04 July 2009 – Saturday

Happy Birthday America!!!!

We spent part of the morning cleaning up our boarding. We tend to let it gather piles of papers, etc. like we do at home. There always the regular things to do – washing the dishes, doing a load of laundry, and general clean-up.

Now that we again have access to the internet, I was able to go to the Church News and read the talks that the Presidency and members of the 12 gave at the New Mission Presidency Seminar. I was especially struck by Elder Holland’s talk called “Divine companon: Teaching by the Spirit.”

He said, “Teach the missionaries that second only to the responsibility they have to listen to the Spirit is the responsibility they have to listen to the investigator. They must have the patience, sincerity and ability to go where the investigator is, spiritually speaking, before expecting the investigator to come where they are.”

“Once we have found these people, once we know our investigators, then we can find out what they believe and what they enjoy and what they hope for, as well as what they fear and anything they are struggling over.”

This is something I told the missionaries in the MTC when we were serving there in the TRC. I would tell them after they thought they had asked all the questions they needed to, that they should ask one more.

President Monson spoke on how the mission presidents needed to build the mission spirit. He also touched on something that Elder B and I think is really important for our elders to understand.

“Make certain “preparation “day does not become a “diversion” day that puts missionaries at physical and spiritual risk, he cautioned. “Do nothing on preparation day that would rob the missionaries of their spirituality.”

After noon, our day got rather busy. The Bartholomews brought the cake and other goodies that they are supplying for President Machaka’s engagement party because they need to be somewhere else today. We loaded up the meat and other things and took off for Port Durnford.

We stopped at Esikhawini and young brother Mthalane had just finished drawing the outline for our big back drop. We rolled it all up and went on to PD. The party was to start at 2:00 but they were still sitting up the tent and the bride was not there. We unloaded all the things we had and sat around talking to people for an hour before we had to leave for our English lesson at Esikhawini.

We thought that no one was going to come but the sister who was cleaning the chapel wanted a lesson so Mary did a one on one with her. Hopefully next week we will have her and some more. We then locked everything up and headed back to Port Durnford to at least let them know we cared about them.

When we got there the program had not yet started – in fact the bride to be was not even into her dress yet. Since we needed to be back in Richards Bay at 5:00 we just took some pictures, said thank you to sister Joyce and good luck to the groom to be.

We made it to Richards Bay before it turned dark and had dinner with the Bartholomews. We talked about our day and other things while enjoying a delicious – and somewhat expensive – dinner. Sister B  was very tired and so we did not linger after the meal before heading home.

Once we were home I started writing in this journal and I felt a need to call some of our children and wish them a happy 4^th. So I called Jim and had a nice talk with his family and then let Mary talk to them. Once I got things started Mary had a good time calling.

For some reason they do not celebrate the 4^th of July here so there is no fireworks in the sky. We will not see them next either because we will not be home before the 4^th.