"Not as important, but you can still read"-- 1/17

Well, as you can see from the title of this e-mail, I definately feel
that this letter is not nearly as important as the one that Shell
dropped on me this  week. Im sure excited for you shelly, but wish
that I could be there. Its kinda wierd to think that youll be married
when I come home, but I guess that I should have expected it. I hope
that the rest of you all are doing fine and that everyone is happy. I
wrote a long letter last week to everyone, but when I pushed send it
logged me off and I ran out of time to write anything more, so sorry
that you were not able to get it. Things have been going really well
over here lately. Last week I had some really cool things happen. The
first was that one of my recent converts went to the temple to do
baptisms for the dead and loved it. She is now really pumped about the
gospel and everything seems to be going well with her. We also have
another recent convert that is planning to go to the temple and has
been preparing names for it for the last few months. the temple is
closed for renovation, but will open in a few weeks and she is
planning on going the week that it opens. Its really cool to see
things like that and helps you to feel really good. Elder Mapamje and
I were talking yesterday and we have set a new goal to have a branch
here by August. That gives us six months to find people, baptize them,
and get them ready to fill all of the callings from Branch Pres. to
relief society Pres. Please pray for us, because I feel that this
could be one of the hardest goals that I have set in my life. I know
that its possible and I have a lot of faith, but honestly I know that
if its done it will not be because of me and Elder Mapanje. It will be
because the Lord helped. Pres. Sabey often talks about Moses 1:39
where it says, "This is my work and my glory to bring to pass the
immortality and eternal life of man".  It is not our work, but his and
he knows how to do it and in what way to do it. If you put your trust
in him and work as hard as you can it will all work out. There is a
really cool experience that helps to explain this for me. About a
month ago, I was on splits with another missionary in my area when an
appointment failed and we decided to contact. Elder Dixon when he came
here told us to knock on the biggest gaits we can find, because they
are the ones that have the biggest houses behind them and those houses
hold the future leaders of this area in them. We decided to follow his
counsel and found the biggest gait we could and knocked on it. A girl
came out and told us that she was really busy and that we should come
back later. Normally Im not very pushy when I contact, but this time I
was for some reason and asked the girl if we could help her with what
she was busy doing. She said no and after some time she finally in
desperation told us that she would go and call for her madam to talk
to us. The madam came out and to our surprise she was really excited
for us to come and talk with her. We went into the back of the house
and come to find out she is not the owner of the house, but is
actually the housekeeper because the owner is in Germany. We taught
her and her sister a really powerful lesson and committed them to
baptism after they knew that these things were true, which they
accepted. Over the last few weeks we have been going to them and every
visit we have felt the spirit there stronger than almost any other
lesson I have ever felt. Last week we had a lesson with her where we
taught the plan of salvation and when we came back she was so sad,
because she had done an abortion early in her life and when we taught
about the plan of salvation she found that God has a plan for each of
his children and she felt like she had prevented one of Gods spirits
from coming to earth. We had a really powerful lesson on repentance in
which I cried like a baby, and she asked if she could be baptized. The
next appointment she failed and when we asked her sister she said that
she was relocated to a village far away and that she would be really
hard to get in touch with. This last week we have been able to get
into contact with her and she told us that even thought it is far she
iis trying to get located back to her old area and that even if she
cant she will still come to church every sunday and she was able to
come this last sunday again. We went on splits with the zone leaders
and while we were with them they asked her why she wanted to be
baptized. She said that ever since the first day that we came she felt
good inside and she just knew that it was true. They were able to help
her to recognize the promtings of the Holy Ghost and now she has a
baptismal date for the 30 of Jan. Well, Im out of time, but I just
want to say that I know that this church is true and Im grateful to be
a part of it. Love you all  a lot. Ty