July 3-9

We got to attend church in our own branch this week. Everybody asked where we have been and some even joked about us becoming less active. It was a good and relaxing Sunday and we enjoyed it.

We had car and boarding inspections this week. It was a little more involved than previous times because we had to do the Newcastle boardings and the Ladysmith boardings and the Dundee boardings. We timed the Ezakheni and Dundee inspections so they were on the same day as our classes in Dundee. It made for an extra busy week. I only had to get after one set of missionaries for not being clean, the others were ok.

We went out to Madadeni to try and get some coordinates of the new Madadeni 3 Branch boundries. We got a map from the municipality but there are no road names on it and the area office wants clear boundaries. We got a couple of road names and were using our GPS to get some coordinates. After awhile it became apparent that we didn’t know where we were in relationship to the map. We had to give up. We will try again when President Mashego can go with us.

Elder Hind got sick with a bad cold and cough. He has picked a bad time to do so because we are very busy getting ready for the District Conference. We have a General Authority coming and our new mission president is coming. We would like to have a good conference. One of Elder Hind’s responsibilities was to call and make all the talk, prayer and conducting assignments. Because we have a District Conference in the Southern part of our district and also one in the Northern part of our district this means we have eight meetings. (two priesthood, two women’s auxiliary, two adult sessions and two general sessions) So making the assignments for all these meetings is very complicated. To make it worse Elder Hind’s voice almost disappeared due to his cold. He spent several days getting all the assignments made.

We had Zone Training Meeting this week and we decided to have a braai. After the meeting all the missionaries came to our house to eat and play games. Elder Hind’s version of the corn hole game was a big hit.

Elder Vaughn was the Braai master

Playing Elder Hind's version of cornhole

The Howdens came up to Newcastle on Friday night. They are the Public Affairs senior couple for our mission. They came up to do a training for the district on Saturday. They gave a very interesting presentation. We really enjoyed it and we learned a lot.  That evening we went out to dinner with them at the Pint and Pig Out. They came to our boarding afterward and met the missionaries and got to hear the transfer news.

Elder and Sister Howden, Public Affairs missionaries

Elder Hind, President Mashego, Elder Howden

At the Pint and Pig Out

Since this is transfer week all the missionaries gathered at our house in the evening to get the news. They are closing the Osizweni 2 area so we lost those two missionaries. They are white washing Madadeni 2 so we lost both of those. We already had two missionaries go home and we lost 2 more in transfers. That is a lot of change. We went from 12 to 10 here in the Northern part of the zone. Two more are leaving from the Southern part of the zone. We always let the Taylors worry about that part of the zone but now they are our concern until they get another senior couple down there.

After transfer news we said good bye to the Howdens. It was fun to have them here for the day. We treasure our time with the other senior missionaries.