Hello
This week has been good the Zone leaders came to our area to do two baptism interviews on Saturday. We were supposed to have four but two guys we are teaching are having trouble quitting smoking. Hopefully we can baptize them in Dec. But out of the two we had one pass the interview but the other one had to get a second interview by Pres. Poulsen but Pres. Poulsen approved them so we will have two baptisms this Sunday. On Saturday the MTC missionaries came out with us and Dylan Hare(from Delta) was with them so I got to talk to him for a few minutes. Yesterday was Stake Conference. Every companionship gets a cell phone. We get transfer news on Saturday, I doubt I will be leaving but you can never tell for sure. I'm already past the three month mark, its gone by super fast so far, I'm and eighth of the way done already. We get to go to the temple on Friday so I'm excited for that. We are supposed to go every transfer but we didn't get to last transfer because Elder Holland came. So ya its going to be a busy week but that's a good thing. I hope everything is going good fot you guys and I hope you all have a nice week. Good luck with everything.Elder Finlinson (Nov. 22, 2010)

Hello
It's been a busy week, we had two baptisms yesterday, they went good. The one lady we baptized was so big we had to have two people baptize her. Then she was floating so they had to push her down and she started to freak out. It wasn't very pretty but it got done . Its weird it is almost Christmas, its so hot here and it gets hotter every day. All of the kids are about to get out of school for summer vacation so it doesn't feel like Christmas at all. The temple was good, just the usual though. We got transfer news on Saturday, there aren't any big changes happening. I'm not going anywhere. Elder Call will be training again but other than that nothing is new. I will probably be here for 6 more weeks but hopefully I will stay for three more months. Yesterday we went to Roodeport for a testimony meeting at the senior couples flat and we ran out of gas like two blocks away so we pushed the car there then they ran us to a gas station to get gas. It was kind of funny but it was lucky we ran out of gas where we did. We are planning a big u-nite at the chapel on Friday. We are going to try,Whose line is it anyway? I don't know if you know it bit it was a T.V. show a few years ago so hopefully it will turn out all right. We have a ton of less-actives in the ward so we are trying to reactivate them. There have been 37 baptisms in the ward this year and only half of them are still active. The relief Society has been having problems with people offending each other and then people going less active, so yesterday Bishop Sibeko gave a talk in sacrament meeting sham bocking the relief society, it was awesome.
On Tuesday we were meeting with this lady that we have been teaching. There are these sangomas or" tradition healers" which are basically witch doctors and people here are obsessed with them. But this lady was going to a sangoma but she wasn't really sure whether sangomas were good or not so we talked to her about God and how he has more power than anything and the sangomas have no power. so she decided we were right so then she wanted to know what to do with all the sangoma medicine stuff that she had. She had seven little pouches that were full of crazy powders and stuff that she was supposed to bathe in and drink and wash her hands with and stuff.And she said she was scared to throw it away because she thought it would bring her bad luck so we took it from her and took it back to our flat and threw it all away. I took some pictures of it but I didn't bring my camera today so I will send them next week. But there are just seven little plastic bags and a bottle of this juice stuff, and apparently it cost her R1200 or about 175 dollars. The people here believe the craziest stuff. But ya everything is going good, I hope you guys all have a nice week and everything goes well for you.
love Elder Finlinson

Hello,
General Conference was good, on Saturday only ten people showed up to watch it. In the priesthood session the choir was a bunch of missionaries from the Provo MTC and so on one of the songs they were showing the choir and they stopped on this one missionary for a little bit, and I thought that guy looks familiar. So ya it was Trent Eliason, he was in the same grade as me, he is going to Fiji, so it was pretty interesting. We just watched conference at the chapel. For family home evening we try to go to a members or investigators home and do it with them. Ya the district is kind of boring now but its ok. Elder Semaemae didn't have a drivers license and got pulled over so they had to transfer him to a companion who had a drivers license and then a bunch of missionaries in Botswana got kicked out of the country so they are moving a few people around. So we should be getting a new Elder in the district today. As far as cooking goes I can buy any food that you can and more. Just send me a variety of recipes. Oh ya I got your Halloween package on Thursday, we were at the office because we had a meeting with Elder Snow of the seventy. It was a meeting for district leaders but I got to go anyway. But thanks for the candy, they have weird candy here so it is nice to taste America again. If you have room in the next package send me another pair of wranglers since the ones you sent earlier don't fit anymore, but if you don't have room don't worry about it. But ya everything is going fine, I hope you guys are all doing well. But thanks for everything, I'll talk to you next week.

Elder Finlinson