08 August 2011 - Learn a Little Xhosa

L to R: Elder Tekulve, Zone Leader, President

08 August 2011

Hello again everyone. It seems like this one was another quick week. I made a video but it's muuuuch too big to send! So here are a few pictures.

Country Club in Cape Town

You know I can always think of things to say during the week but here typing it I forget. I lowered the size of the pictures I take a little so that I can send them.




[This] picture was taken Saturday morning when the Robinsons took us to a very nice fancy country club for breakfast. There was SO MUCH delicious food. So much.

Also there were monkeys.

I'm trying to learn a little Xhosa. Here are some phrases spelled phonetically:

• Molo- Hello
• Molweni- Hello (plural)
• Tata- father, also an honorary
• Mama- mother, also an honorary
• Mlungo- white man
• Spazi- shop
• Opee- Where is
• Agako- not here

Those last two we use often. It seems like more than half of the appointments we make don't follow through. Oh well, we keep trying. The kids in the street here often swarm around us or our car, shouting in Xhosa. The children in the families we visit often are especially excited to meet us and know our names.



Cape Town

If you send packages, hot chocolate mix (the kind that uses water) is a good thing to send. I drink that a lot. Elder Barker can't eat dairy or red meat so we don't really get those things including milk. Muesli with yoghurt and raisins is a favourite breakfast of mine.



Our Study Area

Our Kitchen

Last Friday one of the members was out in the rain and the cold and never got dry so at about 10 we had to get him to the hospital for hypothermia. He's doing fine now, though. Elder barker also has a cold so the next few days may be weird. On Wednesday we're spending most of the day in nearby East London for a zone training meeting. That's 2 hours away, but it'll be nice to see other Elders. The only ones I've seen these past weeks are the Zone Leaders whose pictures were in the last e-mail.

What else is going on? Just working through the weeks. They pass by so fast. This transfer is already halfway over.

Thank you for your prayers for me,

-Elder Tekulve