30 June 2009 – Tuesday

Can it really be the end of June already? It does not seem possible that the year is almost half over. Slept very well last night and woke up this morning fully refreshed.

I spent the first hour reading and writing in my study journal from Mosiah 4 – what a wonderful chapter it is. Almost every verse has some important concept and promise to ponder. Due to our experiences of the last few days, I was especially struck by verses 16-27. The song “As I have been given much” came to mind. Verses 29 & 30 also gave me much to think about.

Confession time: For a couple of months I have been complaining because people can not contact me unless I have called them and put them on my list – they just went right to voice mail but I never even got notification that they tried to call. I had been to MTN and they could not solve the problem. I decided it must be the phone itself and I have been meaning to buy a new phone for over a month but just never found the right one.

Saturday when we were leaving from Port Durnford, Mary mentioned that perhaps the problem was we were not giving out the right number. At first I thought this could not be the cause because I got it right from the phone itself, but the idea started to make sense so I pulled over and checked. Sure enough – instead of the first three numbers being 078 – they were 073. Boy did I feel stupid. Then I thought about the chances of the wrong number being active but the owner did not allow any calls except those on his SIMS already so they went to voice mail.

No internet this morning. I think it is a reminder from the Lord that I have been spending too much time on the web and not enough time studying the scriptures and PMG. I have always said we should be careful of what we pray for because the Lord may answer our prayers in a way that blesses us while also challenging us. I did call and ask the tech to come by and he said he would. Of course we waited as long as we could and he did not make it.

We went to Port Durnford where Mary got the information for a CV from the woman we met on Sunday. While she was doing that I had her son wash the outside of the car so I could pay him R30 and maybe keep the power on for a while. We also gave them the basic groceries we bought for them yesterday.

From there we went to the Mzama home to make sure the meeting was for tomorrow and not today – just in case Mary set two meetings for the same time. She found that she had not so we were able to head for Esikhawini for the Roadshow meeting we knew was scheduled. We did not have time to go buy lunch so we stopped and bought some bananas to tide us over.

While Mary worked with the roadshow – about 8 youth showed up to help her and the YW president – I tried to come up with some lyrics for a song about wanting a king. The elders arrived – they had been out doing service – and I asked them to change the light bulbs in the outdoor lights. They were happy to do this but when they tried to put the cover back on they had problems. Since I had taken them off before I knew they would go back on. However after all but elder Richey had failed, I pulled my tired old body up and quickly set it in place. Once they saw that it could be done the other three were quickly changed. They joke about how many elders it took to change a light bulb. They said “4” and I said “or 1 senior elder.”

My next task was to get the music the sisters wanted to use to play. They tried the portable player without any results. I then tried the cd player in the car also without any luck. Finally I tried the computer and it worked so they could do some practicing. When they were done, I locked up all the rooms and headed home.

We decided since we did not have any lunch we would stop at the mall and get a good meal. But first Mary wanted to stop at the fabric shop and get some material for costumes. While she did that I got the tank filled – it was good timing because it turns out the price of gas is going up significantly tomorrow.

We went to Spurs for dinner. The mall was packed – I guess with school out many of the families are getting out more. I had my favorite rib burger and Mary tried their quesadillas. Both of us enjoyed our food and just relaxing.

When we got home the internet was still down so I have been listening to music, reading, and now catching up this journal. One of the things I have been doing is reading D&C 4 in Indonesian. I still know what the words really mean – that is how the Indonesian differs from the English – and mostly pick out the root words. But I have forgotten all the rules for forming verbs.

End of the month – time to close this chapter of my life.