Re-assigned to Mexico City??!?

So uhh...
Yeah
I'm not actually getting a reassignment, but I needed clickbait and more importantly, my homeboy Ethan Powell got his mission call to Mexico City! So beyond excited for him so I just had to give him a shoutout to the 3.5 people who read my emails!

This week was honestly just crazy, so grab a DR. Pepper and enjoy being in America where your door locks actually do something.. and get a Lil taste of what South Africa had for me this week.

Monday: bowling, mall, etc.

Tuesday: This is the day I wrote last week's email lol. 
The Zone leaders also surprised us with an exchange, I got to go to Mayville! It's one of those town/township areas, not the safest place in the world but... it's South Africa so really, it's safe just about nowhere. But Mom, don't you even worry, we didn't come that close to dying this week as we did last week! I call that Progress!! 
 
Something I did witness today though was while we were in the Central Business District of town, we parked the car on the side of the road and waited for our lesson to come down from the apartment. Now in South Africa everyone is tryna make a couple extra bucks, so this guy was "helping" to back us into our spot when all of a sudden, he runs to the side of the car that I'm sitting on, grabs a random dude's bag, proceeds to kick the poor guy right in the face, and finishes it off with the nastiest knuckle sandwich I've ever seen. And then ran away..
Like what the heck did I just see ?! I was like waiting for Batman to show up but then remembered oh wait this is real life and I'm not watching from a movie screen. 
 
Anyway, then we ran out of gas and rolled into the gas station on hopes and prayers. 
#churchistrue

Wednesday: District Counsel was great, my District leader who I have to accept as my companion (Elder Alder) gave a great training on Listening, or at least that's what I was told, wasn't really listening...jokes jokes. I promise I'm a great listener.
 
For our District lunch we decided to get Pizza, and on our drive over to the place we saw that the road was actually blocked off, why you may ask? There was another dead body laying in the middle of the road, in case you haven't noticed, the people here are not very good at playing crossy road... on the phone or in real life. Then once he was moved from the road to the sidewalk we went back to the chapel where we saw Gogo Duduzile.
 
For those that don't know, a "Gogo" just means grandma and duduzile is the most gangsta granny I've met here. She always talks with an American accent with us, says "what's good gang" and "ayyo cuh". Then as she was leaving the chapel she hit us with a, "see you later N***a" anyways if you can't tell what it says then I'm sorry, but it was so freaking funny I was dying.
 
Alder was like 6 inches away from getting crapped on by some really big birds, for a second I thought I was in the middle of a pearl harbor reenactment and things got real scary. But we left that lesson unharmed.
#churchissotrue
 
And to finish off today, we literally almost had a mission reassignment to Heaven, we were driving home going a ✨️ safe ✨️ speed, (it was almost past curfew) and we noticed some headlights in front of us... actually they were coming towards us, we swerve out of the way almost going up over the curb, and this car zooms past us. The rest of the drive home we didn't speak a single word and didn't go above 25 mph.
Fun times.

Thursday: Got some lekker 20-rand pancakes from the store, I tried a new Dr. Pepper flavor. Why did nobody tell me there was Dr pepper creme soda? It's pretty good to be honest. Leaving the store, we saw some guy who Elder Ferguson and I met way back in September. He just tried to bash with us the whole time and asked how we are saved. We just continued walking bc he's just out here to cause problems and raise Contention. We saw brother Holder (6'3 230-pound monster) riding a little moped scooter thing. It was a sight to see for sure.
 
Sister Nelly made fun of Alder for being chubby back home, and then she asked him to go get McDonalds for her using her mobile app so she can get points. 
 
I met with Bishop's fam for the first time and they're awesome! They had Shrek playing on the TV in the background, so you already know I was HOOKED, and they have two little kids who are just so dang funny. Ik I've said it before, but I can't wait to be a dad. It's gonna be so cool. Anyway, the only thing I didn't like about the visit with them was their bathroom... THERES A WINDOW RIGHT ABOVE THE TOILET THAT LOOKS DIRECTLY INTO THEIR KITCHEN!! Who the freak designed that? Made things very awkward when Bishop's wife goes to grab Popsicles out of the fridge and you're kinda just like 🧍‍♂️. Like what am I supposed to do..? WAVE?? FREAK NAH. Anyway, I hope you can tell I'm traumatized by this experience.
 
Oh, and on the way home we passed by the Porche, Audi, and Ferrari dealership. Cars are so dope.

Friday: I drank a Monster energy. Mom relax it was the lemonade one, and it was alright but nothing too crazy. I won't get addicted or anything. (I will be buying more)
 
We pull up to the chapel and oh look, here comes sister Nelly apologizing to Alder for calling him fat, poor lady said she couldn't sleep bc she felt mean. Bless her heart.
 
Our new member sister Jenny vented to us about another elder that visited her, she's really particular about who she likes and who she doesn't get offended by, idk how Alder and I did it but she loves us. 
 
 ⚠️ Bit of a graphic story so skip to the next emoji if you don't want to read it, as some of you can tell just from this week's email alone, my mission is not considered the safest place on earth, and there are often just random acts of violence everywhere you go.
 
Today's was a drive by shooting on the highway. There was a car that was on the side of the road, absolutely covered in bullet holes, I couldn't tell if it was a car door or Swiss cheese. But then I saw that there were still bodies in the car, they were also no longer living. With their blood dripping out the bottom of the doors.. this was a fresh accident, Im glad we were not around a minute before, or who knows what wouldve happened.
 
Oh, but that is not all. The night finished out with a message on our phone saying that another Cannibal was out and the loose. These people go out at night, find people, do gross stuff, and then eat them! So gross ⚠️ 

Saturday: this email already really long so I'm gonna make it shorter stories.
Today was a bit long in the morning until we met a guy named Sam. He has a background of a lot of different churches. We shared a message about the Restoration and we didn't even get to the end of the lesson before he told us he knew this was the true church, he said that the feeling in his heart made it undeniable. So that was a pretty cool moment, we put him on date for baptism in April!😊 

You'll never guess where we got lunch... Mcdonalds! And while we were waiting for food, some little girl was doing some real weird dances on the FLOOR of McDonalds, I was so uncomfortable.

Another uncomfortable moment was when we visited a friend's house and some little kids came into the room and we're messing around, then the father of the children, took them to another room, which was very not sound proof btw, and you could just hear a loud smack. 
Then what do yah know those kids never came back out to be noisy.

Sunday- Loadshedding is back. 
So it's basically a controlled power outage bc nobody here pays for power so the city just says ok. Snip snip snip, no more power.
Our air-conditioned room quickly turned into an oven and we couldn't sleep.
Anyway the morning came around and we got up for church, Placide got confirmed a member of the church and we had another friend named Sandi get baptized! It was a wonderful Sunday. 
We also saw a dope Ferrari on the way to a lesson 👌.
We ended the Sunday by walking the pier and lookin out at the ocean, twas nice. 

Sorry that these emails are kinda long, hopefully they're entertaining, just remember I LOVE hearing from you guys ❤️