Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Howzit Fam!

Date:  May 9, 2016

Area:  Maseru, Lesotho
Companion:  Elder Woodland
Week 47


So this week seemed pretty chilled, We saw Nelson and his family like 4 times this week so that was cool, but we have run into a bit of a hiccup it seems. So because of tradition it can be hard to get married sometimes, you have to get it approved by the Elders of the family which sometimes live far away so you need to go see them. Then you have to have your traditional wedding which can take time and then you also have to pay labola, paying the family money so you can marry the girl. Its hectic and long and the cause for many people to just not get married at all. So we are still working with them to try and get it all sorted as fast as possible.

I had the wonderful chance to interview a young women for baptism. Her name is Liako and she is a student at the EMT class Elder Woodland and I teach at. She was interested in the gospel after a few lessons with her so we referred her to the other missionaries who work in her area. She has since then progressed so amazingly. She immediately stopped and broke old habits and hasn’t missed a day of church, she even skipped going to South Africa to shoot a music video so she could be at church. She is amazing! She gets baptized next week and it looks like I will be the one who will be blessed with walking into the freezing cold waters with her and I can't wait. It is when you see someone like her change so much and progress so far so quick that makes everything so worth it. I would gladly have 100 more rejections to find just one person! Whoo I am so excited!!!!!

We also had a nice DDM this week. I taught about unity and why and how. We also talked about how having unity with our companion isn’t just an option, it is a choice we made when we accepted our call to be a missionary. We played a game to test how well we knew our companions and that was fun, I think it went well and will be a lesson that they remember.

Another thought that I read about that keeps coming to my mind is how when we leave on mission we pack up our life and put it in the closet, now this is very literal for a lot of things, our cloths, or toys, our every possession in put into boxes and stored. We don’t only store material things though. We store our hobbies, our music, Movies,
Friends, and more. We pack them up and leave them behind for now. We don’t forget about them but we don’t pull them out of the boxes. Now when we come home from mission we see that some of the cloths don’t fit, or some we don’t want. The same applies to the other things we pack up, we may decide the music we listened to before is not what we want now, some of the friends we had before might not be what we need and our lives change, but after mission we unpack it all and we find a lot that we do keep and love still. The key is that we don’t unpack our bags on mission. I don’t know if this made sense or not, but it comes from an amazing talk called “the fourth missionary” and he does a better job at describing it.

https://annathemissionary.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/lawrence-corbridge-the-fourth-missionary.pdf

I have been blessed to be able to see the impact of the gospel on many peoples lives, including my own. I know that the spirit works through each of us as we give it place to. I know that God is waiting to answer us and probably already has, we just need to listen. He loves you! I love this gospel, I love everything about mission, I love these people, I love being able to serve my Lord and my God, I love the growth, I love the experience, I love the change, I love the hard work, I love the whole of it and it dosen't get much better than this. 

I love you! 
Elder North






Saturday, May 14, 2016

Happy Day!

Date:  May 9, 2016
Area:  Maseru, Lesotho
Companion:  Elder Woodland
Week 46

This was a pretty great week,

Nelson and his wife had their baby!!!! woot woot, the moment we have been waiting for, they named the baby hlonolofatso, which means blessing from God, they gave their beautiful daughter this name because they say when she was pregnant the missionaries came and brought blessings from God. So needless to say it was awesome and the baby is so cute! okay not gonna lie. lil black babies are so much cuter than lil white babies..... 

We are excited to be able to start to teach them again as they go home this afternoon, and we hope we can get them married and baptized by the 19th of next month!!!! ah this family is amazing and I love them so bad.

Happy mothers day to all you mothers out there! so my Mme is the best, she is just amazing. I would come home from long days of school and find her in my room just waiting for me to come home so we could have a few minutes to talk. she some how found time to come to my soccer games and other events even with all 9 children running around. I was never excluded or fell through the cracks, which is amazing considering all of the responsibility that she has. I love my mom so much and she has been the biggest blessing in my life. she has always showed me what is important in life and taught me so much by the way she has lived her life. I love my mommy so much and I know she is the best mom in the world. I would not trade her for anyone! not ever!

I love this gospel and it has brought such a light in my life, I have seen that light spread to others as they find the same joy from the gospel. Its true, and oh so good! I love you all and keep on going!

Elder North





I want this

Isn't she just the cutest.






Sometimes we get lonely

Friday, May 6, 2016

Another week of mission life.S

Date:  May 2, 2016
Area:  Maseru, Lesotho
Companion:  Elder Woodland
Week 45


So what has happened this week you may be wondering..... well let me tell you!!!!

So to start of the week we had DDM, I taught about the importance of scriptures and what they mean to us and what they mean to our Father in Heaven. We did this activity that I love to do at FHE's when younger kids are present but old enough to understand... so we are going on a trip, we board an air plain. me and my companion are seated in front and pretend to be pilots, saying things like, "welcome aboard the B-12 passenger cruiser, today we will be taking a beautiful trip from Johannesburg to Durban, the flight should last about an hour and should be a nice flight. I am you captain, along side me co captain.... and if you have any questions please ask one of our stewardess. *deedoo Attention passengers, we have just been cleared for take off and will be moving down the runway, please note that the seat belt sign is on and we should remain seated until we reach a cruising altitude of 15000 ft, when you see the light turn off you are free to move about the cabin. And so on and so forth, then uh oh we make crashing and blinking noises. We come on the radio and say please stay calm the seat belt sign is on and we would like all passengers to remain seated... later we start screaming and have them start screaming as we plummet to our death. right before we hit the ground we say freeze. Now right down in 2 min what you would tell your family right now. These are your last words, what would you say? Then when we collect them all we ask if these are important to them, they say yes. So we crumple and mash them up.... we ask them how they feel. They say bad. we then say exactly. That is how our heavenly father feels, He has given us scriptures, His last words to us, what He wants us to know!  What do we do with them? Leave them on a shelf never to be read?  How would you feel knowing that your family got your note and didn't even bother to read it, or they read the first line and decided it was "boring" If you asked me, I would be pissed! So let us not do the same to God, let us read His counsel, His direction, His love. 


The lesson goes sort of like that, of course there is some more, but I am lazy for writing it all.

We went to some caves, so the people that originally moved into the cave went there because they were being hunted by cannibals so they lived in caves, some people still live there! no electricity!






Inside the caves


Still gotta find people to teach.





The caves were closing in like 5 minutes
so we were too late to see them but we
kept talking to this Gogo and we
eventually got her to let us go and she even gave
us 50 percent off!!!!  Blessings on blessings.


What else, oh ya, so remember Nelson and his wife.  They are expecting any day, in fact I believe she is in the hospital right now. we are excited to teach them and they said that they were planing to get married on the 29th of May, so woot woot, we will see though with having a baby if it is possible to get it done so soon.

We met a new couple that we are teaching, they have been married for 4 years so we are praying they progress, sadly they didnt keep all our commitments but they did do one thing I asked. I told them that before bed, every single day they should pray together, holding hands. It is said a family that prays together, stays together. I believe it, and I think God does too. so I told them to do that because God expects them to stay together much longer than just four years. so that made me happy that they are doing that.

We got to play some cricket and softball the other day, we passed some kids playing and watched for a while then slowly crept closer until we were playing, now we are going to go play softball every Wednesday for a bit. Elder Woodland loves it because he played baseball back home so he has a blast. I like it too....

We have another great investigator, her name is Bolelang, she is about 26 or something and has come to church twice, thats like two more times then any other investigator!!!!

I heard something that I thought was so true, its something like this If there is no opposition, we are doing something wrong, we are not progressing, we are sitting on the fence. It is true. Life is not easy, and guess what... Good! If you were given everything you ever wanted and needed in life, would you ever learn anything?!?!? NO! When do we learn the most in our lives? when we are going through trials and hardship that's when we really grow and become all the better because of it. So life is tough, I say good. Lets learn and lets become better. That means you are moving in the right direction. If things are hard that means God is molding you into something greater. If you want to give up, don't!  You are almost there, I know it! If you want to cry, well me too but take another step anyways. Its all part of his plan and we can take comfort in that because would our Father In Heaven give us something that hurts us or breaks us????? NO! ya it may sting but in the end we have grown and found so much more joy from it. There is opposition in all things and without it we would never truly know joy, you know you are happy now because you are not sad. if you have never been sad then you would never know if you are really happy, you would be nothing..

sweet letter from Amber!
This was a pretty good week. We were finally able to get a list of the members in our area so we can start working with them and we have been able to make contact with about half of the people on the list. (even though I feel half our members are missing from the list) so we are super excited to start meeting with a part member family, a less active family with a missionary in Zimbabwe and more members to hopefully get some help in the area.

It was a long process of finding the name in the branch list, finding their gps coordinates and then trying to get a hold of them but a couple hours latter we now have somewhere to start.

We also went through the area book and picked out all the former investigators we felt were worth calling or visiting again. we hope to get one or two promising investigators that way as well.

We are very excited for this week. we sent some great companionship goals from, waking up exactly on time, to how we are going to be teaching.

We have also been focusing on teaching about the temples early in our visits with investigators and it is amazing how well it seems to always work. People love the concept of being sealed forever and helping their ancestors who didnt have a chance here.

Our whole district seems to be moving in a upward direction which is a huge blessings with up to 10 baptisms expected/ hoped for in the next two months.

My planners!




My awesome time that was ridiculously over priced.

We eat a lot of pap and chicken

Bought a six pack of coke and got this shirt and a cinch bag.


Oh ya I forgot, I did get mail a week or two ago from Grandma North and Mary thank you!!!!!

I LOVE YOU 
Elder North