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.