Placide was finally baptized
This week was an interesting one for sure, it was pretty long but also the weeks just zoom by, mission time is really odd.
Monday- went to a dope waterfall, I talked abt this in last week's email.
Tuesday- had the most trash morning ever, pretty heartbreaking stuff but hey it's out of my control and in God's hands now.
I said goodbye to 3 Elders who finished their missions today, one of them was American and his parents came to pick him up, they took us out to a fancy lunch (mcdonalds)
And we started telling his parents some stories... and from the look of absolute horror and fear on his dad's face, I don't think his son really told him what goes on here lol.
Wednesday- yet another morning that was rough, we were at district council and guess who walks in? The Assistants of the President, and they have with them 4 more greenies that just landed today!
And some of you may think oh wow that's so awesome, and while it is cool that they are here a few days early, it means elder Cottrell has to babysit. And don't get me wrong, I love looking after kids, but not when they're grown adults and we're walking the streets of Africa and they all decide to split up away from me.
I can't be a babysitter and a shepherd come on now.
By the end of the day they were all clapped, shirts untucked, ties coming off, they looked like they had enough. Butttt it was only 6 o'clock and we still had 2 hours to work, they were pretty surprised to learn you don't actually get to just go home early for the day lol.
Thursday- ok I'm gonna be honest this week was kind of just full of bad mornings, but once we got out for the day, I'm able to take my mind off of stuff so it's chill. I did some training with the now 5 new greenies, it's so crazy the growth I've seen on my mission just in the almost 8 months I've been out here. We went to a really ✨️ safe ✨️ part of Durban, I was with my ZL and we visited the awesome family from Uganda that just got baptized last week! Everyone in that sketchy downtown area was giving us the most "what in the hail are you doing in this part of town" look. Then if we just spit some Zulu at them, they absolutely lose their mind, it's pretty fun.
Then we visited the Ndlovu family, a fam of 5, who live in a room that's about the size of a king size bed. Can you even imagine that? 2 adults and 3 little girls all share this tiny space, like when we walked in the "house" the door couldn't even open all the way because it's just such a tiny space and they hardly even have room to breath in there.
Then the father asked if I could give him a blessing, he was very sick and needed that power of God in his life, it's some if these little moments that give me so much to be grateful for, I would encourage you all to take a look at your own situation and see what God has given you, and what do you do with it?
Friday- 🚨 Transfer day 🚨
My first transfer where something isn't changing for me! Alder is staying put and so am I, he is my first comp of my whole mission to stay with me for more than 6 weeks! We went to get breakfast at.. you guessed it, mcdonalds again! I got like a milk chocolate doughnut thing which was pretty fire.
Also does mcdonalds in the states not have doughnuts? I really can't remember.
Anyways we're chowing food and then a mcdonalds employee comes out with bucket hats, 9 of them.. our whole district was graced by Ole Ronald and we got them for free! I'm not a fan of bucket hats but it's a cool souvenir lol. Then in all the excitement of getting something as cool as a bucket hat, we forgot that we actually needed to be at transfers in 5 minutes, and it's a 10 minute drive.
Idk if any of you have watched fast and furious recently but if you look closely it was actually just film of us driving to transfers, we were cooking. Thankful we don't have the tiwi thing or whatever the state side missionaries have that tell you to slow down.
Anyways I loved seeing a bunch of dope elders again, Ferguson came down from Swaziland and is now my ZL, everybody knows pres is just prepping him for that shiny AP position 😉.
We got everything packed into the cars and it was just dumping rain, anything and everything just got absolutely soaked.
Alder and I do a lot of funny voices when we talk to each other and it was starting to be like we never spoke in a normal voice, and I can't be having my date back home think I'm a complete dork, so we made it a point to try and avoid it... guys it was bad, it felt like I was having withdrawals.
Saturday- Things started turning around today, the AP's went on a split with us so that one of them could take me to get ice cream and talk by the beach in the morning. It was really nice and helped me to refocus my mind on what God's purpose is for me being here and realizing that I can't beat his plan. The things I wanted aren't always what he needs to happen, so recently I've really tried to do the whole "Align my will with Gods" then after that we walked a short little pier and got some of the Only genuine Mexican food you will ever find in Durban. It was so fire.
The rest of the day we absolutely Grinded the day away, just finding, finding, and more finding. Also start fasting for ...
Fast Sunday!- we started off March with the wonderful baptism of Placide! Yes, he may have been late for church... butttt he still made it into the font in time so it's all good. Besides the water being a weird green color and Placide not going all the way under the water the first time, it was a pretty good baptism. Nothing like Sunday being the day of stress... I mean rest.
I gave a talk about baptism because the member that said they were going to give it just didn't come to church that day (bc it was raining)
After church was all said and done we went to the apartment to eat, then as we left the house I shut the door (which automatically locks itself) and the second it shuts I hear Alder say, NO COTTRELL I DONT HAVE THE KEYS.
Yeah... we got locked out of our apartment, there's no spare key, our housing coordinator wasn't picking up the phone. So we did what any normal person would do, find a paperclip and the spring of a clothes pin, and take turns picking the lock.
Now you may all be thinking, there's no way you can actually get into a lock with just a paperclip, that's definitely gotta just be a movie thing.
Well you're wrong! We got into that dang house with a paperclip. If yall thought your locks were keeping you safe, I'm about 5 cents away from going wherever I want.
Once we really did get out of the house we went to the chapel where we saw a cat had broken in, we tried catching it but I'm convinced it was Puss in boots, without the boots.
Monday- sheesh this email is getting long, sorry yall, hopefully you could make it this far. Today all we really did was go shopping, went bowling, played some lekker basketball and soccer.
I also bought a new suit, check the Google photos out for a pic...
Spiritual thought:
Jesus Christ was sent to earth to Atone for our sins, if we can look at this word "Atone" and space it up, it becomes "at one"
I know that through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ we can all become At One with Christ, he can and will heal your broken parts, let him in your life so he can clean you up!!
Love you all, if you have any questions, I really am craving to hear from yall 😉
-Elder C