Meus Amados Irmaos (3-7-16)

Hey family and friends, whats up?  Its another week and another email from elder holt.  I am doing pretty good this week.  Sorry I dont have a ton of super cool stories I will just get that out now.  This has been a week of a lot of finding, and so we didnt have any crazy things happen, just me and elder stewart working our butts off, as well as like 20 pounds of sweat.  But yeah, we did have a cool experience with one investigator, we found him this week and taught him about who we are and what we are doing here, and then we taught him how to pray and then invited him to church.  He proceeded to tell us all of the problems and such he has had in his life.  I dont understand why, but for some reason people trust us missionaries so much, to the point that they will tell us absolutely anything.  But yeah, usually they expect us to give counsel or something like that, but the handbook says not to, so we usually say, come to church and let the spirit guide you in resolving your problems.  AND HE DID.  for the first time in a long time, we finally had an investigator come to church.  It was a stake conference and then we were a little worried because it was a little different than normal, but he came out of the meeting beaming and said he loved it.  The stake conference was awesome.  At the first one on the mission, there was enough room that we missionaries sat in the main room, like halfway up, and then had empty chairs behind us.  But this time we got there, and not only was the main room full, but the overflow rooms with the projectors were full, and then the hallways were full with people listening, so we sat outside, next to a window where we listened to the conference.  It was fantastic, after a hard couple of years of fighting for it as a mission, I think the stake finally has taken the initiative that they need to take with going to the temple.  The saints here want a temple so bad, they always talk about it, president koch said that he did a q and a a few months ago and a member asked when we would get a temple, and that president accidentally laughed at the question, but I am pretty sure that the man who asked hasn't been endowed and so is the case with just about every member.  They want the blessings bad, but the think that the sacrifice to get to Johannesburg is impossible, but it isn't especiall with the churches patron fund.  So yeah, now the fight is helping the leaders help the members get the vision.  the good news is we have been working with a family in the ward and they have passports and will be going this month!!!!! but yeah, those are the novidades from the week.  I love and miss you all, but I also love it here a lot, so I think I will stay a little longer.

Love,

Elder Anthony Holt

(But yeah, also I forgot in the big email, but I had two recent converts get the melckizedek priesthood this week, so that was awesome.)