Elder Hind has to be to church early for meetings so I spend the hour before Sacrament Meeting sitting in the chapel reading and visiting with other early birds. This Sunday a little boy in the branch was in the chapel singing primary songs to his dad. I asked his father if I could make a video clip of him singing. Could he be any cuter?

One day we went out to the Madadeni chapel and Elder Hind got out of the car to unlock the gate. He left the car running and his door open. I was sitting in the passenger seat. A man came by and told Elder Hind that he should not leave his car running when he was not in it or someone is going to steal it. We have gotten comfortable in Madadeni but even its residents are quick to warn us if we are being careless.

It was Zone Conference this week. We usually go out to dinner with President and Sister Zackrison but Sister Taylor and I decided to make a home cooked meal for them and have dinner at my house. Sounds like a good idea, right? About one o’clock in the afternoon the power went out in our house. We weren’t too concerned at first because this happens from time to time. We were just hoping the power would be back on in time to host the Zackrisons. Then we are told by the Zone Leaders that they have no power. They are only a couple of Ks from us so we just figured the power outage is widespread. Then we got a text message from some of the elders that they have no power and were given a letter saying that the power was turned off for non-payment. So Elder Hind walked outside to our gate and sure enough there was a notice stuck in our fence that our power was cut for non-payment. He walked to the elder’s boarding two doors down they had a notice stuck in their fence too. Now we were concerned. Elder Hind called the Mission Office and sure enough there was some kind of glitch that resulted in the power company not getting paid. They said they would get right on it but we didn’t know how soon the power would get turned back on. We called the Taylors to let them know what was going on.

Meantime, the window cleaner had showed up at our house late and was doing the inside of the windows and we had to leave to teach our Institute class. We had to skip having some of our windows done so we could leave and lock up the house. We didn’t know if we would have power when we got home or not. The Taylors were going to spend the night with us because they had to be here the following morning for the main Zone Conference meeting. We told them to bring a flashlight.  When we got back from teaching our class the lights were on thanks to the senior couples in the Mission Office. However it was too late to make dinner so the President and Sister Z took us out to the Canon Restaurant.

Notice how Elder and Sister Hind are glowing. Does that mean we are angels?

Our responsibility for Zone Conference is feeding the elders. They get pizza and cake and ice cream.
Not too much work and the elders love it.

As we advance into spring here it is fun to see our yard come alive with flowers we haven’t seen yet. I have always wanted a Wisteria vine in my yard. I did not know I would have to come to South Africa to have one. I have a little succulent garden in my front yard and some of those plants have flowers on them. Every day we see beautiful and unusual trees and bushes in bloom all around the city. And all the brown grass is turning into beautiful green grass.

Big nasty spiny stem, sweet tiny coral flowers on the end.

Blooming bush by my front door

My beloved wisteria vine

Right now this magnificent tree is covered with millions of tiny sweet smelling lavender blossoms

Every time I step outside I can smell these sweet flowers. I am going to call this tree
"Yvonne". I hope I get to see it bloom one more time

I don't know what this bush is called but it is beautiful.

Elder Hind is trying his hand at flower arranging/ I think he has the knack.
By the way those tiny lavender flowers have my house smelling like heaven.

We continue to enjoy the Institute class we are teaching. We have great attendance and the young people seem to enjoy our class. Our lesson this week was on the Law of Chastity. Whew! Glad that one is over with. We enjoy all our teaching activities and opportunities. This is a public blog so we are hesitant to describe all the people we teach but we are happy to have the chance teach often.

The Madadeni 1 YW and their finished crazy quilt blocks.

I had a Young Women’s activity on Saturday to finish up our crazy quilt blocks. Most of the girls either finished them or almost finished so we can move on to something else. The girls want me to teach them to make bread. So I think we will do some cooking for our Divine Nature project.

We went to a missionary farewell party given by the YSAs in this area. Elder Hind enjoyed the dancing. He loves to make people laugh and he likes being the life of the party. The young elders and the YSAs all like him because of his sense of humor and he is not afraid to be a little goofy.

The elders dropped by to wish the new missionary well and to eat lunch

Line dancing african style. Actually it looked a lot like the "Boot Scooting Boogie."

We ended the day doing some visiting and then collapsed into bed. We love our mission!!!