Madadeni (05/19/97)

Family-

Hello!  This will be another one of those short letters as I don't have a whole lot to write about.  This week has been a crazy week, one that I hope not to repeat on mission.  I won't go into detail here, but thing just kind of hit the fan after I phoned Pres. about the situation with Elders in our zone. I'll tell you details when I get home.

We finally moved into the new chapel this week.  It was so nice to be there this Sunday!  We had 26 investigators there yesterday between the Elders and us.  The people are just so excited to have a new church in their township. The church is already too small for the amount of people that attend.  I don't know if I explained it, but what they've done .. but, we need 100 people attending each week before they'll build a chapel, but the branch here didn't have anyplace suitable to meet. They were meeting in a dirty, run down day care center where all the classes had to meet outside.  They pulled in some of those trailers, almost like mobile home type things and turned it into a meeting house.  They put it on half of the lot so as soon as we reach 100 they can start building a real chapel on the other half of the lot.  Then they'll pull the temp. buildings out and put them somewhere else where they can start up a branch.  It's really a smart idea.


We are sitting in a clinic right now.  Yesterday my companion went into a dog cage.  The dogs got excited and were playing with her.  She got a little scratched up and so now she's worried about tetanus and rabies. I guess it's good to be cautious especially in the township.  There are a lot of interesting diseases here.

Well, this may be my last letter home from South Africa.  I don't know how long it takes for my letters to arrive there.  I won't be able t send this one until next week.  So, we'll have to see.

I love you all!

Take care!

Love,
Michelle :)

(Just a little explanation in regard to "things hitting the fan" after I called Pres about the situation with the Elders in our Zone.  I don't remember all of the details now, but I know that we all kind of started getting a little laid back, by mission standards, at least.  There was one set of Elders in our Zone that my companion and I got along with really well and somehow we got into a practical joke war, things like putting Vaseline on door handles etc. It was all innocent and all, but the last joke that the Elders played on us, caused a few issues.  They made a wedding cake and left it on our front porch and then decorated our car in "Just Married" fashion.  And I think they even decorated the front of our house a bit... though I can't remember for sure.  So, anyhow, several of our neighbors commented on it and asked which one of us got married etc.  Not the best impression to make in regard to Mormon missionaries! :)  I was concerned about this and wanted to explain things. I told him about the wedding prank, but he didn't really give me a chance to actually explain anything else, he just simply said that he was due up in our area for interviews anyhow and that he would be up the next day to meet with us and learn the details.  I was fine with that, and hung up.  Well, I guess Pres changed his mind about that, instead he made the Elders drive down to Durban and reamed them!  They got some major chewing out. I felt horrible, because of course, they took all the blame and we got off scott free for our part in the pranks.  There was some other underlying issues that I had wanted to talk to Pres about also, which I will talk about in the next letter that I sent home, but I was disappointed that I didn't get that chance)