Elder Dani Observation Report

Elder Danisa did not remain the way I described him throughout his mission. He taught me things about my behavior that I changed and we taught him things that he eventually changed, like being nice to both men and women. I noticed that I thought I was better than were the locals because of my American heritage before my incident with Elder Danisa. Even though Elder Streadbeck told me that my people, Black Americans, were great in their own right, I started to notice that other people were great. I started to notice the Black people in South Africa were different. They had a heritage, culture and language of their own. I embraced it. I decided to learn Xhosa so that I could meet the people where they are as the Savior meets us where we are. I learned to love the people and love the work among them. In the process, I learned to love myself. My initial relationship with Elder Danisa was rough, but necessary for the Lord to jar me enough to receive His Spirit to teach. Umtata is not just memorable because I learned to love the people. My first day in Umtata, besides …show more content…
I could not identify with them, so I wondered why they wanted to be so divisive about culture and heritage. Why do we need to focus on Black heritage in America? Well, everything is focused on being European—British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and such. It is all White. We celebrate the cultures of these great people, but there is no celebration of people with my ancestry. If we even try to have something to celebrate it, there is criticism from both Whites and Blacks for trying to be divergent! Some of the people in the United States, God’s grace upon her, do not afford the same freedom from criticism to Black people socially equivalent as they do to other groups to focus on race or heritage, which for us Blacks is the only heritage that the descendants of slaves in America have. All we have is our