09 March 2010 – Tuesday
It was a lovely, warm day in Richards Bay and we took advantage of it to go out and make visits in Enseleni. I called Khulekani to find out if he was available to go out with us and visit some of the members and he was happy to do so.
Since he was able to get a copy of his receipt for his police clearance, the first thing we did was to review Khulekani’s mission application. Mary went through it carefully to find out what was still needed and where it needed to be signed.
We found out that he needed more passport pictures so he had to change from his everyday clothes to a white shirt and tie. He also needed to have a lot of his papers duplicated and certified so we decided to this first. One nice thing about South Africa is that you can go to the police station and have almost anything certified for free.
After the police station we went to the have some lunch at McDonalds before going to the mall for pictures. While he was getting his picture taken I did some other errands like getting airtime and some cash so I could then go to the hospital and pay a bill.
Having got all the errands done we went back to Enseleni where we visited Mama Zulu and Thandi  Mkhwanazi. When we got to the Mkhwanazi home, we found her mother sitting on a mat in the shade at the side of the house. So we joined her – I forgot to get a picture – there and had a nice meeting with her and Thandi. Thandi’s mother has not joined the church mainly because she does not know English well enough to participate. This is of course the problem for all but the youngest generations of black African women. Many of them never went to school or only went for a few years so they never learned English very well.
Thandi has been trying to get into Zululand University but has had some problems because they want up front fees that they just do not have. Sister B talked to me about this last week and I promised to follow up. So we made arrangement to go with Thandi to the university and to see if I can convince them to let her in to their program and pay the fees after she gets her PEF loan.
Our last stop in Enseleni was at President Vilanes where, after have a short visit with the president, we dropped off Khulekani so he could have his mission interview. Next week he can be interviewed by President Mann and then he can turn in his papers. We are hoping that he goes before we leave so we can be at his farewell. He is going to be a great missionary and I would love to be able to see him in 20 years. Who knows maybe I can.
As we were driving out of Enseleni school was just letting out. When we came around a corner the whole world seemed to be alive with students in their colorful school uniforms. They not only covered the sides of the road but the road itself so we had to carefully crawl through them so they could part long enough for us to get through. Mary took a couple of pictures but they just could capture the scene as it was before us.
We drove back to our boarding where I dropped off Mary and went took the car to the car wash. I was lucky because there were no other cars being washed so instead of taking the usual 45 minutes to an hour, I was out in 30 minutes.
In the evening I went over to the Richards Bay Chapel where I met with Calwyn Baldwin to work on the audit. While I finished up 3 of the branch reports – I left the hardest ones for next time – he made lots of copies of branch lists for me. Because Calwyn has everything so well organized, doing the audit is not hard but it is time consuming. However I can understand need for a closer look at the way the Lord’s money is handled but I am glad I will not be here for the next one.
Back at our boarding we watched an episode of Numb3ers and Mary started another puzzle. While she was doing that I looked at Facebook and was surprised to get a chat message from brother Hafen. He said that a woman they know told her that her parents who are in the MTC and was called to go to the Joburg mission was called out of class and asked to change to the Durban mission. If this is true, then they will be here next week. My guess is that since the re-alignment of the two missions the area asked for the re-assignment. I plan to call President Mann tomorrow morning to find out if he has heard anything about it. It would be great if it is true because there might then be enough couples that one could be sent here to Richards Bay.
We had a good day. Mary held up well but was happy to be able to spend the evening relaxing. Hopefully this will just keep improving so we can finish our last months of our mission doing what we can to build up the Kingdom here.