We got a chance to take a picture with the Richards Bay elders at KFC. Elders Lemmon and Zondi – the end two on the right – will be leaving the area on the 6th. Elder Lemmon heads home to the US and Elder Zondi goes home to Durban and at the end of May will report to the Joburg MTC for his mission. We will miss these two fine elders. You have heard of the saying about being out until the cows come home…well today as we were about to turn on our street we almost ran into the cows coming home.
29 April 2010 – Thursday
We again spent much of the morning just doing odds and ends. Mary worked on things for her English and music classes. I posted a lot of pictures to her Face Book account – I did not take the time to write any headings. I will do that over the weekend if I have time. I was still posting pictures when Melissa Hoyt (ne Fernald) commented on how great they were. Talk about a quick response.
Elder Kitili has been having headaches for a long time and nothing seems to help so I contacted Sister Mann and got permission to make an appointment for him at Spec Savers to see if it is a problem with his eyes. I took pants to the cleaners, visited our mail box – a piles of bills, and dropped the clean and folded (thanks to sister Mickelsen) baptism clothes off at the RB Chapel.
As we drove into the parking lot at the chapel we saw the elders’ cars and realized we had completely forgotten about the RB DDM! Talk about a senior moment. We stopped long enough to apologize to the elders for missing their meeting but we did have a number of other things to do. We stopped by Spec Savers and paid for elder Kitili’s exam as we can not be there when he comes in for his appointment.
As we were ordering our lunch at KFC, I called the RB elders and suggested that since we had not brought them any treats for their DDM and two of them are leaving the area – elder Lemmon is heading home next week and elder Zondi will go home to prepare for going to the MTC in late May –that they join us for lunch. This not only gave us a chance to give them a goodbye meal but also to have our picture taken with these four fine missionaries.
The rest of our day was spent in Port Durnford where Mary taught English to just two of the usual four women, having an excellent meeting with the youth, and Mary giving Lungani a piano lesson. I taught the lesson from Jacob chapter 4 about the importance of scriptures and got each young person to commit to reading the scriptures each day this coming week for 15 minutes. We will see what comes of this.
As we were driving around today and yesterday we noticed that there were cane trucks back on the road, so the harvesting of this years crop has begun. Soon the sky will be filled with clouds of smoke from the burning fields and we will be following more and more cane trucks as they take their loads to the sugar factories. We have now lived here for a full year’s cycle of life. What a marvelous time we have had and how much we have learned about the land and the people. It is an experience we could never have had – or at least we would not have taken – with out the opportunity of going on a mission together. The Lord truly has blessed us through our membership in the only true and living church on the earth.