I received this letter from Dallin this morning and thought I'd share. He sounds like he's doing great. The pictures were from the day he arrived in S. Africa sent from the Mission Pres. in a seperate email today.
So this past week ish we have been working with these two young men named Vuse and Moroti they have been being taught for sometime now and they were extending their property so we helped them tear down there wall and rebuild it back up it was a lot of hard work. Their mom died about 2 months ago and they are in love with the plan of salvation. there uncle in times past has told us that his faith in god has been lost. anyways as we were going and helping day in and day out there uncle was there and he told us that because we were there helping them out his faith in god had been restored because no other church has ever helped like we have. We set up an appointment to see Vuse Moroti and there uncle on saturday. when we showed up Moroti was the only one there and he is about 16 and a complete stud. we taught the gospel of Jesus Christ (faith repentance baptism, gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end) When we got to the part about baptism he stopped us and said i wanna be baptized as soon as possible because when you guys come and when i'm reading i feel overwhelming happy and when i pray for strength everything in life seems easier and like i can handle things :) so me and Elder Sederholm were in shock so we told him to aim for the 10th of january. then we told him he needs to come to church and asked him to get vuse and his uncle to come to church as well. Well yesterday was sunday and Church had started and i was a little sad that none of them showed up and then lo and behold about 10 minutes into the meeting in walk Vuse and Moroti and guess who was right behind them.... their uncle haha i was propably smiling from ear to ear i can't even explain the happiness and love you have for people as they draw closer to christ and make those steps to become better.
Then we were sitting there and Sacrament was drawing to a close and Kenneth another one of our investigators gets up and walks to the front. Me and Sederholm turned to each other and grinned. We actually found Kenneth together and at first we thought he was what we call a golden investigator. he told us in a lesson about a week ago that he didn't want to be baptized quite yet until he received an answer so we were a little discouraged but continued to work with him at the fullest. anyways he goes up to the stand and says this " Brothers and Sisters yesterday i was watching the soccer game when and Elder Craven and Elder Sederholm paid me a visit, i told them i was busy and that i couldn't have a lesson tonight but that i would see them at church tomorrow. when they left i continued watching the game and i felt really really good and happy and got excited to come to church. i took this as my answer that the Book of Mormon is True and that Joseph Smith is a true prophet." Holy cow i have never been happier in my life i cant even describe how much joy i have.
I'm serving in an Area called Kagiso, i'm not really sure how many areas are in my mission there are at least 90 areas ha ha so its pretty big. the weather here is Summer time, its way too hott but i'm coping ha ha. We walk/ride bikes everyday besides for tuesdays we get a car so that we can take members to and from appointments. i'm living in a 4 man flat and we share the car with the other 2 elders and they get the car the other 6 days cause there area is bigger but because we work harder we get more baptisms even though our area is much much smaller. the area is all black people and there pretty poor but they have an attitude like they are rich because they are so grateful for what they do have.
