These are two photos from the Friday night reception that I took off of the FaceBook page of another member who was there. I thought they were excellent – especially for showing off the cake that sister Taylor made.

Seminary has been moved to Saturday morning so that more can attend. Unfortunately this did not work this first week as all we got was the faithful three. But hopefully in the future it will be better attended.

After Seminary on Saturday we stopped at the store and picked up our usual order of 12 delicious large scones. The people in the bakery department all know us by name and I think they make especially large scones to fill our order. Mary spent the rest of Saturday decorating a large carrot cake for the social on Sunday to honor the Kwaikwais. She also made a huge pot of spaghetti sauce to go over the rice that will be served. Some of the sisters who had it at the tri-branch youth dance really liked it. I have to say that I liked it better over rice than I do over spaghetti. I take pride in that I grated the carrots for the carrot cake, diced the onions and bell peppers for the sauce – I also stirred the sauce while it was cooking and finally grated blocks of parmesan cheese to put over the sauce when it was served. The cake was not only beautiful it was delicious and much more flavorful than the sponge cake that brother Simon decorated for the occasion.

I made the map for the area auditor, Denis de Jong who arrived on Sunday to do the very late end of the year audit and then went on to do Jouberton branch. He came in time to enjoy Sacrament with us. We loaned him our GPS so he could get to the Jouberton chapel to do their audit. This made it possible for me to stay for the baptism and social.

Mary plays for the first hour of Primary. I took this picture of president Kwaikwai with sister Ncapayi in her beautiful African outfit.

This was a very special Sabbath day here for the Potchefstroom branch. First 72 Saints gathered for the regular block of meetings. Sacrament meeting was especially memorable because sister Mogapi spoke about how the atonement was personally meaningful to her. She spoke from her heart and read only a few things from a paper. It was a very moving talk.  After the block we had a baptism – Gomolemo Tladi Sebokwane which is pronounced – Ho Mo Lay Mo – Clod E – C -Back – Wana – was baptized by David Rampai. David did an excellent job but had to do it twice as he did not get his head all the way under the first time. His family was present so that was good also. Since next week we will have conference, we had the confirmation after the baptism. I had the privilege of confirming him a member of the Church.  During and after the baptism, the Relief Society sisters and others were busy setting up for a surprise social to celebrate the Kwaikwai’s marriage. Luckily the president had a number of interviews he needed so he was in his office while the final preparations were being done. They kept telling me that they needed more time so I kept feeding the president interviews – they would say 10 more minutes and I would get them 20 but then they wanted more. Of course when they were ready, the president got into a long interview and everyone had to wait. I was sure the president knew what was going on but he told me he really did not – he did not plan to have a party until their 1st anniversary. Why I think he may not have known is that when they asked him to speak he got completely tongue-tied and only spoke for a minute or two. He mentioned that this was unusual for him since he loves to talk too much.