Elder Swindle In Africa

Well I cant believe its my last time sending home a weekly letter. This last week ive learned a lot spiritually as ive been able to reflect back on my mission. Its been priceless to look back and to think about all the wonderful things the Lord placed in my way here in South Africa. I was able to meet the people that changed my life only in a way they could. Im Forever thankful to be able to of met these people through the name of Christ, honestly there would be no better alliterative. I was able to bear my final testimony at Zone Conference, such a wonderful chance to share the things i was able to learn with all the wonderful Elders in my Zone. The spirit throughout the meeting was just the strongest and i felt like it just reminded us all of the importance of the work we were involved in. Also had the chance to give a talk about tithing combined with my departure testimony. I based my talk about how wonderful & supreme God is and how through sacrifice we can conn...

Wow i honestly could not even describe how AMAZING this last week was in mamelodi! Seeing my people that i haven't seen for about a year now, was just the best thing ever. So news came in that im still a zone leader for the Pretoria zone(hit my 14 month of ZL 😨) and we will be whitewashing Mamelodi 4 which includes about half of the previous area i served in last year. BUT also includes/consists mostly of the most ghetto boonies in both mamelodi East & West! My companion who will be joining me for this wild ride will be Elder Burberry from Bountiful Utah- a really chill and down to earth guy & ready to work! Within the last week we had massive roits that blocked the whole main road so that was a adventure getting around. Elder Sudberry is not really used to the township feel coming from Pretoria east a big city so its fun to see him freak out a bit haha So the whole week has been full of eating food from members and getting to know them! We are blessed to ...

What a week! But a week that will be remembered! Started the week of with zone conference-always a spirit that will knock you out of your seat kinda experience. Always love when zone conference comes around because i know im going to get a handful of inspiration that will last a life time! The next day i went on exchanges with a home boy from Provo Elder Wallace, got to check out Mabopane and meet some wonderful people! One thing thats sweet is i met a lot of the founders of the mabopane ward- the people who were there when it all started! They started in a shack and moved countless times, and now today have 140+ faithful members with an huge chapel! So that gave a lot of hope to me and my Hammanskraal family! We Me this one sister that was so reliant on the book of Mormon and is converted to the words to the point that she KNEW if she implemented its teachings into her life she could be in the celestial kingdom one day. Loved her faith and it defiantly inspired me! We...

Well its been a week full of lots of great lessons and also Miracles! Saturday as we were driving to a members place that lives in the middle of no where in a village we are driving down the road to his house then all of the sudden my right pec on my chest just feels like i got struck by lightning! So im yelling an stop the car and my companion jumps out of the car wondering what in the world is happening, then it happens another time. Then it stops and i was just like did i have a stroke or what? So get back in the car just thinking to my self what in the name just happened...? Then we go to the members house and shake his hand and it happens again! Right in front of the member who also has a guest over... I start jumping around in pain, i rip my shirt off and look down and theirs a big black something moving underneath my garments. So that just starts making me jump around and yell even more, and it turns out to of been a massive black wasp like as big as your index ...

What a incredible week! I dont think ive ever been more busy my whole mission compared to this week! So to explain  first before i explain about the details, we prayed Sunday night for a "PERFECT WEEK" i guess we didnt really know exactly what we meant but we prayed for it. It all started off on Tuesday, We had a awesome zone service in the Montana elders area, we did so much manual labor i but my back out probably for the rest of my mission. None the less it was a great opportunity for zone unity and we had a blast. After which we where able to able to see everyone we had scheduled for, including sister Maleka and her family, we felt inspired to bring a sister and her husband from the group teaching with us and we had a wonderful discussion about eternal marriage and temples. We Were finally able to have a productive lesson with sister jackquine(less-active) were she was able to feel the spirit. Wednesday we watched the world wide missionary broadcast. Yes we ...

Good morning over there! Yeah so the new house is sweet, its pretty roomy for both of us. We are getting so much more work done now its incredible. We found a ton of new investigators last week and this week and we have been able to see most of them. Lots of cool story's. First we broke our record for investigator lessons taught in a week sense we opened the area!  And we decided to track down as many of the former investigators as we could and we found Maria and pindilea who are wonderfully prepared, they had a brother who was takin the lessons and was going to be baptized but the missionary's were taken out of the area and their brother bongoni passed away. It was crazy when they showed us his BOM that he would study out of and the old pamphlets. Besides that we found a lot of father led family's and they all look promising. We are a happy bunch and should have sister mathodi baptized on the 29th. She is awesome, every time she blows me away with signs of a c...

Loved this week, lots of progress with the area, and lots of activity's! All day zone conference/Christmas braai @ presidents house / interviews with president/ practicing soccer for a upcoming zone activity! We also put Victor on date for March 26th and had a record 30 people at church this week! Awesome to see 3 investigators show up and to feel the spirit as we all watched the Christmas devotional! President eyrings talk was powerful loved it! Great week excited to have a Christams themed week and track all day if needed to teached everyone i can about Christ! Love, Elder swindle

Enjoy!

🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 This week we had a few things popping for us! First off we had a mission tour by inspired Elder Elis from the 70- it was pretty cool combined zones with Pretoria, good to see all my good buddies again! On Friday i went on exchanges with elder Renyolds, fav brit missionary/old zone leader comp in Pretoria. Always a good time together we were able to find a few new investigators, one of which Victor, came to church a bared his testimony! Wow. Didnt see that coming! Then of course church was always a bomb, fast&testimony meeting with 15 people at church was awesome! We filled the whole hour with spirit packed testimony's From some of my favorite people in this world!💪(funny to think 100+ people on sacrament meeting back home cant even fill a whole hour of powerful testimony's!) 🤔 Great learning week that has giving me much! Grateful for my comp & his Ugandan jokes that sometimes leave you clueless... but a good guy! Gratful to be here a...

This week was so awesome!!! it was a long stressful week with lots of prep for sacrament meeting in Hammanskraal!!! Basically every day we were slammed with arraignments/assignments with zero help from the soshanguve ward or the bishop. They were not very excited to lose some of their members to Hammanskraal so they decided not to help us even in the smallest means!! Well to bad for them it went AWESOME! About 16 people showed up besides us and President chad. & his wife, came and attended. Some members had not attended for years until yesterday! The first councilor in sosha ward spoke along with me, and president. The spirit was so strong it was over whelming! We all sang with power it was amazing. I loved every moment of it! The only thing that we will try and fix next time was the flock of doves that decided to land on the roof in the middle of sacrament meeting haha im sure someones got a shot gun around here 😁 Everyone was so happy and everyone couldn't h...