BUG OF THE WEEK

It's been a while hasn't it??? I guess I've just gotten used to creepy crawly bugs...

a cockroach fell out of my shorts the other day....yeaaaahh. 

But this was quite the site!! Steve the lizard was on the roof of our bathroom chowing on a cockroach as amidnight snack... I only found them because a cockroach leg fell on my head....welcome to Africa Elder Eastmond

This concludes another BUG OF THE WEEK!!!!

Helloooo family! :) How is your December going?? :) Tyler and Mandy felt the baby kick so that is EXCITING! I still think that it's a boy ;) Devin is still rocking sax, the family STILL hasn't gotten those cookies from the Davies ;) hahaha

As promised, here is the story of the baptismal font:

Soooo we get there and look at the water and you literally couldn't see the bottom it was so dirty. Like green dirty.... So luckily this time we had a pump so we threw that in the water and turned it on but as elder aygeman was lowering it into the water the hose came off and spit nasty green water all over him! Hahaha so I had to yank the cord and pull the pump out of the water! Once we fixed the hose we drained the font and cleaned it with mops and soap. Btw we are in sunday clothes this entire time...hahaha! So after that we drained the soapy water and we needed to fill it back up with water. So we went over to the hose but the hose wasn't connected to the faucet...so we tried to jam the hose on the faucet but it wasnt fitting. Someone had taken the piece that connects them together..... so I took our car keys and I cut the top of the hose a little bit so it was able to strech of the faucet but when we would turn on the water it would just fall off...so then we found 2 plastic bags and tied the hose to the faucet and FINALLY we were able to fill up the font again! So last time it took like 5 hours to fill up the font so we just left the hose running and went to a couple appointments. We went back after like 3 hours and the water was already overflowing...hahaha so we had to get buckets and slowly empty the water to the level that we wanted it at! Satan really didn't want that baptism to happen! ;)

Last week was just pretty normal! We had district conference on Saturday and Sunday and President wanted some other elders from durban to attend so at one point we had 8 elders all staying in the same boarding...you can imagine how crazy that was! :) District conference was great though and I learned soooo much! :)

Soooo the big news this week is that this transfer was shortened a week due to christmas stuff and yadda yadda yadda so I'm staying here in Esikhawini and my next Companion is going to be Elder Chitate. He's from Zimbabwe and I've talked with him before. He seemed like a waaaay cool guy so I'm stoked! Elder Aygeman is going to Pinetown to be with another Ghanian Elder! He's way pumped about that! :) All in all good news! I'm sad to say goodbye to Aygeman because he's been such a good teacher and we have so much fun together but I'm excited to get a new companion and see what happens there! :)

Teaching and finding has become harder and harder as we get closer to the Christmas season. Everyone is either out of town or partying so it's pretty hard. In fact we only have one investigator right now and we haven't been able to see him for awhile. His name is Nthutuko. We tracted into him a while back and we've taught him 4 lessons. The first 2 lessons he was just TOTALY high....So we are going to go back through all of the lessons and see what happens. Awhile ago I actually challenged him to baptizm and he accepted but then we didn't see him foreeever so we have to go back to the drawing board on him!

Mostly we are just meeting with the members and sharing little messages with them to uplift them and help them think about Jesus during the Christmas season!

There are a lot of families so I'll tell you about some of them!

So my favorite family ever is the Modlanis. There is Ma Modlani and then her Son Thabani with his Wife Amanda, Thabanis little brother Mandy and Thabani's daughter Abo. They love missionaries and love to play games with us and have family home evenings. A lot of the time we have them teach us so that they can get used to sharing the gospel! This week they are actually all taking a trip to the Joburg temple to be sealed! They are soooo excited and we've just had a ton of lessons about the temple!!

Another Family is the Butelezi Family! I LOVE THIS FAMILY! They are all just so crazy and we all just make fun of eachother and have the best conversations. Last week Elder Aygeman had a dance battle with one of the daughters and it was just the funniest thing ever. So there is The Grandma who is the best woman ever and then there are just a TON of family members. There is someone new there every sinlge time that we go over there! Haha it's pretty fun! This is actually the family that Sister Sne belongs to that we baptized 2 weeks ago! They feed us every thursday and it always AMAZING! :) 

Those are just some of the families that I've gotten to know really well! It's always a delight to teach them! :) 

Tomorrow we will be driving down to Durban to pick up my new companion and Drop off Elder Aygeman! Hopefully everything goes just swell! :)

I love you all and I'm so grateful for your prayers and all of your support! Families can be together forever! <3

Kay Love you Bye!

Elder Eastmond

Short but sweet

Hello family!!!! :) I love you all soooo much! :) This email might be a little short because we have to pay for emailing and I have like no money left until Wednesday... soooooo I have like no time but I will type fast! :) Grandma I got your package and I've already eaten like all of it...the food not the box...thank you soooo much! :) Tyler and Mandy I also got your package! Thank you soooo much! :) I just love elmo...also that piggy bank....didn't survive the trip.... hahaha I'll send a picture...hahaha 

So the highlight of this week was the baptism that we had yesterday!! :) We cleaned the font on saturday and it literally took allllll day! I'll tell you more about that adventure next week! And Aygeman has all of the pictures so I'll also have to get them from him later! But trust me, it was quite a feat! HAhaha But we finally got it all cleaned up and ready for The baptism! We were able to baptize sne and the 3 sithole kids! I baptized the 8 year old and the 10 year old and they are just the cuuuutest little kids ever! :) The water was sooooo cold and sne screamed when she was going down into the water! Hahaha it was really really funny! :) I'm sorry that i can't talk more but I'll tell you everything next week! I love you all! I'm glad that thanksgiving was awesome! :) I love you all so much! :)

So this was another pretty rainy and slow week but it was good none the less!!! :)

I got my haircut by this MASSIVE guy from Ghana! He didn't take it easy on my head at all. He would just jab me so hard with the razor! hahaha but the haircut turned out pretty sweet so I'm happy ;)

We weren't actually able to have the baptism this week.... We needed to drain the nasty water out of the font with a pump but we weren't able to because the electricity has been out at our chapel for the past week... So we are going to try and fix the problem this week and have the baptism this sunday! If worse comes to worse than we are going to drain the WHOOOOLE thing with just buckets! That will be fun! ;) 

So Elder Aygeman has taken on the habit of making me laugh every single time I take a drink so I've spit juice out of my mouth in pretty much every lesson and once it went out my nose...not very nice of him huh?

One time we had to walk from one end of our area to the other so we started walking and the rain came down and the floods came up and by the time we got to the members house we looked like we had just gotten out of the shower...hahahahaha

This week during a lesson something hit me pretty hard. We were with this family called the Enzama family. They are in Port Dunford area not ours so we don't usually go there but they invited us over for sunday lunch. And we were just sitting there and laughing with them and having a great time and it just hit me so hard that that's the reason that I'm here. Like obviously we are here to teach of Christ and our church but it hit me that I'm also here to leave people a little bit happier than when we found them.! :) 

One of my favorite things that happened this week was on Thursday we decided to go around to a bunch of members houses and showed them a mormon message with Elder holland talking about the book of mormon. And it was such a humbling experience to hear all the the members testimonies about it. You can see that the book of mormon has truly changed their lives and they know without a doubt that it's true. It was just very humbling and it made me really happy! :)

I love you all so much and I'm praying for y'all! :)

Live long and prosper.

OOOOOh also we found out this week that on December 5th we are having a District conference and the saturday session is going to be held in our Chapel and there is an Apostle coming!! I don't know who but I'm really excited about that! :)

Okay I Love you bye!

Elder Eastmond <3 B)

Rain, rain go away

Heeeeyyyyy family!!! I love you!! And we all know that the Gender of the baby will be announced this Thursday so I just want to publicly state that it's a BOY. So that when I'm right, you will all know that I'm brilliant. ;) Okay now that that is out of the way, back to the normal schedule.

This week was WET! Honestly every single day has just been POURING RAIN! I found out what a real thunderstorm is...we will be driving at night and the sky just looks like fireworks. The lightning is craaaazy here! Suuuper loud! It's way cool! But rain makes it reaaaally hard to get to appointments! Especially cause we are in a walking area. It pours monkeys and elephants on us. (people don't say that here by the way I just wanted to say it hahahaha) So we sprint to a members house and wait out the rain! 

But we were able to have some good lessons despite the rain this week! :) Some of my favorite people to teach is the Sitole family! This is the single mother of 8 kids! 3 of them are getting baptized this Sunday along with Sister Sne!! So I'm suuuper pumped about that! :) They are the CUTEST kids of all time! :) When we show up they all just suround us and shake our hands and then they all grab a big huge blanket and sit on it while we teach them! :) Suuper cute! There is one kid and his name is the Zulu word for "Star" So I just call him star. He's 3 years old and him and me are just BEST friends! Every time we see eachother we both just light up and play with eachother! Hahaha he's waaaay to cute! Even during lessons sometimes Elder Aygeman will be talking and we'll just make faces at him and then all the kids laugh and then it takes all of us forever to get composed again! hahaha it's super funny! :) In fact teaching little kids have been some of my favorite moments! Like on Thursdays we always go over to the Buthelezis for a family home evening and dinner and there is this little 4 year old girl there who just loves me and she always sits on my lap during the lessons! Suuuper duper cute! :) 

This is the first week of a new transfer! There are 4 Elders that came to our zone! One is Elder Donney from america and Elder Odiambo and I think he's a south african! Both are really really cool! :) There is also Elder Gumbo and a Greenie from Idaho that are whitewashing and area together! Whitewash training sounds pretty crazy to me!! 

Something fun that we have been doing is having members teach us the missionary lessons. We pretend to be investigators and they have to teach us! It's been awesome and it's teaching them a lot I think! If you want to learn something, then go teach it. You'll learn so much! Hahaha but it's been fun cause now we get to ask OTHER people all the crazy questions that WE have to answer! We are really mean investigators! Hahaha! :) I had one member say that we would be thrust down to hell if you didn't repent! Hahahaha That was funny! :)

We saw some Dolphins at the Beach last PDay!!! I'll send some pictures! They were jumping out of the water! They are alway just so freaking happy! If I was an animal I would want to be a dolphin. Or a Raptor but that's not what we are talking about right now...so a dolphin.

I ate spicy chicken that made me cry.

I miss snow so soso so bad. I heard christmas music today in the grocery store and it was talking about a sleigh ride and I don't think that people even understand what that means here. I took snow for granted. I love Snow.

I'm Eating Cadbury chocolate right now.

it's caramel filled.

I love you all and I'm praying for you! :):):)<3

Love Elder Eastmond

Zimes' Baptism

Guenias, Pirates and Dead Bodies

Hey family! I love you all so much and I think about you every day! I was actually pretty homesick this week but that just means that I have a good home with people who love me! :)

So this week has been pretty slow going but still really really fun! :) Elder Aygeman showed me this thing called a Guenia. It's basically like a super scone! It's just a huuuuge ball of fried dough! It's amazing! And so good for you ;) You can buy them at like any tuck shop (which is just little shops that are EVERYWHERE) So I buy them all the time...I need to stop....Also the ice cream here is SO much better than home...man it's so good.

So on wednesday the craziest thing happened....So we were walking past this school and there were all these people and cops everywhere. And we were like...wuuuut the heck....so we got closer and we saw this huge white tarp on the grass and I was like what is that. And then i saw a hand sticking out of it and I was like...oh my gosh that is a dead body....so later we found out that these 2 kids had fought and a 14 year old stabbed and killed a 17 year old...it's just SO crazy to see a dead body...like that kid is now in the spirit world getting orientation.

On Saturday there was a HUGE soccer match against 2 south african teams, the Chiefs and the Pirates. (pirates are the best) and so no one wanted to meet with us...they just wanted to watch the game.

On Thursday we taught Tutugo. He's the one who is usually high when we teach him but he is doing better at that now and I actually challenged him to baptism and he said yes!! So we are shooting for the 22nd of December with him! :) That was really cool and I'm getting a lot better at listening to the spirit and being bold! It seems to be going well! :)

Transfers were this week but we are all just staying in the same place! 2 Elders just went home from our district though so we have some elders coming in to whitewash the area! Also one of the elders is brand new and he's from Idaho. I haven't met him yet, but it's nice to not be the new guy anymore! hahaha! 

On Sunday we watched Conference with The Branch FINALLY!! We just saw the sunday morning session which I already saw but it was still way good! :) Zime also was given the Gift of The Holy Ghost and that was really really cool! :) So all in all a really good week! :) I'm looking at this second transfer with high hopes! :) 

Love ya'll so much! :) As it's snowing and getting colder for you, it's getting hotter and more humid for me! Hahaha still not over that...

Love, The one and only Elder Eastmond (actually I'm not the one and only...there have been like...a ton before me...and a lot after me...and i'm sure that there are other Elder Eastmond's who aren't even related to me that are serving right now...but yeah...)

First baptism

Family I LOVE YOU!!! How was halloween??? I realized that like all of you have asked me if there is halloween here and I keep forgeting to tell you. No there is not halloween here :'( They think that we are really weird for doing it...but if you think about it, it's a really weird holiday...hahaha but I"ve seriously missed it! It sounds like the house was SICK though! 

Well I'll just get down to the best stuff first, WE HAD A BAPTISM THIS SUNDAY! It was suuuuch an amazing experience! So we baptized sister Zime. She's a 21 year old and she has a little 1 year old that is soooo cute...okay the baby actually isn't little, it's like the fattest baby I've ever seen! Hahahahaha but anyways, I gave a talk on baptism and at the very end I started talking about my baptism and all these memories just came flooding back and I got all emotional and it was really cool! At my baptism I just remember looking down at my hands and It just looked like they were glowing and I just felt soooo clean. Like literally perfect :) So that was cool to give a talk! And then Elder Aygeman Baptized her and when she came out of the water she just couldn't stop smiling! the whole time she was just smiling! It was really really cool! :) And when she went to bare her testimony it was SO cool to hear her bare her testimony on things that we had the privilage of teaching her! It was just amazing to help a sheep back to the fold! :)

We've also been giving a lot of blessings this week because everyone has exams and exams are HUGE here. Like nothing compared to back home. Exams are literally everything here! Haha it's funny! So it's been really cool to give some blessings and see the peoples faith in them! :)

Something funny that happened this week is we were going to a house that we had tracked into earlier that week. But when we got there we saw this HUGE dog just sitting in front of the door and looking at us like we were a piece of meat...soooo we just left...hahahaha I'd rather not get raibies thank you.

Everyone really really likes to talk their native tounge of Zulu here so I'm really trying to learn some things! I have a Zulu Book of Mormon and I'm reading it side by side with my English one and trying to learn! Hahaha we;ll see how that goes! ;) Tandaza means prayer! hahaha

Basically this week has just been trying not to get hit by cars...hahaha first of all it's month end and that's when everyone gets paid sooooo everyone gets drunk and parties. Like literally all day and all night. Apparently Esikhawini is the place to be if you want to party hardy. And it's only gonna get worse...apparently December is just a CRAZY month here! cause it's christmas aaaand it's Summer here..so everyone is just partying SO hard! They say almost everyone just takes the whole month off from work so that they can party! Hahahaha Cars will just be parked in the middle of the road or on peoples front yard and stuff! And when people are drunk they either love me or they hate me! I had one guy come like inches from my face and he was yelling something in Zulu but I could tell that he was asking why white people shoot black people and i was just like uuuuuuuhhhh but then he started just laughing and he hugged me and was like, I"m just kidding brother, this here is a place where we accept everyone! No matter what your color! hahaha sooo it's always entertaining here! :)

Oh and yesterday I heard a total of 4 Gunshots...like literal gunshots. and one was from a car that was literally 20 yards away from me....hahahahahaha yas Esikhawini yaaassss

That's about it for this week! I love you all so much and I can't even tell you how much I appreciate the prayers and support that you guys are giving me! Thanks for everything! :)

Shap shap shap

Elder Eastmond

Ps. Everyone says Shap here for like What's up and goodbye here. So I'm totally hooked on that! Okay love you bye

This computer is also being bogus so I"ll send pics of the baptism next week!!

BUG OF THE WEEK

Again I didn't get a picture...but it was a giant blue and green and yellow metallic armored wasp that could curl up in a ball like an armadillo..I"m not lying it was in our chapel. I'll try to look it up to see what it is...definitely the most terrifying thing I've seen so far! 

Pink eye

Hi family

This one is going to be a little shorter today cause I spent more time on personal emails! BUT it was still a reaaaally good week!!! 

So we met a family that just moved in called the Sitole's! They Lived here 5 years ago and then moved but now they are back! The mom is a single mother of 8 kids and 4 of them are old enough to be baptized...soooo we are preparing them for the 22nd of November!!!

She isn't being baptized this week! Someone died in her family so she had to go out of town but we are going to baptize her on the 22nd as well! But Sister Zime is all ready to go and I am giving a talk during church about baptism and Elder Aygeman is baptizing her! 

We talked to Brother Zwelli and he had a black eye and stuff and he said that a gang is like after him...sooo he's probably moving to Durban...so I don't think we are going to get to baptize him but we will see! I'm praying for him! 

So the coolest thing this week was on thursday. I woke up and I looked in the mirror and my right eye was all red and puffy and I could tell that it was pink eye. And I was SO sad cause I wouldn't be able to work for like a week at least and pinkeye is the WORST! So I went and prayed and just asked if I could be healed...then I went to the mirror and it was gone. My eye was completely fine....MIRACLES ARE AMAZING. Seriously this church is so true. A real faith builder right there! :)

This Sunday was AMAZING!! We had 66 people there! the chapel was completely full!!!! It was a record breaker for this branch! :) I was really happy about that! :)

This week was great and I'm so grateful for all of your prayers and I love you all!!! I'm learning so much and I know without a shadow of a doubt that this church is true. I don't know what I would do without it! :)

Love you all!!!

Love Elder Eastmond

BUG OF THE WEEK

So I don't have a picture...but remember last week's bug of the week? The moth?? Well this week's bug of the week is the ants that live in my house....they literally ate the entire moth in a single day. So the moth died inside our house and was just laying in a corner when we left the house. Then we came back and the ants had completely taken it apart. It was completely gone...yeah that's crazy.

This concludes another BUG OF THE WEEK

This is what happens when a boy with a bright yellow personality is sent to Africa.

Springbox
 

BUG OF THE WEEK

This moth is literally the size of my fist.

The picture doesn't do it justice but yeah that's HUGE!

African Safari

Hello fammmmmmmmmmmmmmmily! <3 you guys! :) You all sound amazing and the halloween decorations are looking faaaabulous! :) and a special shoutout to dad. Happy Birthday Pops! :)

This week seriously flewwww by! A lot has been going on and keeping me super busy so I think that's why! :) 

So first of all I just want to let you all know how insane our house is. First of all it's haunted. The alarm system just goes off allllll the time and we don't know the password so we just have to sit there and try to read our scriptures as the alarm is turning our brains to mush. So that's good :) And then the doors always just fly open and slam shut which is suuuper freaky. And yeah we are just infested with poltergeists. But that's not all that we are infested with...ANTS. Literally there are ants everywhere. I am so tired of them. I had a whole bottle of honey and they managed to get inside it. Like 200 of them were just inside my honey. No i did not still eat it.

So on Tuesday last week was like the hottest day i've ever experienced in my life. Even the people here said that they had never experienced that heat before. And we got to bike around in it! :) So ya know how sometimes sweat drips off of your face? Yeah this time it was a steady stream. I'm not lying. It was disgusting. So that's when I decided who needs hair anyways?? Yep I shaved my head and It's the best decision i've ever made. So much cooler now! But yeah, right after I did that, the next day was actually cold and rainy and it even started to hail...like sooooo hard! They were HUGE hail peices too! Like the size of quarters!! So cray cray! The people have no idea what the weather is doing. Pretty sure I brought the crazy utah weather with me...woops...

FOOD: Sooooo I haven't eaten too much weird food! Apparently they LOVE KFC here because it is everywhere! hahaha who knew?? But yeah mostly it's just rice and chicken which is awesome! BUT the other day I had something that was pretty interesting....Pretty sure that it was cow intestines.... it was horrible.... I can still remember the taste....yuck. I just would take a bite and then drink juice and swallow it like a pill! Brilliant! :) But at our house literally all I eat is peanut butter. Okay I eat other things too but I have developed the biggest love for peanut butter <3

On Friday we had exchanges! So I went with Elder Nkomo to his area! Annnnd I got to drive the Bakki (truck) and it was soooooo sick! :) I was afraid to drive it because Elder Pinkston has just been having the biiiiiiggest trouble driving it! But when I drove it it was actually suuuper easy! :) I realized that if I could handle driving my car at home then I could handle anything ;) Geez that thing was craaaazy! :) 

But exchanges were pretty fun! :) It was cool to see a new teaching perspective. But the only thing is that Elder Nkomo speaks Zulu so in some lessons he would just be speaking Zulu with the people and I would just kind of be sitting there and then Nkomo would just look at me like it was my turn to talk and I would just be like,"Well I don't speak Zulu but....." and then just say some bogus thing. Hahaha it was pretty funny! :) 

We haven't been able to meet Zwelli at all this week cause he's been sick but we will see how that goes! Sister Sne and Sister Zime are both being interviewed for baptism on friday so I'm really stoked about that! :) Also one of the highlights this week was teaching this 17 year old kid named Quiniso. He's really good friends with some members but he's not a member! We taught him about faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost, and enduring to the end and then I challenged him to baptism on the22nd of november and he accepted! So now we have 4 people on baptism dates! :) We are also reaaaally close to getting this family I think so I'll keep you updated on that! It would be so amazing to help an entire family! :)

So this week has been amazing but one of the best things we did was today: WE WENT ON A SAFARI!!! We woke up at 4:30this morning and drove like 2 hours to this game park and you can just drive through it yourself! It was seriously the coolest thing i've ever done! We saw a toooon of animals! The best ones we saw were Zebras, Rhinos, Warthogs, Wildabeast, this weird freaky bird that looked like an ostrich but it was like bright blue and kind of looked like Kevin from up, and AN ELEPHANT!! They say that it is super rare to see and Elephant but we saw one on our way out of the park! Literally I could have walked 5 steps and touched it...SO SICK! 

But when we first went into the park we drove for like 20 minutes and then we saw some zebra so we jumped out of the car to take pictures of them! And then we saw some rhinos so we took pictures of them too! Then we got back in the car and a little while later some rangers came and had us all get out of the car and they searched us and the car and everything and they said that we werent allowed to get out of the car because they've had problems with people killing rhinos in the park...which I think is insane because there are people all around,,,,I don't know how you could shoot a rhino and get away with it...hahaha but yeah so then we continued on our way and then later when we were leaving the park rangers pulled us over again and this time there were like 10 of them and they all had HUGE guns and they pulled us out of the cars again and were just questioning us about everything, especially the white guys! Hahaha they were asking us why we were even in Africa and stuff like that and they like deeeep search our car like pulled up carpet and took everything out of it and stuff it was seriously so crazy. I still don't even understand what gave them the right to do that buuuut it's a cool story! Hahaha then they followed us all the way out of the park! Hahaha it was really funny! But yeah the Safari was siiiick and I can't wait to see a lion sometime! :)

I'm loving mission so much right now and I'm so grateful for everyone that has made it possible for me to be out here! :) I love you all and I'm so grateful for all that you guys do for me! :) Sending sooooo many prayers your way and I"m grateful for all your prayers as well! :) 

With an extensive amount of love_Elder_Eastmond_

This is Elder Clayton fishing last P-day! The beach is amaaaaazing here!

This is our Chapel! It's a bunch of trailers! So coooool!

BUG OF THE WEEK

This bug of the week is a big nasty cockroach that was outside of our boarding! It should have been this huuuuuuge black wasp that I saw but I just ran away from that one.... It was honestly the size of my pointer finger....like it could have eaten my whole hand... but yeah here's this. But I'm getting super used to spiders now...they are all over. I just grab them and kill them with my hand now. Never thought that I would get the courage to do that...hahahaha 

Zwelli, Heat Wave and Machetes

Hello family!! You all sound so good so I'm happy about that! :) I'm really good as well! This week flew by super fast cause we are working soooo hard! I'm definitely getting lost in the work! :)

GEEEEEZ! That is so crazy that the house flooded!! That picture that dad sent me is freaking craaaazy!! I hope that everything is okay! For me I still feel like I'm at home because our washing machine sounds like it's gonna take off too!!! hahaha :)

A typical day for me is to wake up, shower, study, do training with my companion cause I'm still a noob, and then we eat lunch and head to the area. A ton of the work we do is with less active members. The branch can be pretty weak so we are just trying to strengthen it. But my favorite lessons are when we teach investigators! The guy that we challenged to baptism is named Zwelli! And I know that I probably shouldn't have a favorite investigator...hahaha but he is definitely my favorite investigator! He's a waaaaay cool guy! He's around 23 years old and he's friends with a less active member who is also 23 named thabani! I loooove teaching Zwelli cause he is just suuuper smart and he picks up on things so easily! I feel like I really connect with him really well too! And he came to church this Sunday which was like the highlight of my week!!! We scheduled him to get baptized on the 1st of November with another girl Called Sne! So I hope that those both work out! :) 

Something interesting that i've experienced is that we will be teaching people and they say that they don't believe what we are teaching, and then we ask if we can at least leave them with a prayer and they say yes and then they are like hey will you pray for me and help me get a job? And it's just interesting that they think that we aren't preaching the truth, yet they have faith that our prayers could help them...hahaha just kinda funny!!

So pretty sure that I'm gonna shave my head this week. This is the hottest place in the entire mission and we just found out thtat we are about to have a huuuuuge heat wave...so that's just great. Don't be suprised if you get pictures of me next week and I"m bald. 

So like I've said a lot, we have been working sooooooo hard! We worked a total of like 51 hours this week. An average for this mission is like 40. So we are killing it! One day we worked a 13 hour day! In the morning we got to help this Gogo (grandma) With her HUGE garden! She gave us machetes and I was just like, "ooooohhhh yeeeeeaaaahhhh" She had us ninja slice these huge bushes and it was so freaking sweet! Best gardening ever! I was better at it than Elder Aygeman cause my tennis muscles were helping me swing! ;) So for once I beat him at something! ;) He played soccer for university so he kicks my butt at biking and stuff....But geeeez we were tired that day! It feels good to work this hard! And we definitely got rewarded for all of the work on Sunday!

On Sunday we had 54 people there! Which is waaaay better than last week! The Chapel was almost completely full!! Of those people, 12 of them were less actives or investigators that we were working with! So that was seriously amazing! :) It's so good to get them to church! :) And I was just so stoked that Zwelli and Thabani were there! They both are just helping eachother out and it's been so neat to see how far that they have come! 

Fun fact: Did you know that Ether 12 says the word Faith 37 times???? I got a tiny book of mormon and I call it my Faith Book of Mormon. I go through and mark every single time it says the word faith and that chapter is just crazy! So yeah there's that.

We've been chased by a couple dogs but if you just step at them like you are going to fight them back then they run away so that's really cool. I haven't had to kick one yet! ;) 

So anyways I've just been good as ever! :) Thanks for all of your prayers and I hope that you can feel all of my prayers as well! :) I'm learning so much and It's amazing to be able to bring the gospel to other people. I've definitely taken this gospel for granted and I will never make that mistake again. It can change lives. The gospel can do anything. I have the biggest testimony of that! :) Love you all so much! :)

Love Elder Eastmond <3

First week in Esikahwini Oct. 5, 2015

Sweeeeeeet soccer field! These are all over.

This is my companion Elder Avgeman 

This was when Elder Pinkston crashed the Bakki into the garage...oh btw they call trucks Bakki's here so I will now be calling them that for the rest of my life! hahaha :)

MONKEEEEEEEES!!!

This is probably my most favorite picture of all time! These guys are
always just outside our boarding and they always want to kick the 

basketball around and they kick my butt at soccer so that's cool!

This is Snyder the Spider. Pretty sure that he bit me the first night that

 I was here. But I don't kill him. He just chills in my room. Also he's the fastest spider

 I've ever seen and he jumps sooooo high! he's seriously like a pet. I see him in 

a new placeevery single day. I hope that my companion doesn't kill him! hahaha

This concludes another 'Bug of the Week'.