13 April 2010 – Tuesday

Exactly one year ago we left our boarding in Swaziland and traveled down to Richards Bay. It was the last day of the holiday and the roads were packed. It did not help that they were also re-building the main hi-way so that there was only a one road shared by traffic in both directions for 80K.

Elder s Hafen and B met us at McDonalds and took us to our temporary boarding and helped us get settled in. What a blessing they were for us as the Swaziland Wilsons were just a couple of months before.

Now we know the area so well that for the most part I do not really think about where we going. Of course it helps that Mary seems to be a human GPS and gets us within striking distance of almost any place we have been before.

Mary had an early appointment at the hospital and then we took some time to clean house. I know we should have done this on P-day but we just could not face it yesterday. I found that sometime yesterday I had accidently turned off my cell phone. Luckily we missed only one important call. President Vilane needed help with a food order. Since we were going to Enseleni to meet with him in the afternoon, we just left an hour early so we could buy and deliver the order.

We have bought so many food orders at the store that the cashier automatically called over the manager so we could get the 5% discount that they give to pensioners – they know we often buy for them. I had forgotten all about it. A little later I was checking out our personal order and another cashier reminded me that the last time I saw her I had commented on how tired she looked and today she felt and looked great. We are going to miss these folks – after shopping at the local store in Provo for 25 years, the cashiers still are not as friendly as they are.

We delivered the food order and then spent some time talking to the members who were out and about. Mormon row has 5 LDS families in a row of 8 or 9 houses. We had a short visit with Mama Zulu and then a much longer one with Queen Seoka. This last was very important because I found she worked in the local clinic as a registered nurse. It turned out she should be able to help sister Vilane get a job either in the clinic or at one of the local government hospital.

We then went over to President Vilane’s where we did the branch quarterly report and finished the audit report. When we were finished and getting ready to leave he asked if we could drop him at the bank in Richards Bay. Of course we were happy to do this but first we stopped so he could talk to Queen about sister Vilane getting a job at the Richards Bay hospital.

By the time we were through and had dropped off President Vilane I got a call from the garage door installer and he wanted to come by and check out the problem. So we went home and I dropped off Mary before going to get the car washed. It was really dirty after our trip to the game park yesterday.

The repairman came and plugged the opener back in and of course it started working fine. I was just starting to feel really foolish when it started making the noise it had before and smoking. So it seems that the motor is blown and they will try to get a new one in tomorrow.

Earlier when I was waiting for Mary I felt I should call Bongani out in Esikhawini and see how he was doing. He was excited to talk to me and said that once again he had gotten an answer to his prayers about the Book of Mormon being true. I told him we would try to get out and see him tomorrow. Hopefully this time his faith will be strong enough that he will come to church on Sunday.

I am reading some of the volumes of Lunds “The Work and the Glory.” Some of the volumes seem to have disappeared from the library at Esikhawini so I only get to read about every other volume but that is OK because I do know the story. I find reviewing the history of the Church this way is quite spiritually uplifting. Sharing the story through the Steeds is a good way to ‘live’ the experiences of many of the early saints.

For the second day I spent well over an hour working on pictures. Some day I might even get them posted on our blog.