15 January 2010 – Friday
Slept in until 6:45 – sorry about that President Mann – and woke to a beautiful morning that is likely to turn into a blistering afternoon.
My morning reading continues in Alma and his preaching to the people. As I read Alma 8:15 and the angels’ message to ‘lift up thy head’ I thought of the D&C 121 where a discouraged prophet is told that he should stop feeling sorry for himself because God is with him. A little further along in 8:24 Alma declares that he is ‘the high priest over the church of God’ and has ‘been called to preach the word of God among all this people.†That brought 3 Nephi 5:13 to mind where Mormon says almost the exact same thing and we repeat it at almost all missionary meetings. I am certain that President Monson could say the same thing.
We are now waiting for President Vezi to come to pick up a desk to add to other things he is taking to the Empangeni boarding. He is picking up a mattress at the RB boarding, the desk from us, two mattress bases at a store and taking all up to their boarding so the two elders can stop sleeping on couches and the floor.
We got a call from the Mickelsen’s who are making plans to come to RB next week to work with some young people who are interested in a PEF loan. It is too bad that they live in Southern Utah because I think we could easily be good friends with them if they lived closer to Provo. They are a fun couple who seem to have many of the same tastes that we do.
When President and sister Vezi arrives he tells me that he was late because he ran out of fuel and had to walk to get some. Since there are not gas stations on every corner here, he may have had to walk a long ways. He also wanted to talk about a business he would like to start but does not have the capital to get it going. This is the same problem that we saw in Indonesia.
Once the Vezi’s were on their way we immediately left to do some errands and eat some lunch before heading up to Enseleni. One of the errands was to get the mail which included two more packages from the Bartholomews. When we had time to open them we found lots of licorice – black, red, and chocolate – Crystal Light – real Hersey’s chocolate chips – and much more. There were a number of things to be given to the members in Enseleni and Engwelezane. The Bartholomews hearts are still here in South Africa.
At Enseleni Mary taught President Vilane English while I worked with Khulekani on his mission papers. We found that the doctor did not do a TB test which is mandatory before he can send in his papers so I am going to have to make another appointment for that.
We then attended Youth and showed the introduction of the new theme DVD. Only about 60% of the Youth were there. I think the month lay-off made some of them lazy and we will have to try and do some interesting things to get them excited again. We left as Nonhlahla and Khulekani were about to play games and then hand out the Seminary manuals for this year. I do not know what they will do if Nonhlahla moves to Joburg and Khulekani goes on his mission. Hopefully some of the others will rise to take up the leadership of the youth.
In the evening I finally got caught up all the pictures but did not get around to posting them on our blog. We did get a nice note from Elder Mendenhall’s mother about reading our blog. Later I looked at her blog and found that he has served in Richards Bay and taught Khulekani. I thought it was a nice coincidence that now just about 17 months after Elder Mendenhall watched his baptism Khulekani is getting ready to go on his mission. Maybe Elder Mendenhall can go to the temple when Khulekani does – President Mann allows missionaries to go to the temple with their converts.