Week Three

Hello everybody,

I wish I could tell you all something new I learned about South Africa this week, but I've been stuck in the mtc the entire time. Pretty much all that I know about this place is what people tell me and what I can see from the window. It's kind of like Spirit Prison. Our schedules are such that we can barely breathe without being told that we can, we're only let out in the yard to play sports an hour a day and to go to the cafeteria to eat. And I'm stuck with a companion that I don't really like while people are teaching us the gospel all the time. Besides that though, everything is pretty sweet. I've started over in my Book of Mormon reading, and It's crazy how differently I see it now. It's not just a book anymore. On Tuesday we went to the Joburg temple and the distribution center again. It was awesome. Everyone needs to go to the temple as often as they can. Also, at the distributioncenter they had this big Book of Mormon covered in wildabeast fur. It was crazy, it looked like something out of Harry Potter. They had a ton of stuff like that, and I took some pictures with it but I can't send them yet. It's been Interesting being here but I still can't wait to get out of the MTC. I'm leaving on the 13th, I'm excited to have a companion who actually knows what he's talking about. Yesterday we had something called TRC, which is where they bring referrals into the MTC to be taught by the new missionaries, and the teachers tell us that all of the people are real investigators but you can totally tell that they're all members. Some you can tell are wearing garments, others accidentally introduce themselves as Brother or Sister and one of them forgot that he was wearing his ctr ring. I thought one of the guys Elder Masaya and I were teaching yesterday was a real investigator until I realized that he had a vile of consecrated oil on his key chain and I couldn't take anything he was saying seriously after that. I also found out that polygamy is legal here because the chef in the cafeteria has 3 wives of his own. Apparently if we're teaching someone and we find out that they have more than one wife we're just supposed to stop teaching them. Today I'm also going on splits with the real Joburg missionaries and I'm pretty excited that I'll get to see some of what this place is actually like. Hopefully I don't get mugged. They had a member who is an ex-cop come in and talk to us for an hour about how not to get killed. It was pretty funny. But other than learning about the gospel and how to teach nothing else has really happened.

What I'm going to try and do since I do not have enough time to read all of my emails and then respond is I'm going to print out the emails as soon as I get on the computer, then respond to the previous weeks questions and read my emails when my time to write is up.

Dad-

1. I think that as long as it is an attachment and not a link I can open it because of the filters on the computers.

2-3. Anything printed out would be awesome. I just found out that I'm allowed to print here at the MTC but I don't know if there'll be a printer available wherever I go. I'll let you know as I find out.

4. I met up with Elder Dirkmaat in london. He is a pretty cool guy and we'll both be going to the same mission so I'll probably get to see a lot of him.

I love you all. Sorry I couln't tell you more but my time is up. Thank you for all the letters.

Josh