Daily Archives: November 16, 2009

16 November 2009

16 November 2009 – Monday

The rain continued to fall almost all day. Although it did not make driving to Durban as enjoyable as it might have been, it did keep it nice and cool. In fact it was sweater weather in Durban in the evening.

Our first stop in Durban was the Mickelsen’s boarding. They have a lovely 3 bedroom house with a nice jungle filled with fruit around them. They have papaya – I ate one, mangos and bananas growing on their property. It is like having a fresh fruit stand right outside their door. Of course they have to compete with the monkeys and birds for the ripe fruit but they can get their share.

After a nice visit and making arrangements for them to pick us up for Family Home Afternoon with some of the other couples, we followed the GPS to Little Haven B&B where we will be staying for the next two nights. It is always a pleasure to see Grace and Vic and stay at their nice accomodations.

We had just enough time to get settled in and have a brief nap before the Mickelsens arrived. We first went to the Pinetown chapel where they met with the patriarch so they could download 12 Patriarchal Blessings that he had given over the last week. Sister Mickelsen transcribes them off the recordings and then they are carefully checked a number of times before the finished blessing is produced for the member and the Church records.

We then went to the Griesmers’ apartment for their regular Monday afternoon FHE. Their apartment is high on a hillside in a large complex that can be seen from the Pinetown chapel. They have a lovely view that we could have taken better advantage of it had not been raining.

We watched two segments of scripture discussions on BYU TV. Todays episodes included from D&C 35 to 42 and it is interesting to see how the participants tie what is given there to other parts of the scriptures and to what is happening in the church and the lives of the members today.

After the program we ate pizza, salad and the best Chelsea buns that I have had since we were here. Before tasting these, I thought the ones from Engen were as good as they got, but these were soft and moist and just plain delicious. As we were finishing up Elder and Sister Markum arrived. They had been in meetings about CES all day and were happy to relax a little with friends. The Markums are the couple that our friends the Coxes will replace early next year.

When we arrived back at Little Haven we stopped in to say hello to the Rawlings and were invited to their FHE lesson. Vic had prepared a very nice lesson on Doing Good for Others. It was nice to sit and share thoughts and scriptures about this gospel principle with these lovely people.

Even with the continuous rain, it was a very nice day. As Mary said it was nice to spend some time with other couples.