Tyler May 24, 2010

Dear family,

This week has been kind of a strange one. There was actually a tragedy in the mission this past week. President Probst has been going around to the different districts and zones telling about the death of Elder Zulu from Zimbabwe. We had our interviews on Saturday and it was nice to seek some counsel from a very wise man who knows how to handle situations because my patience is running low. He told us about the death of Elder Zulu. Have you heard it on ksl news or anywhere? I really felt bad for President Probst on having to deal with that situation he said that he hopes that he doesn't have to have another week like this past week. On Monday while President Probst was at a mission seminar in Johannesburg he got a call from one of the Elders announcing the tragedy. I never met Elder Zulu but he was located in Mtatha which is the furthest east in the mission. They decided that they were going to go to the sea on this past Monday p-day. He said that they started to take some pictures on the rocks and basically one thing led to another and they were on the beach and a wave submerged them he said. Elder Zulu was carried out to the sea and he could not get back. They had the search crew after him but it was to late and so he drowned. President Probst didn't tell the details of everything but they must have been swimming in the ocean. As you can imagine it was very difficult for President Probst to tell the family and I think the mission as well. He gathered zones together to tell each zone about it but we didn't go because we are out in banishment and we are kind of our own small zone out here. but I heard he compared it to kind of like an emergency transfer on going to the next area except to the spirit world. Heavenly Father can do many things but wont take away someones agency from them so he compared it to an emergency transfer where things happen to create it such as someone in the branch that is extremely attractive and a distraction or companion problems or anything of that nature. I think that a majority of his family is not members and so hopefully it will provide a way for them to accept the gospel. President Probst just wants us to pay a tribute to him by working harder in mission but I am wondering if he is going to buckle down obedience even more since this incident happened. This past week we went to Mossel bay and located some less active members out there. We went to go see bro Goodger who is a counselor in the branch presidency but on our way out there we received a prompting to see the Meyers and so we were able to see the Meyers family who live in great brak river. I was glad that we went out there because when we got there they were living in some pretty bad circumstances of poverty. Eric and Loraine have been super less active members for quite a while but they have been pretty scarce for money lately. Eric was gone on a trip to Port Elizabeth since he is a truck driver but he hasn't been very busy at all lately in the last couple of weeks. There house didn't have a roof cap and the place around them really looked like a hole. She said that her baby Ersula has been sick over the past few weeks and has gotten to the point where she is constipated and cant go to the bathroom. Elder Jordan (a zone leader from port Elizabeth) and I were able to give her a blessing on Thursday and so hopefully everything will work out well and I really applied the council Elder Oaks gave in the last conference on administering a blessing. I just wish more of these type of people would give us a call because I would love to come and help fix up there house and help them at their home but they are to self-dependent and wont ask for some help. We have been tracting out some of the richer white areas of George lately and we were able to meet up with a guy named Joe Hall who is from near Pretoria. He said he was an owner of a diamond mine and he has a couple of cottage homes in the denneoord area. We will meet with him this Wednesday and so I am pretty excited about that since getting into white peoples homes it is a little more difficult especially when your with a black companion and a lot of white people around here are very racist. Well thanks for everything. have a good week.

Love Elder Hansen