These pictures are from the upgraded Hubble telescope…how great are the works of the Lord.

09 September 2009 – Wednesday

What a difference a day makes – 24 little hours. Where yesterday was bright and clear, this morning it is gray and overcast. Later we ran into rain and so my beautiful clean car is now not so beautiful and clean.

 

I was trying to get a picture of a construction truck that we have ended up following a number of times. We can tell it from other trucks because of the way the sign on the back is bent – unfortunately I missed the shot. But then it probably is not very safe to take pictures while driving – even at a stop sign. The big, black bird with the white head and white underwings surprised us when it flew down and started eating some road kill – we did not realize it did that since we always see it near water and figured it ate bugs and such. I guess you get your food where you can find it.

We were up and out of the house fairly early as we needed to go to Port Durnford and picky up sister Chirwa to take her to the clinic in Richards Bay. My selfish side thought that we should have just given her transportation money and we could have spent more time at home this morning. But as we drove to Port Durnford to pick her up and then back to the clinic, I felt that we were doing what we should be doing. She told us about how she and Thandi Nzama had visited a sister on Sunday who had not been coming to church and she said she would come next Sunday. She told us about another sister who is very ill and needs to go to hospital. She also told us about how her leg hurt and so walking was hard for her.

She had to go to the clinic because she is trying to get a government disability pension and they are making her go to a number of doctors. They have managed to drag this on for over a year and she still does not have her pension.

We dropped her off and told her we would call her when we were going to leave for DDM and if she was done we would take her back to the taxi stand in Esikhawini. When we called about two hours later she was still at the clinic patiently waiting for her turn. They are used to waiting for medical help – usually for 4 to 7 hours.

 

Everyone sings at DDM – it is good to see Sister B feeling well. On right – our fearless District Leader Elder Babeeyo.

DDM was a little long but there was some excellent information shared. Elder Musemare gave a good talk, they sat district goals. I suggested that they extend the one week of obeying exactly that President Mann asked for to the full cycle and see how the Lord blesses them. They thought this was a good idea and adopted it.

The Bartholomews came and sister B looked and felt great. The only problem was that she has a very nasty tick bite on her neck and so now she has to wait for 8 – 10 days to see if she gets the fever. We are hoping that there is so many antibiotics in her system that she will be OK. She thinks she got the bite while in Durban but that the tick had got into her luggage when we were in Tembe a couple of weeks ago. She certainly does not need any more illness.

After the meeting we left the elders and the B’s eating pizza and we went to the mall to have lunch at Spurs. When we were finished eating, I was not feeling good at all so I suggested we call President Machaka and tell him we would not be there for PEC meeting so I could take a nap before we went to visit with President Malinga. I gave him what I needed to talk about over the phone.

I had a good nap and while I did not feel 100% I felt well enough to go to our meeting. We were about 75% of the way to Esikhawini when we got a message from President Malinga saying he would not be back in time. When we called he said it could be hours so we found a place to turn around and headed back.

After a quick visit to Meernsee to check out the art store there to see if we could get some supplies for Bungumuse to paint some things for us, we went to the Richards Bay chapel where I made some copies of articles out of the May Ensign that I want to give to people. While we were there I looked through what they had in the library and came across some World Wide Leadership Training manuals from 2001-03 that had just the information that I thought the branch presidents needed to be trained on.

I mentioned to Mary that if our copier had not stopped working and if we had met with President Malinga, I probably would not have found these materials. Now tomorrow when we meet with him we will be able to give him more training to help him in his calling.

I managed to index 125 names this evening. I am trying hard to average 50 a day because that means in a year I will have done about 18,000. I also read some of the WW Leadership material I picked up earlier and it is interesting how the format changed from single talks to interactive talks between two and three of the 12 to role playing. Rather going from lectures to demonstrations. I think the talks work best in the written form while of course the demonstrations work well either live or by DVD.

Another 1 ½ mite day for me.

08 September 2009 – Tuesday

Woke to a beautiful morning in Richards Bay. Our car was filthy so I took it to the car wash early to avoid waiting in line. I was the first one there and opened the wash. While they are washing the car I stay inside so when it comes time to move it to the detail area I am ready. This also gives me the opportunity to read from the scriptures or Ensign for 20 – 25 minutes.

Today I took the May Ensign and continued to re-read the conference talks. As usual each talk that I read was special and I learned more. I am going to copy President Monson’s talk “Be of Good Cheer” and give it to Ayanda Mlondo because it talks about loosing love ones and how knowing the gospel makes this less tragic.

Elder Bednar and Elder Stevenson’s talks were for me. From Elder Bednar –

“There is a difference between church-attending, tithe-paying members who occasionally rush into the temple to go through a session and those members who faithfully and consistently worship in the temple.”

Even though I have served in the Provo temple for years, I am afraid I am still one of those who ‘rush into the temple.’ Of course we are now far from the Joburg temple and will probably only get to go one or two times while on our mission, but when we get home hopefully I will remember Elder Bednar’s comment and establish a regular time to go to the temple. But just as important is preparing to fully participate in the session and not just making it through. Elder Bednar points out it should be temple service not just going getting it out of the way.

Elder Stevenson’s talk was comparing our home with the temple. He said:

“Not only can we turn the doors of our homes to the temple, or the house of the Lord; we can make our homes a “house of the Lord,”

So not only does our car now look bright and shiny but also I have been taught once again by the special men and women who have been called to guide the church in these days.

When I got home I spent way too much time working on the pictures Mary and I took over the last few days – especially those we took yesterday in Imfolozi. It takes time to download, caption, and edit 60 – 70 pictures. But I got it done, caught up my journal, and am getting ready to head to Esikhawini.

When the meeting we had planned fell through we decided to explore Esikhawini and see what the Hafen’s had marked in the GPS. So we turned it on and got out the maps. We then drove through the town and stopped at each member’s home we came across. Some were on the GPS and some were not. We also found some people had moved and some were away to school. The experience was made more interesting by the fact that most roads do not go through to ad adjacent areas so you have to go out to the main road and enter at a different point.

We had lunch at the KFC and the traffic guard pointed out that our license plate was falling off. I checked it certainly was. It turns out they put them on using double-sided foam tape. I imagine the regular washing caused some of the strips to come lose.

We also stopped by the Esikhawini chapel where we found elders Musemare and Mokopotsa doing service by cleaning up a garden plot. Actually elder Musemare was doing most of the work as elder Mokopotsa said he was not a gardener.

We toured all of H section and decided we would do J section on Friday. In between time we hope to get new copies of the city map that we have been using so we can mark it more clearly with where the members live, the names and phone numbers.

We then headed to Meernsee to run some errands. We checked the mail and found we actually got some mail from home – Olivia sent us pictures she had colored of us as missionaries. This was the first mail we got from home and we loved it. We ended up managing to do everything we had planned except we did not make it to the city offices in time to see if we could get new maps. They close at 3:00 and we got there at 3:10. So we have at least one more thing to do tomorrow. I also ran into the Barts in the mall – something that has not happened lately. They were coming for a late lunch and I was just leaving after getting some money from a ATM. Sister B seems to be feeling better and that is great.

Once we got back to our boarding it was a normal evening of reading, writing, indexing – I am trying to do one batch a day – and working on a new puzzle Mary started.

For some reason as I was reflecting again on what I had read this morning, I came to the conclusion that charity – the pure love of Christ – has no room for selfishness. I thought of elder Koelliker’s comment that Christ’s work and glory was to do God’s will. This seems to me to mean that Christ goal was to never put himself and his will first. That does not mean that he could not enjoy life – in fact it meant that he could enjoy life to the fullest. Obeying God’s will is the only way we can truly get the most out of life. Each time we put our own will and our own self first, we take away from the fullness of joy that we could have had.

I think this could count as a 1 ¾ mite day.