Week #17 Greetings From Swakopmund

Hello everyone! Hope you've all had an amazing week and were able to enjoy the end of the holiday season. This week has had a few surprises, to which area/s I'm serving in as well as some mission rules. So we can get right into a report of my week and its adventures/ surprises!

 Also, as of Monday, I have officially been serving as a missionary for 4 months!

Tuesday:

Today I woke up to some amazing news… we were told that we’re going back to Swak! We planned on leaving Wednesday morning so we had to deep clean the flat which sucked cause I had just deep cleaned the Swakopmund flat but since I was going back to Swak I didn't mind 

All of our phone lessons were canceled today so we went and joined Elders Machisu and Wanambuko for two of their lessons. We went to a member's house after who usually hosts an FHE for the missionaries each week but turns out she's in England right now. So another member who is also staying there came out and showed us the RC car that he completely built from scratch which was pretty sick. Not long after showing us, there was a tiny crowd of people around us asking to try and drive it. We ended the night by getting some nice ice cream twists.

Wednesday:

We drove to Swak this morning and I was so excited to get there and show Elder Were all of the awesome people/ area! Turns out the car had other plans… As soon as we arrived the tire just randomly blew up out of nowhere. So we fixed that, picked up the flat keys from a member, and headed to the flat.

After throwing all of our stuff in the flat we got in the car to head out for the day and it wouldn’t turn over. Not a good first impression of Swak for Elder Were! 

After looking around for someone to help us our landlord got another tenant to come help us.

Finally, after getting out we went and saw a few members, had a few lessons, and even saw the notorious Bouta (finally figured out how to spell his name right). He was trying to race the car but only when I was moving. If I stopped,

 so would he.

I’ve also been calling with Tolbert every night which is pretty fun. Apparently they just sacrificed a sheep with Bishop Pule in Kanye (I did get videos).

Thursday:

We taught a handful of lessons today over the phone as well as in person. We also got to see a few friends and members who are finally starting to trickle down from the villages up north.

We helped one member family fetch water because they were gardening when we got there so we wanted to help.

Right before we headed home we had one last phone lesson so we parked the car and started. While we were teaching I looked up and saw a man carrying a conspicuous looking garbage bag. I could see that it was some sort of butchered animal (assuming a cow) but when I looked a bit closer it definitely was not a cow. There was a long tail sticking out of the bag… it was a dog. He was trying to get into a taxi but there were a few of them that wouldn't let him in until finally he found one. 

Friday:

Today didn’t have anything particularly exciting aside from youth activity. We went to the beach with the youth and I taught them how to throw a rugby ball. We did that for a bit and then Elder Were tried to walk on his hands and split his pants bad so we ran to the flat to fix that. 

I did three baptismal interviews now that I am the DL so that took a little over an hour and my mouth was so dry after talking for that long.

Ended the night by making some bomb fried chicken that Tolbert taught me how to make!

Saturday:

We had a nice amount of lessons today (phone and in person). We taught some mission prep. But other than that we didn’t have anything crazy happen today.

Finished the night by making a notorious Bots/Nam mission meal… “Hambeggatoes” Ground Beef, Eggs, Potatoes. 

It was very mid as I'm sure you'd expect.

Sunday:

Sunday morning we hopped in the car to leave for church and when I turned the key I heard the same *click click click* noise from a few days ago. The car once again would not start so we ended up taking a taxi to church and barely made it on time. It was nice and we had a lot of friends show up today so that was a blessing. We had a lot of phone lessons cancel today which sucked but we managed to stay busy. The reason we have so many phone lessons is because we are still teaching people in Windhoek from a distance and also because many people are still up North visiting family. 

Monday:

My alarm this morning was Elder Were walking full stride into the glass sliding door so that was very funny.

We baked some cookies because it was the branch president's wife’s birthday the other day and Elder Were also wanted to learn how to bake cookies. 

Elder Were got a haircut and the guy right before him totally looked like Clubber Lang (Mr. T) 

We went and played some soccer at the beach and relaxed a bit. 

We ended the night by going and saying hi to Leticia because she is finally back from the north and she was crazy as usual 

Spiritual Thought:

Sometimes we may be given commandments or asked to do things that we may not fully understand but it is our responsibility to accept and submit to the will of God.

I can’t remember the Scripture but it talks about how the timing of the Lord is not man’s timing and the Knowledge of God is not man’s Knowledge and the Will of the Lord is not man's will. 

Something along the lines of that.

Conclusion:

I hope that you all had an amazing week this week and it was good to hear from a lot of you this week.

As always, all my love,

Elder Miller

I’d love to hear from all of you @ Heath.Miller@missionary.org

Our last day in Windhoek before heading to Swakopmund. I didn't mind leaving the 35 degree heat for the nice 20 degrees in Swak!

I can't tell you how happy this photo makes me.

Youth activity.