29 November 2008
Yesterday, after 5 weeks of anxious waiting, the magic enveloped arrived. With Jim, Kristy, Olivia, Charlotte, Brian, Daniel, Becky and Spencer watching we opened the package and read that we have been called to serve in the South Africa, Durban mission. We are to report to the MTC on January 19 and should arrive in South Africa sometime in the first part of February. The letter said that we would be serving in the office.
We called all the rest of our children, other family, the bishop, and some close friends to tell them the news. It was great to share our joy with others. We will now have about 6 weeks to get things wrapped up here before starting our mission.
Today – Saturday – we sent off our acceptance letters to church headquarters. We also had some photos taken and sent them off to Durban where I would guess they will be used to get our visas.
We did a number of web searches and found that Durban is a little cooler than Jakarta but still sub-tropical and very humid. Like Jakarta it is a sea coast city. We will arrive during the rainy season – just like we did in Indonesia. The country is 83% either Christian or no religion – almost a mirror image of Indonesia. Many people speak English but Zulu is spoken in most of the African homes. We do not know if we are going to need to learn Zulu or Afrikaan to function in our calling. We will try to find out Monday.