Dumela Botswana

We keep learning new phrases, new concepts, and we keep making wonderful new friends whom my heart grows around, such as E lder Dylan Braganca.  We rubbed elbows with him in the mission office almost daily as this was his last assignment before returning to his home in South Africa this week.  He is one of the most stellar and intelligent young men I have ever had the privilege of knowing, and I look very forward to meeting up with him in Salt Lake as he plans to pursue his higher education at Ensign College.  He inspires me to be more of a peacemaker.  Thank you Elder Branganca for fielding my endless and repetitive questions and for behaving as a true man of God wherever you serve.   My heart also grew enormously this week with love for these beautiful women of Zion, the beautiful sister missionaries of the Botswana Namibia Africa Mission.  And my love for these precious young men, some of the most diligent and hard-working young men I've known, thes...

                                                As one woman said to me last week, "It is finally time for Africa!"  The church here is absolutely exploding, so much so that a visiting Global Services employee told me that over 2000 people were baptized in a northern African country last month alone.  The numbers joining the church, he continued, have overwhelmed local wards and branches, and there isn't enough experience among the members of the congregation to hold together the numbers pouring in.  He said bishops are called as soon as they receive their temple ordinances, some of them just months after joining the church.  Sometimes this results in far too much stress to these new inexperienced bishops and wards, and the results are not good.  How to keep up with the fast pace of church growth in Africa is a major concern for our Prophet and...