05 January 2009

It was a morning for doing a few things for getting ready to leave for South Africa. The first stop was the bank where we found that instead of ordering $500 worth of Rands as we requested the young lady order $100 worth so we will get to go back again to get the rest. We did get the problem of our debit card running out while we were gone taken care of – they can not extend the old one so they just ordered us a new one that hopefully will arrive before we leave. The South African money is bigger and prettier than Indonesian. Also we take a number of zeros off when using Rands. 100 Rands is about $10 – $10 was about 100,000 Rupiahs – now it is about 110,000.

Desseret Industries has become a regular stop on Monday. Today we dropped off 3 good size boxes and a large bag. As the man dropped one of the boxes into an large empty bin I mentioned that there were some breakable items included. He did not seem to really care. I can understand that since he was working in 10 degrees F and had to keep moving or he would freeze.

Interestingly enough I also had a chance to become more Spiritually ready at lunch time. I had not brought a book to read so I took in the September Ensign. There was an excellent article by Elder Cook called: Be a missionary all your life. That fit in perfectly with one of the goals of the South African Durban mission – Help members become effective life-long missionaries.

The very next article was by a former mission president, Dale M Valentine, called Coming to Church, Becoming Converted that outlined 6 things we can do as members to help investigators feel the spirit while at church. I noticed that brother Valentine had died since he had submitted the article. It was another case of a voice speaking from the dust.

I find my thought often going back to the talk by Elder Maxwell that is in the December 2008 Ensign. I know the idea of completely giving up my will to the will of the Father is possible if I just take one stepping stone at a time. It reminds me of Brigham Young’s idea that he tries to be a little more righteous each day and lets Eternity take care of itself. I have set that as my goal – to be more Christ like today than I was yesterday and let Eternity take care of itself.