September 21, 2008

Dear family,

Sounds like things are going good around home. Sounds like your getting pretty big there Spencer. I am trying to lose weight myself, it's hard though when your fed a giant plate of rice, mutton curry, and a glass of Coke every night for dinner. Advice mission wise, the only thing I would do differently is bring a better camera, and music, but not a music player, just buy one when you get there because its too much of a hassle to deal with power converters. Other than that everything has worked out great for me. I think that I will have around six areas on my mission too, and I am keeping a journal. That is interesting to know that Thabo Mbeki stepped down. I knew that he was getting a lot of criticism from the ANC, but sounds like they got him out. I will give you a brief on politics over here. The political party called the ANC has a presidential candidate called Jacob Zuma. The Zulu people have said they will do anything to get him into office because he is Zulu. The problem is he has committed a lot of crimes including rape, and is supposed to be in jail by the time of elections so its a bad situation. Politics here are so terrible because of the tribes and things, but I don't think there will be a big difference from day to day life until next year. On a lighter note we are having a baptism on Sunday so that will be nice. It's a lady that was taught by previous missionaries so I haven't been that involved in the conversion process. Our other investigators are doing well too. Two zones of missionaries came on the trip to the mosque. We went into the mosque and a IPCI (Islam Propoganda Centre International) told us about some of their beliefs and things and answered some questions. They let us take pics in the mosque and stuff. After that they took us up to an office room and tried to engage in a bible bash with us and tried to show us anti Mormon material. I was surprised about the whole thing. I guess they did that because we were so young and felt we had been mislead into going on missions, and they hate westerners. I was sitting with Elder Katende the Elder from Uganda who I used to run on the beach with in my old area, and he is very familiar with Muslims and their beliefs. He told me the only Muslims that aren't radical are the ones who don't understand their religion. So my perception of Muslims has changed a lot, for the worse.

Well I think a camera for christmas sounds good, but I will be happy with anything you decide to send. I will try and get these pics online as soon as possible. I realised something this morning, my year mark on mission is a weak from Saturday; its hard to believe. Anyways have a good week and I will talk to you later, and I didn't get your email spencer.