I am now serving in Nelspruit, South Africa!

Hey dad,
Ya the last couple of weeks have been no good but I guess its experience. Actually it all made up for it now. I am in the most beautiful place in south Africa, in the North East in a place called Nelspruit. I think that the spelling. It’s so pretty, it’s like a jungle area and its really nice. You would have died on the drive out here it was almost like I was in a dream or something. My new companion is Elder Robinson and we get along really well. He is from St. George and we are almost like exactly the same, we get along great. The only problem is this being the most pretty area it’s also the hardest area in the mission. By far, it’s a more Afrikaans area. There is a difference between Africans and the Afrikaners. Africans are black and Afrikaners are white and sadly a lot more stubborn and hard headed. It’s a very wealthy area and basically my whole mission has changed. I went from teaching every hour of every day to knocking on massive gates and talking in intercoms. It’s a lot different and so hard but they say if you can have success here you can have success in any part of the mission. It’s crazy though like all of the homes have HUGE DOGS. I mean like big big and they do not like you. The other day I had my first dog experience and I had to kick it. It was not to big though but man I don’t know what they’re freaking feeding their dogs. I think they give them like protein shakes every morning or something its crazy. Me and my new companion have fun though we come up with some fun games while tracting, like we came up with this one where right before the person comes to the gate, or whatever, one of us says a color then the other has to put that color in somewhere as they are talking, it’s pretty funny we had some funny things happen the other day.
I am very low on money but I’m not going to try and use the home card if I can. I can just buy some bread and pope or something for the next couple of weeks until money comes in but I might have to use it for shirts sometime. But ya that’s good BYU is doing good as well but it’s good to hear from you dad love ya lots.

Mommmmm,
Hey it’s good to hear from you too, the week has been good as you read in dads, and ya the inside of the cow was not a great experience. The past few days have been good. The ward is really good here as well. The only problem is that it is in a really bad part of town so people are scared to go to it. We meet in the back of a furniture store, kinda funny but not. The members are really good though and very very dedicated, it’s a small branch. We actually went and saw this man in the ward yesterday that had terminal cancer. It was actually a really emotional experience and we gave him a blessing and everything and he told us a lot about missionary work. The cool thing about the man though was that he was still making jokes and asking if he could help in any way in the church even though he knew that he would not make it, it’s just so amazing to me.
That’s the advice I would give to grandma and everyone else, I know it’s hard when things like this happen. It was very hard for me when I found out my grandpa had passed on. I was down for a few weeks but the thing is you cannot let it get you down. I know it’s hard to just say that but when you think of where he is what he is doing, it should make you happy. If we truly understood the plan of salvation and if we could just see a glimpse of what we could have, I believe every single person on earth would obey with exactness. I don’t know what it’s like where grandpa is or what maybe he is exactly doing but I do know how happy he is, and I do know that he does not want us to be sad. If we look at the life ahead of us with a bad attitude everything that follows will be a bad result. I know this sounds simple but it’s very true and something people do not realize and how key life is according to the way we face our trials and the way we look at life. God wants us to be happy and He wants to do everything in His power to make us happy but we just have to go that 10% and let Him in. Whenever we are teaching a lesson and the subject comes up of what I care about the most in life, I say my family. Because I have realized almost more than anything now on my mission about how important your family is. I look back at all the stupid things I used to think were important but the main thing that matters is eternal happiness, which is what having a family is all about.  But ya that’s my advice, sorry if I was all over the place my mind works faster than my mouth. But I love you very much mom and dad, more than anything. And I’m sorry you have to do jury duty:) That no good let me know how it goes.
Love ya, Justin