Elder Kaden Smith: August 13, 2017

Time is whizzing by and my 2 months with Elder Steffensen are coming to an end... Transfer news came Saturday morning with something I didn't expect.

My new companion isn't so new to me, he was my trainer, Elder Zongoro.

It'll be interesting to serve with him again but we'll definitely have a fun time, he's really old now on mission though, about 22 months, same age as Elder Thulari was on mission when I had him. But it'll be fun, about a year starting all over again haha.

This week we were busy with Inam and Unathi preparing them for baptism and as of yesterday Inam is ready and interviewed and Unathi needs to be interviewed. The only problem is there is no water here in Cape Town (the dams are at 18%) so it's against the law (according to what we're told) to fill the fonts. So we need your prayers for rain. We need A LOT of rain.

But the work will still keep going.

This week we had a fun Elder's Quorum activity with the ward and we went on a jog to some of the members/investigators houses. Coffart, one of our investigators was with us and he really enjoyed it! Hopefully he'll be ready for baptism in September.

Sunday was a busy day, us elders held our Culture Fireside/Activity at the chapel after church. It went surprisingly well. We opened and then split into two groups and taught classes and then rotated the people. Elder Matare and myself were teaching about Culture and The Gospel Culture.

Something really stuck out to me as we were prompted to teach about clan names.

"Xhosa clan names (isiduko (sing.), iziduko (pl.) in Xhosa) are family names that are considered more important than surnames among Xhosa people. Much like the clan system of Scotland, each Xhosa person can trace their family history back to a specific male ancestor or stock."

We then proceeded to teach the ward members that our clan name in the gospel is that of Jesus Christ. When we are baptised we take upon ourselves His name. Jesus Christ makes it possible that we can not only connect ourselves to him and our ancestors, but provides a way that we can teach our children a way to follow.

From an article by Elder Dallin H Oaks in the March 2012 Ensign it says, "This gospel culture comes from the plan of salvation, the commandments of God, and the teachings of the living prophets. To help its members all over the world, the Church teaches us to give up any personal or family traditions or practices that are contrary to this gospel culture.....

All men and women on this earth are the offspring of God, spirit brothers and sisters, whatever their color or citizenship. No wonder God’s Only Begotten Son commanded us to love one another. What a different world it would be if brotherly and sisterly love and unselfish assistance could cross over all boundaries of tribe, nation, creed, and color. Such love would not erase all differences of opinion and action, but it would guide each of us to focus our efforts on cooperative actions with our neighbors rather than on hatred or oppression of them."

The gospel is awesome. I'm excited for these upcoming 6 weeks with my father. It'll be fun to catch up on old times. Next week I'll be a year, but until then, I'm not over the hill yet haha.