Greetings from Africa

This past week reminded us of the many blessings that come from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

One of the goals of our mission is to assist African young men and woman to serve full time missions.     This includes strengthening their testimonies, providing opportunities for them to work with full time missionaries, filling out missionary applications, obtaining police clearances, passports and medical/dental exams.   In the past 3 months we have done all those things.  We have a young woman and a young man with their mission calls!   I can't tell you how exciting that is for us.

  Larry realized that they did not have their patriarchal blessings.   He immediately began trying to make that happen.   Because we are not in a stake, there is no patriarch.  Things got a little complicated because each person needed to be interviewed by the mission president but he was not available.   The mission president called and authorized Larry to give the final interviews instead of him.    We contacted a patriarch from Durban (about 2 hours away) and he agreed to come up.   He said he could do 9 blessings for us....3 Friday afternoon, 3 Saturday morning and 3 Saturday afternoon. (That is a LOT of blessings!)   Larry contacted the 5 branches we work with and found out who else would like a blessing besides our 2 missionaries.   Friday afternoon we were at the chapel with the three members waiting for blessings.  As each person came out from their blessing, they were radiant.    They were not able to speak for quite awhile.   Then they began to express how the blessing had opened their eyes, or had changed them, or had taught them, etc.    Each blessing took an hour, and because transportation is such a problem, we all come together and go home together.  So we all sat together and basked in that wonderful spirit for over 3 hours.    Their lives were changed and our appreciation for these blessings was rekindled. 

That night we were blessed to have the patriarch stay at our home.   He spoke freely about his experiences for 2 hours.    Just one thought he shared:  " Heavenly Father has billions of children on the earth, yet he takes the time to stop what He is doing, and speak to one person and give him/her a very special message.   This message shows that he knows us individually, loves us, and has specific things just for us.  Isn't that incredible?"

  Saturday morning we picked up the next group for their blessings, and continued to feel this outpouring of love from Heavenly Father for these people.   Elder Todd and I felt so blessed to be a part of this.

As the blessings finished, we couldn't decide whether to drive people home (45 minutes each way) or give them the taxi money.   Suddenly Larry said, let's take them home.   After we dropped them off, Larry said "Should we stop by the Young Adult Activity?"   We were both tired and didn't really want to go, but we thought we would stop for 20 minutes.    To make a long story short, we helped set up, get food ready and then began to leave when the person in charge said:  " Thanks for speaking today."  We both looked at each other in confusion.   She said:   This is the spiritual part of the activity and that is why we asked you each to speak.  (Neither of us remember EVER hearing anything about this.   we hadn't even planned on attending this event.   Why would she think we were speaking?)   But 5 minutes later Larry spoke and did a great job.  I was grateful he had to go first because I had no idea what to say.   I wanted to run away and hide.  When it was my turn,  I didn't feel words flow from my mouth, but things that I had studied and read the week before, came to my mind and I shared them.    It might not have been a spiritual experience for them, but it was for me.

 We ended up staying and helping for 2 hours and then rushing to our appointment for the night.   During this appointment, the inactive brother committed to attend church the next day.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the path to happiness.   I am amazed at His love for each of us.

We count your friendship as one of those blessings in our life!  We read the RS and High Priest newsletter and enjoy hearing about the wonderful things you are doing.   We are especially grateful for the missionary work you are doing and the lives you are blessing.  We are grateful to join in fasting and prayer for Page, Abbey and Brad.  

Love, Elder and Sister Todd