So I will start with an explanation about what has been happening the last few weeks. The week that I didn't send one we were at the internet shop and the internet connection was lost while I was typing the email to you. So I just continued to type in hopes that the connections would come back by the time I finished. But it didn't so we decided to save the email on Elder Hales's flash drive so that I could send it last week. But then when we tried to pull up the email on the flash it came up with all of these crazy symbols and things. But part of the draft saved so I retyped it and that is the one you got last week. I then proceeded to type another email and while it was trying to send it the time ran out and so it didn't send. When that happened we were about to head to the house of the bishop of the Highlands ward to go have a party for Elder Roberts so I didn't have time to get back on and resend it. Then today when I got on I was going to send it but the draft was completely gone. I hope that you will forgive me.
So to answer a few of your questions now. They do celebrate Valentine's Day here but it is not near as big of a thing here as it is there. It is more like they mention it to each other but that is the end of it. When we contact people it is when we speak to them on the street or in the markets and invite them to come to church while sharing something to hopefully spark an interest. Most missions only have to contact like 10. It is difficult but we manage. When President Dube gave us the challenge even the APs were shocked. When it rains hard here and we ride our bikes in rivers the houses don't flood because they don't have basements and they are built like at least a foot and a half above the ground.
We had transfers this week, I'm staying in Glenview with Elder Sefatsa. So it will be good. We now know the main part of our area fairly well so we are starting to branch out a little bit. We had three baptisms on Saturday. All three were referrals from members and all three were fairly young. One was our Ward Mission Leader's daughter, Greshan Chamunorwa, she is 11. The next was the son of a recent convert from September, Tatenda Mavhiki, he is 13. Then the last one is the neighbor to our mom in the area Sister Gondokondo. His name is Ashley Benura. He is 14. They progressed very quickly so it was good. The baptisms went very well, but Tatenda got sick so he couldn't get confirmed but the other two got confirmed as well as Dexter from a few weeks ago. Next week is Stake Conference so Tatenda will have to wait 2 weeks to be confirmed. While we were starting to branch out this week we had one of those really cool experiences that was definitely divine intervention. We have been teaching these guys that stayed close to us but then they moved to part of our area where we have never been so we called them one day and set a time to go to their place. While we were in the area after finding out the address was wrong and thinking that we had just wasted an hour we were stopped by this family as we rode by. The father had been baptized in South Africa a few months ago but the mother was still living in Zimbabwe. She had been living in Buluwayo which is like a five hour drive from Glenview and was about to be baptized on the 13th but then the father came back and she had to come here. We set a time to meet them and have now seen them twice. They were even at church yesterday which is a difficult thing for them because the father has a heart condition and they stay far from the church. It made us very happy to see them. Devote, the girl who we could only teach on Sundays left for Buluwayo this week just before her baptism, I hope that she will get a hold of the missionaries there. We have been told that Shelton will be back by the end of the month so we can continue to teach him. But we have also been teaching his older brother, Stanley, who was going to get baptized on Saturday but he got a call on Wednesday that his aunt died so he had to go to her funeral. So we moved it back to the 5th of March.
I think that my rain coat and pants are at the office, have three packages there so I will see later. I got a Valentine's Day card with $5 in it from Brother and Sister Wood. As soon as I get envelopes I will send them a thank you note. But you can tell them that I really appreciate it. Well that is all I have for today, I hope that all is well at home, you are in my prayers.
Love,
Elder Cecil
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