snail mail recieved Friday (transcribed by mom)

Dear Family
Sawobona! (Hello) Unjani? (How are you?) Ngiaphila (I’m well) Nami! (as well)

I’m learning Zulu pretty quickly. It’s not very hard to pick up. The clicks and the other few sounds that we don’t have in English are a bit different but not really very hard. There are only 3 click sounds: Q, C & X. I don’t think I can explain how to form the noises though, the differences are pretty small. Elder Warner, my trainer, knows quite a bit of Zulu & I’ve been learning a lot just listening to him talk to the people.

I got your package on Saturday! Thank you so much! The Fritos & bean dip were definitely a nice surprise! Thank you so much!

In about 2 weeks or so I’m going to get a new companion because Elder Warner will be going home. That means that this will be my area. I’ll have a senior companion of course who will be responsible for the work but I’ll be the one who will know the area & the people. It will be cool because I’ll get to be more involved in the work.

I’ve been having a lot of fun. We’ve been to the beach twice now for P-day. It’s fun to play sports there because you get really tired running in the sand. Although it’s no fun not being able to swim. We’ve been playing soccer & volleyball with potential investigators too, trying to use sports as a way to contact new people. It hasn’t provided any new investigators yet but it has helped to make people realize that we’re normal people, not some religious freaks. The people are warming up to us more.

But we are having a lot of success. We have 3 baptisms scheduled for the 21st of September. And we have maybe 4 or 5 more that we could have baptism dates for very soon. Nseleni seems like a very successful area. Whenever we tract we get into probably every other house, sometimes more. They don’t always believe us but we always have people to teach.

President Mann is a very good mission president. He is totally consumed by the desire to make this the most successful mission possible. He is always doing mission work and always trying to come up with new ways to make the work more efficient. Some of his methods are already spreading throughout the area including the Johannesburg Mission. President Mann has a lot of programs that are probably going to make my mission very effective.

I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to send more pictures home yet. I barely figured out how to find the South African version of msn because the US version doesn’t work here. But when I figured it out I didn’t have my camera. Hopefully I’ll be able to send some this Monday so that by the time this letter gets home you should have more pictures.

I love and miss you guys so much. Pray for me so that I can teach by the spirit.
I love you all.
Elder Mendenhall