Christmas and New Year's!

 Heard from Caleb again today. Poor kid has been sick. 

He said their was some suspicious meat in some finger foods he ate.

But, seeming to like the new area, especially having more options for food!

He found some Tim Tam! Anyway, his email this week was pretty detailed,

so here it is:

 

Hello Everyone! I hope you are all doing amazing and that you've all had a wonderful holiday season! For me, its been a blast although its kinda weird for it to not be cold 

First and foremost, I got transfered! I have left Nhlangano in Eswatini and moved to an area called Ladysmith in South Africa. Compared to my previous area its much more wealthy here. Everyone here has a proper home with a roof overhead, in my last area we ran into many people that didnt have phones or proper addresses so it was quite difficult to teach them after our first time meeting them, so far in Ladysmith that hasn't been an issue at all! 

For Christmas all the missionaries went down to Durban, we had mission Conference on the 23rd and 24th and then partied on Christmas day. Honestly the whole time was a party but there was also a lot of insightful things that were discussed during mission Conference. One of the biggest take aways that I recieved and that i somehow feel everytime we have zone conference is that the missionary work is a work of miracles, which I'll touch on a little bit later.

During mission Conference we did a service activity where we made little school supply bags, for children and families that cant provide the supplies they need for their child to go through school. We ended up making somewhere around 5,000 supply bags and it was super awesome, its wonderful that the Lord can provide such gifts to those that need them.

After Christmas we all went to our areas, but unfortunately a bunch of missionaries (including myself) got food poisoning it was no fun but nothing can stop the Lords work!

New Year's is a crazy time in South Africa, its basically just a reason to party and drink... in the middle of the road! On Tuesday we were trying to leave our area but people had put rocks in the road basically to close it off to have a block party. Due to the craziness on New Year's eve, all the missionaries had to be inside by 2 PM, which meant our regular working day was only like 3 ½ hours

I mentioned previously that what I took away from mission Conference was that missionary work is a work of miracles. This is for one huge reason. In Early November our mission president had a conference with all the mission leaders in the Africa South Area, and they were asked, in one sentence, what their goal was for December because every mission in Africa South sees the work slow down in the month of December. Our mission president said that the SADM's gift to the Savior would be that every missionary would baptize 1 child of God in the month of December. By December 21st, 115 people had made covenants with our Heavenly Father in the month of December. And on the 28th of December 17 more people were able to be baptized. The Lord is hastening His work, and He blessed the SADM missionaries to be able to find 132 people that were ready to go before the Lord with a contrite spirit and broken heart in the waters of baptism!

Sorry that this weeks was so long but there was a lot to catch up on!

Love you all,

Elder Roskelley