Down in Africa

May 8-14, 2016

Mother’s Day was a wonderful and very busy day. It started with a skype call from Ethan. It was early in the morning here but late at night in West Jordan so his kids were falling asleep as we talked. It was good to see them and to chat with Adi, she is getting so big.

We put some sloppy joes in the crock pot and went off to church. The elders started showing up for phone calls and skyping almost as soon as we got home from church. We set up two lap top computers, one in the office and one in our spare bedroom. Then we let the African elders use our cell phone to call their families because most of their families don’t have computers. We also got to talk to some of our other kids in the evening.

Monday we had our usual busy day with the Cottage Meeting and Family Home Evening. We had a very nice FHE lesson given by Zinhle. After the lesson we brought out the Bean Boozled game. We like to get it out once every transfer so the missionaries can try it. The game is played by spinning a pointer. You have to eat whatever color jelly bean the pointer touches. The trick is, every color bean can either be good tasting or bad tasting. For instance the black jelly beans are either licorice or skunk spray. So you take your chances when you pick out a bean to eat. Some elders won’t go near this game and others love it. Sometimes we have to put the game away or the elders would eat all of the jelly bellies. We probably have enough jelly beans left for one or two transfers.

We went out to the school to play corn hole with the kids. Last time we did grade eight, this week we did grade nine. They really have fun with it. Especially the girls because boys all love to play soccer but the girls don’t have as much to do.

Elder Hind teaching the finer points of the game

cheering a great shot

We went to see our friend Bro Mkubo so the new Madadeni missionaries could meet him but he wasn’t at home. His son was there and told us he was in the hospital. We tried to see him at the hospital but they have very strict visiting hours. We came back later with President Nkosi and gave him a blessing. He knew us and was happy to see us but he didn’t seem to be able to tell us what was wrong. He did not look good.

We had to do District Training in Ezakheni and Dundee this week. We went to Ezakheni and taught the Ezakheni Branch and the Ladysmith Branch in the morning and Dundee in the afternoon. When we got to Dundee it started to rain. We had to run from our car to the chapel and then from the chapel to the house where the classrooms are and then back out in the rain to our car. I got so chilled even the car heater couldn’t seem to get me warm.

Dundee Branch classroom building

Dundee Chapel - converted garage

In this picture you can see the huge 200 year old
Monkey Puzzle tree.

We got a call from a young girl in the Newcastle Branch this week. She asked us to help her with a school project. She needed to build a model of a cell phone tower. We gathered up some things around the house that we thought might work and went to see her and her family. We showed a picture of a cell phone tower and she built the model with the materials we brought.