would Jesus do in our situation. If he was to go somewhere to visit someone and they weren't there, would He say oh well lets go home or would He say, well who else is around here that I could teach. The day at the end wasn't so bad as we found new people to teach and worked hard all day, its satisfying to know you worked hard the whole day. It really makes you feel like a missionary.

Me and Nelson Mandela

Something that we do, or we try to do, every night is talk about the tender mercies of the day. Every day no matter where you are or what you are doing there are tender mercies. The Lord helps you every day in many small ways, too often we do not recognize them. I have found as I look for those small things I begin to realize the Lords hand in every effort of the day and you can see this in your own life as well. Too often we do not give thanks for the help we have received in the day. Think if you were to give your child help, guidance, protection, and much much more every day of their life and they didnt thank you for it how would you feel. Maybe he says thank you for one thing out of the many things you do every single day.

If you ever get the chance to meet a Nigerian you will have a great time, they love religion. Yes Its a stereotype but its a true one, we met a Nigerian man the other day and he immediately let us into his home to discuss more about the restoration of the gospel.

I ate chicken liver for the first time, and a lot of it. It was good, but the texture wasnt so nice haha so not my favorite thing, it was about on the same level as goat head.

I got to stay in a hotel this week as we went to zone confrence in bloem. It was cool to just hangout with a bunch of missionaries from other districts.

I got letters from McKay, Haiy, Callie, Gogo marry, mah, and amber! thank you all so much, much needed support and strength comes in letters, I love them so much.

I asked him a few questions and these were his replies

Well the biggest surprise for me of my mission was how much I love the scriptures now. I have never been one to like reading of any kind and that goes for my scripture study, I wasn't ever consistent at reading everyday and in turn I guess the blessings and comfort from scriptures were never consistent. I realized that I have been so blind to such an amazing thing my whole life, its been right in front of me but yet I refused to accept it. I have come to see

My zone

how amazing this gospel really is and I learn more and more each day on how it can better my life still! So it shocked me when I began to actually enjoy reading my scriptures, when I actually started to want to read and learn more and when the blessings started coming they came with force and power. This gospel is true and will bless your life if you let it. We have our agency and sometimes we don't use it well, I exhort you all to accept the blessings from heaven, accept the strength, courage, comfort, peace, and love that comes from studying your scriptures, and living to the truths of the gospel the best you can.

A lesson this week that I really enjoyed was when I was teaching a young girl named Tokelo, she is only 8 years old and getting ready for baptism. She was scared and crying because she felt like she wasn't able to be baptized because she felt as if she hasn't been a good girl. Like she wasnt good enough for baptism. She was crying because she felt like she wasn't a good daughter. I opened up my planer to a nice blank page and showed it to her. I explained how this white page was like us. We all make mistakes in our life and do things that we shouldn't, we call those things sin. When we sin its like taking a pen and putting a line on the page. I then scribbled a line, I told her we then make another, and another, and another. Soon the page was filled with scribbles and marks and was no longer this perfect and pure white peace of paper. I then told her that I have made many mistakes, your mom has as well and when we do we look at ourselves and say eish, look at me I am all marked up, I am not good enough, I am dirty and yucky. This is why we have baptism. God loves us and knows that we do bad things so when we are baptized it is like turning a new page. I talked a little bit more on how baptism cleanse us from sin and then I turned the page. when we come out of the water we have turned a new page in our lives and are clean again, before baptism we aren't clean and that's why we need it. I then went on to say but then we don't something wrong again and put another mark on the brand new paper, but when we take the sacrament we turn the page again and start out fresh.

Some of the shanty's people live in.
Man are we so very blessed!

I taught Tokelo on exchanges so she isn't in my area, I got a call from her yesterday and she told me that she wanted me to be the one to baptize her. I was super happy as the day wasnt going so well that just made it so good! I had the chance to give Tokelo a blessing about a month ago and when I did I just felt as if I was giving a fathers blessing to my own child and the feeling was unexplained and joyful. The gospel is amazing, it can confound the wise but is simple enough even a child can understand.

I get along with all of my boarding roomates very well, Razafindrakotos English isn't that good but he is so funny, Katimbo is always nice and patient and super humble, and Jena and I get a long very well.

Did you take any other shirts for Pday's other than your Riverton jersey? I have two other shirts, a Nike blue one and a red cotton one. I do wish I had a couple more because I don't want to wash my jersey so much that the patch begins to fade more than it is already.

A creature comfort? I don't know what that means. (food or clothes/material items) oh haha um... food, anything mama cooks. I do miss all my clothing, I only have white shirts and then 3 other shirts to go between.

Keep on keepin on

Love

Elder North