I had to chuckle when an elder told me his mother told him to stop sending pictures of clouds and send her pictures of himself and his companion. I take lots of pictures and a goodly number are of clouds. Thursday as we drove two of Mary’s seminary students home, I had to stop and take a picture of the sun setting over a small lake. Later that night I noticed how the full moon – or close to a full moon and the clouds made a great looking picture.

This is the home of the students we took home. It has been in the family for a couple of generations and will probably stay in the family for years to come. Just inside the fence was these beautiful flowers. With the sun and now the rain, the NorthWest is becoming filled with flowers and blooming trees.

Friday we went to Klerksdorp for District Meeting where the only picture I took was of this mime. There is a crew of them that stand in the middle of the street and perform. They have a can for the motorists to made donations. I have yet to hit it – even when we are stopped. In the afternoon we needed to take one of the missionaries into the emergency room – a mistake on our part because we could have taken him to our doctor – where we spent 4 1/2 hours waiting for him to finish being treated. But it was worth the wait because today he says that he feels great. This is our third trip to the clinic in 3 months or so. Hopefully we will make it through the rest of our mission without having to do it again.

I accidentally took this picture of my keyboard. I was about to trash it when I realized how dirty it is so I decided I should post the picture and shame myself into cleaning it.

One of the fun parts of going on missions is the gathering of souvenirs that you can display around your house and later the children can decide what they want and give the rest to DI! We were blessed when we were in Indonesia to have a way of getting boxes home at almost no expense. Also they cost almost nothing – I can remember bartering with a vendor and realized that we were haggling over a nickel! So of course we bought lots of things to bring home.

On our first mission to South Africa we were blessed to because President and Sister Mann were going home just a few days before we were and the container they are allowed was not full so they told the senior couples that they could put their boxes in the container and then pick them up in Idaho when we came up for their mission report.

Florida was really easy because we had our van there and we could pack just about anything that we chose to take home. However we did not get much there – after all we were in the US and nothing was very ‘native’ that we could not get on line.

So now we are back in Africa and although we probably will not buy much, we have started to accumulate some things that we will need to either put in our suitcases or send off via a package. We did bring a few things from home – mainly batik hangings from Indonesia. But they are easy to fold up and pack.

The three batik hangings are from Indonesia. Because they not framed they are easy to take with us but when we are finished going on missions I will have them framed. The giraffe in the picture with the house batik is our big $9 purchase here that I am trying to figure out how to get home.  The elephant, nativity set and two Christmas ornaments were bought in Kimberly.

The gourd nativity set has figures made from banana leaves and we got it when we were with the Taylors early in this mission. Then on Tuesday we were with them again when Mary bought this wood nativity set.

This very beautiful stone nativity came from our trip to Kimberly with elder and sister Dummer. Going places with other couples can become expensive. But we will be able to enjoy these while we are here and long after we have said goodbye to Africa for probably the last time.