First Week‏

So much craziness has been going on. Food here is pretty awesome. It is cafeteria style but it's African and tastes way good. They put ketchup and chutney on everything!!! But no issues with the food and hasn't caused any problems. So today being P day we got dropped off at the mall for an hour and I ended up teching a security guard there. He stopped us and was asking us some questions and saying his friend told him all the churches were wrong and he needed to be baptized by us since we're the only ones who can. So he asked us: "so are all the other churches wrong?" and I remembered we were supposed to be bold so I told him yes. And I started talking to him and talked about JC and his ministry because he was a christian and went to church and told him about the apostosy and the Joseph Smith Story. He was all like, oh man I need to get baptized! He said I need to go to church on sunday and tell my pastor he's wrong, he needs to be killed for letting people think that he can baptize them. And I was like OH NO NO NO. And he says no he should. I just kept telling him no. So we gave him a pass along card because he didn't have a phone. And went off. But ya, super spiritual time 09!!! All it is here is spirit! That and long classes!!! The days have been soooo looooonnnnnggg!!! Like this one week has felt like 3. But temple was awesome. It's much smaller than Utah temples but alot of the missionaries didn't have their endowments cuz of the distance. But running out of time so got to hurry. So Here's pics!!! Love you all and miss you!!! Send me pics!!!

In freakin Africa‏

Jordan has asked me to keep this blog up for him while he is gone so everybody can check in here and see what he is up to. I will do my best to keep this updated. Here is his first letter home and I added a couple pictures from the farewell. He tiltled this himself....Camee

So here I am in Africa! First couple of days in the MTC. I was able to sleep most of the time on the plane. Which was a surprise. But ya got here late thursday night. We were waiting for another missionary who's flight got delayed but then it got delayed again and we didn't see him till mid next day. Just in time for the group photo which is already up. I got to the MTC around 9-9:30 at night and I missed out on most of the orientation. I got my companion when I arrived his name is Elder Kamalandua from DR Congo. He speaks French, and some English. But he is learning. Our roomates are Swiss and Zimbabwian. Our Swiss Elder is name Elder Huwiler and it's pronounced Hooveeler. I don't know why but he's cool and brought some swiss chocolates. All the Zimbabwians here are jealous about me going. There is a couple people here going to Zimbabwe but most are going to Joberg, (it's what we call Johannesburg here). Class is long but everyone here is pretty cool. All the Africans do this cool hand shake when you shake hands. But other than that, it's just learning the gospel and basketball when we go out for sports. Alot of them play soccer. There are about 25 Elders here, we have one 3 companionship. We got a few from Utah, one from Alaska, and a couple from England. Both are pretty funny and one of them reminds me of Eddy Izzard, but just cracking spiritual jokes instead. But other than that things are going pretty good. I never expected this early to start reading the scriptures and just start taking off and continuing going, and constantly looking for new things with the leason. We email on saturdays, that's our P day, we email and go to shops. We don't have much time on the computers to email. But write me and I'll email back.
Much love,
Elder Vanderlinden