Stellies On Fire

The reason I named it "stellies on fire" is because Stellenbosch has quite literally been on fire for the last couple days.  Kayamandi has had a couple power lines just blow up the last few days.  And some of the shacks have burned down, which is really sad. Last Saturday we were driving home and all the sudden a big flash of orange in the sky, and then when we got back to our apartment, Kayamandi was in flames. Also, when we've been on the outside of town parts of the mountains are just on fire.  It has been so hot here; I literally don’t have to do anything and I sweat buckets. Plus, we're in stage 6 loadsheading for power. So, at night, we don’t have power until like 1 am, so it’s impossible to sleep when it's 95 degrees in our apartment and no power for fans.  And, this is just the beginning of summer! So, it'll only going to get hotter. I'm just preparing myself for that January sun.   

 

As far as our area goes.  Stellenbosch still pretty slow right now.  Because all the students have gone home for summer break, that gives us the opportunity to find the older families that live full-time in Stellenbosch. So, we have been tracking so much.  Talking to about everyone we see. We had some cool lessons this week.  One guy named Riann was super interested and I'm excited to meet again with him.  We met with this crazy lady who told us she can see dead people so that was funny.  Also, we met with our friend Liam who told us how he takes shrooms and how he dresses up as a knight and does battles with people.  He even showed us his big training swords.  It was cool, but he's a very “interesting” guy, lol. 

We're having plenty of first lessons so that great.  We have also been meeting with this sweet old lady named Rosetta who wants to read the book of Mormon.  A lot of our friends are gone for the holidays which is tough, but gives us the opportunity to find even more people.  

 

A funny story was Sunday night it was so hot the whole day. We were so sick of heat and while we were walking home from a lesson all of the sudden, within like 10 minutes, it was absolutely just pouring, like so much we could barely see in front of us.  My pants were basically tights they were so wet, so funny.  It was honestly so much fun and felt so good.  I was so sick of the heat. 

 

Another funny story was when we were in Kayamandi walking home and a couple drunk guys came up to us and tried to get us to come inside their shack and hangout with us. And smoke their weed.  We kindly declined, lol. 

 

One last funny story was we came home to eat lunch one day and somehow a cat got into our apartment.  She's swag and we named her Shania Twain.  

 

A cool spiritual experience I had this week was we were meeting with a recent convert family, the Sehlabane family. And sister Sehlabane or "mama" told us how happy she was today because she was able to pay her first tithing.  She said that after she gave it to the bishop that she could feel the spirit so strongly and she just felt so much joy.  And to me that really touched me.  Because this family barely has anything and they still have enough faith to pay a full tithe. With the little money they have.  And honestly there should be no excuse for people to not pay their tithing if this family can do it.  Seeing her Joy from giving to the Lord just touched me pretty deep. Their family has such incredible faith. 

 

Things I miss this week 

-Please come home for Christmas by the Eagles  

-skiing 

-snow 

 

Love and miss y'all

 

-Elder Quick 

[Send Mason Christmas wishes at mason.quick@missionary.org]