13 January 2010 – Wednesday

Since I wanted it to rain today, I took the car to be washed. The morning was quite fair but soon after I got home from the car wash it clouded up and by the time we left it was drizzling. At least the inside is quite nice and clean – the outside of course is clean but water-spotted.

Karen Bartholomew called to see which package we got yesterday. Mary had a good talk with her and found out she is still not well – they still have no idea of what is wrong with her. That has to be very frustrating for someone who is so full of life as sister B. Hopefully they will figure it out so they can come back to Africa on another mission.

At 9:00 we went to the RB chapel to see President Mann and make sure it got opened for his meetings with the elders. He gave me authority to take care of some changes at Esikhawini. We then went up to Enseleni to pick up Khulekani for his doctor’s appointment. He was excited about getting this done so he can send in his papers. While he was getting checked out we did our grocery shopping – it is scary what we spend on food. Especially since we do not eat all that well and often eat lunch out.

Khulekani got done at the doctors just as we were heading back to see how he was doing. We then took him over to the hospital for his blood test. Mary needed one also but she could not get it at the same time because she has to come fasting for 12 hours. Since by then it was just noon, I called president Mann to see if they were going to have lunch somewhere and he suggested we meet at the mall. So we had lunch with Khulekani, President Mann, and Elders Holmes and Crowther. It also allowed President Mann to see Khulekani sans dreadlocks.

After lunch we drove Khulekani back to Enseleni and went to try to visit Thandeka to find out how she was but we did not find anyone home. A neighbor tried to help but then remembered it was clinic day and so she would be there.

Our next stop was Esikhawini where Mary gave sister Ndlovu an English lesson while I went over and visited Wenzile Thusi to see how he was recovering from his accident. I was amazed to find that other than some slight bruises and scrapes on his legs, he was fine. His mother showed me a picture of the car and I was again reminded how blessed he was to just be alive. He goes back to work on Friday – just 6 days after a head on collision with a truck. Before leaving Esikhawini we made a quick stop to see elders Vinson and Dishon about their bike tire problems. I guess we are going to have to try solid tires because their tubes are a mass of repairs.

We drove up to Ngwelezane to help out with youth. While waiting for the whole group to gather we played some Skip-O and some BofM match game. Aftermost of them got there, president Mngadi talked to them about making plans for the future for about 25 minutes. I got to add a very short thought about making sure we live tomorrow a little better than we did today. We finished up with another round of the match game which we had to end quickly because the guard wanted to close up the library so he could go home.  We gave the kids some bananas and said goodbye until next week.

It was a good day and kind of made up for Tuesday being just an ‘errand’ day.

One fun thing that came up was that President Mann kidded Khulekani at lunch about wanting one of his dreadlocks for a souvenir. Later the President called to say that Elder Nare gave him two of Khulekani’s dreadlocks and he was going to use them as book marks in his scriptures! That means the magic Ostrich scriptures now includes real South African dreadlocks.