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.