June 26, 2016

This week’s letter is going to be short cause of time.

I had to drive to east London to pick up some cars for our zone. The trip consisted of my comp and i and then a senior couple, the Bells and oh man it was sooo funny. They talked the whole time in the car!!!! Oh my goodness, they’re kinda old and super funny. I really enjoyed the ride cause it reminded me of car rides to Utah with you guys! hahaha. Anyways we got the cars and were driving back and we lost Elder Bell and he didn’t have a phone and east London is pretty big.  Sooo we try to look for him and we find him after a little  so we drive up to the car as he is driving away and then just drives off, he didn’t see us!!! So we just head back to Queenstown with sister bell following us, hoping the elder bell will somehow make it back. Luckily he found his way back and its like a 3 hour trip hahaha super funny but I’m way worried for those two. My comp and I were laughing so hard!

elder shaw

love you and will definitely keep Baylor in my prayers.

love you

June 19, 2017

Thanks for the birthday wishes!  So the flat that i live in is pretty scary. hehe The kitchen is rough and old and i don’t think the pan will fit in our little oven. I lost/ got my home card (debit card) stolen. i don’t loose things sooo i think someone stole my white hand book which had money and my home card in it. So i cant buy anything for my birthday with the money you sent. Sad day because i was going to take my comp out to dinner. Well it’s the only thing you can do on a misison hahaha especially here.

I finish Jesus the Christ this week and that is an accomplishment. That was the longest book i have ever read!  But it was way good!

The couples here are never married and the boyfriend and girlfriend don’t really get along so we either teach one or the other but try to get both!

Yo this week was crazy just because we had transfers and then combining the areas is going to be hard because we are already scheduled out for this week and we can’t see the people we want as often as we want to! We had to drive down to east London for transfers and stayed for 2 nights cause the flight came in late and we didn’t feel good about driving home that night so we had to stay another.  It is not fun to drive when you’re sick. I was throwing up all night and had to stop a few times while driving hahaha but all is well now. We got back and stayed home for a day till i got better then on Saturday it was a crazy day!!!! We taught 9 lessons and all super good. Since we are combining areas we have a lot of work to do and so many lessons. We try to get to our area at 10 and work through till 9 and we are constantly teaching! Yo it’s the best but i was super tired after the first day. Our investigator Sanele who has the old german husband is super sweet and sensitive to the spirit. We were teaching her about baptism and invited her to be baptized and she just expressed to us how she wanted to change and be better and i was like wow, your already an angel. She must have had a rough background but she super cool and here little daughter is the cutest thing ever!

I’m sure this week is going to be super crazy as well but we have MLC on Tuesday which would be my birthday and we have it at our senior couples flat cause we have to skype in and they said she would make beef stew so I’m super stoked to have a home cooked meal on my  birthday!!! hahaha The Bells are the best! Senior couples influence missionaries so much and help out. Oh how much i love them!!!!

Love you all have a good week,

elder shaw

June 11, 2017

Mom, i seriously don’t know what happened this week. It’s hard for me to remember! i need to start bringing my journal so i can remember everything. I’ll try my best... here we go

So let me tell you guys about a new investigator of last week. I’m not sure i told you about her in my last email.. soooo Sinale is such a cool person!!! She’s probably 28 with a cute little girl named Adele but while we were in a lesson i realized that Adele had strait brown hair and she was lighter than her mom and I was like wait a minute... found out she’s married to a 40 year old German, like what the heck!!! The best part is she jokes about it too. i don’t know how that marriage lasts, but hey, love wins. She is really progressing and i can’t wait to extend a baptismal date next time we see her!  This week was good. Elder Behunin said goodbye to a lot of people so we were all over the place and didn’t really teach too much. The disappointing thing is we were planning on 5 baptisms this week but then it went down to 3 and turned out that we had none. It was a shame. One of them went to the village and couldn’t make it back in time, then our other one moved to another area and was baptized there, and then the other one didn’t pass his interview. We were really bummed but all is well. I’m sure they will eventually get baptized. I’m pretty sure we are planning on hopefully double digits for july 9^th. That is our next baptismal date cause our areas are combining, hope and pray!!! I love the people in Queenstown they are sooo nice.

love you,

elder shaw

June 5, 2017

Well shout out to my mom for telling me that my letters are awful so i will try to make a little more interesting lol. Let me tell ya this week was AMAZING! I didn’t really spend a lot of time in our area cause we had interviews on Wednesday and zone conference on Thursday which was all awesome!! In the interview, President Merrill, (I don’t know why but he always tells me my transfer news early hahaha so far i have always known my comp and my area before the news comes out cause he tells me what’s gonna happen) told me that my area and the zone leaders area are combining and i will be a zone leader, which means I HAVE A CAR!!!! But it also means i will be here for 6 months, which is great with me. So far 2 areas will make up a year of my mission! I’m so glad i dont have to walk anymore. My knee has been acting up again (old basketball injury). Then at the end of the interview he gave me a blessing. It was super spiritual and just what I needed. I loved it. Then at zone conference we talked about the joy and misery cycles. I was great also. It all comes down to our attitude, the consequences will follow whether it be good or bad. Wow dad is so smart! You learn by counsel or consequences!\

Apparently I’ve gotta to tell a little about my area as well. It’s hard to explain but its huge, we walk so much!! i work in a township but its pretty spread apart not close together. It looks like Peytons pic lol. (I can’t take pictures for safety.) but it also means that people just burn their trash.  They just throw it into this empty field and then they light the field ablaze haha it smells awful cause you got like dirty diapers and burning plastic. i think that’s what im going to do when i get home, so much more useful.

We have a district in our zone that lives like 3 hours away so they come donw for zone conference and stay 2 nights so we had a chance to play basketball. Yo i miss good basketball although there was this one elder, elder ivans who is super good... obviously not as good as me hahaha but he really is good and so it was fun defending someone good. We invited president to come play with us in the morning cause he’s a really athletic old man. I’m impressed but sadly every time he says no.

Super crazy about the Dunns. Tell them congratulations and I would love to see pictures of their fiancées.

Shout out to my momma again hopefully you like my letter this time!

Love you all,  elder shaw