06 October 2009 – Friday

Read on Facebook this morning that Mike and Cindy’s house was burglarized and among other things both of their computers were stolen. Also the burglars trashed the house. We are hoping that there was some back up for all the pictures that Cindy took so much time scanning in this summer. We read this too late to call this morning but will tonight and learn more.  As this is the second burglary in the last couple of months of people we know, I am thinking that we may need to put an alarm system in our house when we get home.

It was a morning of paperwork. Mary made the baptismal program for Engwalezane and a recommend for the Youth Convention. I typed up a letter to the branch presidents explaining all the things I am giving them, telling them who will speak in their branches this Sunday, and announcements for Sunday. It is a good thing we are living in the middle of huge pulp tree farms, because a number of trees are going to be used up this morning.

Our first stop for the day was the Richards Bay Chapel where we made lots of copies of the different things that we needed to give to the branch presidents. We then went home to use our paper cutter and to assemble packages for each branch.

For the next few hours we visited presidents Malinga, Machaka, and Mngadi and went through all the forms, lists, letters, etc. Then after a break for a late lunch we headed to Enselini where I did the same with his package of goodies. Mary then gave him his English lesson.

We finished with that just in time to start welcoming the Youth for their activity. I remembered to bring hymn books so everyone got to sing. After a short lesson we played games. Since we did not come prepared with games we had to make them up as we went along. First we played Musical Chairs, then hot and cold, and finally ‘Fruit Salad.’ Everyone seemed to have fun – actually the youth were continually going in and out during the games which made Musical Chairs difficult.

When Youth was over a group of them, President Vilane, the missionaries and ourselves went over to the home of a woman who was investigating the church when she died. It seems she had set a number of baptismal dates but was never baptized. At the home we sang some songs, I gave an opening prayer, and there was a brief talk by elder Tsegula in English that was translated into Zulu. I was very pleased that so many of the young people – about 30% of those who came to Youth – gave of their time to show their respect for the dead non-member sister.

Elder Tsegula talked to me a little about funeral customs in his country and it seems that the men spend the night before the funeral at the family’s home singing until dawn when the women come and sing until the burial. It would be interesting to write a book about the funeral customs in the different areas of the world.

We spent a quiet night at home. We called Cindy about the break-in and was sad to hear that she had lost most of her jewelry including her wedding ring. But they did not lose any pictures because the thieves did not steal the Mac hard-drives. That was a tender mercy among all the chaos. We later chatted with Fae Dahl who is serving in the Dominican Republic and found out that one of our friends – Ron Haller – was dying of cancer. That is sad news and I just realized that his mother died of the same disease some 40 plus years ago. We also got the news that another couple we have known for many years have received their mission call to South Africa. Fae thought they were coming to Durban but was not sure. She sent us their e-mail address and I wrote to find out if they were coming here and if so when.

Close to a 2 mite day.