The Hardest thing about being an Elder...

Is leaving the people you've come to love. I don't want to leave Etwatwa yet, but it's about time for me to head out and to another area.... Transfers are next tuesday yet I can already feel it in my gut that this is the time for me to leave... and it sucks. 

Me and Elder Shamanga have been going out tracking last week and apparently we had some of the highest lessons in the whole mission last week... We've been working hard to build up our teaching pool so that we can start teaching some serious investigators. I love this work. I love showing people the Gospel. I hate when they reject it because I know how it will bless their lives and hey wont even give it a chance.... The hardest thing about being a missionary is having your heart broken by people you've come to love.

On to a happier note, I gave a powerful talk on Sunday about hope. I was told to pick a topic on what to talk about, and sure enough after some prayer the word Hope came to my mind. I gave scripture after scripture about what hope is and how hope works. I ended by sharing with the Branch 2 Nephi 31:20. This summed up every point of my talk into one nice wrap. Apparently everyone likes my talks: must be that I have something in my teeth they laugh at.

It seems that the longer you are on mission the shorter the days get. Missionaries talk about the dead missionaries, the bad ones, the ugly ones, or the crazy ones. Everyone seems to forget to mention the best ones. With that logic in place, I guess I want to be the best kind of missionary: missionaries wont remember me, but the people will and that's what matters.

Also, this picture is of the morning of the Sabbath. The fog was so thick over Etwatwa that I was driving at 20 k's. That's super slow for you Americans. (I know I'm a American, sue me.) It was a pretty legit day.

Keep on praying. Keep on reading. If you don't, is it too late to start?

-Elder Schnepf