28 April 2010 – Wednesday

The first thing I did today was get the car washed. Two days of driving over gravel roads had turned our usually blue car to a shade of rusty red.  I was lucky because there were no cars in front of me so I was in and out in 30 minutes instead of the usual hour.

We went to an excellent DDM up in Empangeni. It was Elder Kitili’s last DDM but he did not show any signs that he is trunky. He did take a lot of pictures but that is understandable.

When we came out to get in our car, I saw that the passenger front tire was dead flat. Luckily there were three strong, young elders right there to change it for us. Talk about a Tender Mercy for us if not for them. But they are always happy to help us as we are to help them so everyone is a winner.

I did not want to take a chance on a second flat without any spare, so we went back to Richards Bay and dropped off the flat to be fixed while we had lunch.

After lunch we picked up the repaired tire and then it was back to Esikhawini where Mary taught an English lesson and I went to meet with President Machaka about a number of things. Just as I was getting ready to leave, the elders drove up and we took care of some more business.

I got back to where Mary was teaching before she was done and used the time to make a number of telephone calls. I found that President Vilane was going to Swaziland for a funeral and that President Mngadi was working on his reports that are due on Saturday.

We then had a number of errands to run including getting a new microphone for Esikhawini. It seems we have to replace it about every 6 months. I am going to tape this one in place so that they can not pull on the plug which seems to be the problem.

By the time we got home it was growing quite dark – I had forgotten how early it gets dark here in the fall and winter and we are still almost 2 months away from the shortest day of the year.

I spent most of the evening working on pictures from our drive. Elder Mickelsen had downloaded what his to one of our thumb drives so I had his 130 plus our 80 or so to go through. After about 3 hours of staring at the computer screen and making adjustments I called it quits for the night.

It was a good day for us and as usual we were blessed often by the Lord.