May 7, 2015 – Flat inspections take about 5 hours door to door with most of that time spent driving the 140 plus miles there and back. These were unannounced inspections and so some of the flats were a mess, some kind of messy and one clean and just a little messy from the morning activities. It was good to see and talk to the elders in the zone. I have missed flat inspections for that reason. We are able to talk to them about their areas, how they are doing and take some pictures of their flats and a companionship picture.
The Vaal Zone leaders – elder Tekurio and elder Togiatomai. Since the guard at the gate would not let us in without contacting one of the flats, the ZLs had a little warning about us coming so elder Tekurio was busy washing dishes when we went in.
The cleanest flat by far was that of elders Andritiana and Stomp. Elder Andritiana was just finishing washing all of his clothes so he could start packing to go home on Tuesday. He is from Madagascar – a name I can never write correctly – and is one of the few who’s last name does not start with an R and contain at least 20 letters.
The Sebokeng 2 flat elders -Â Savage, Neuenschwander – was well kept up and was just a little messy but not dirty. Elder Savage was trained by elder Clegg and so i sent the pictures we took off to sister Clegg to forward to brother and sister Savage. I know parents – especially mothers – are alway glad to get photos of their missionary sons and their surroundings. Their whiteboard shows that they are keeping very busy and have a couple of investigators on date for the month.
Our final inspection in the complex – there are four sets of elders there – was Sebokeng 1 with elders Carter and Mwale. Their flat was lived in but you can see that all of their dishes were washed and not piled up in the sink like some of the other flats we inspect. They did have one major problem and that was that their bathroom ceiling was almost black with mold and that is very dangerous. We gave them instructions on how to clean it and hopefully they will.
We then drove to Ennerdale where we expected to inspect two flats – Ennerdale and Orange Park but found that one of the elders had gone home so they were now a threesome. Elder Yates is the DL and his companions on his left are elders Turauskis and Rizk. Elder Turauskis is from Lithuania. Since elders are not allowed to sleep in a bedroom by themselves – these three elders share a cozy bedroom in one of the flats.
Flat checks!! They are fun to do for the most part. Even though our are always announced, some don’t seem to care that seniors are coming to check, but thank heavens most do. All of our missions have the same thing in common – mold. Looks like the elders flats are nice. That is something we are working on hard, to get really decent housing for the missionaries. At the moment, we have several 3-somes and their flats look just like the one you pictured with the mattresses and beds. Sometimes, they have moved the mattresses into the lounge area because it is cooler – but this is not what they are suppose to be doing. We are looking forward to having the elder from Richards Bay area come, but it has been put off until July 1st because he doesn’t have an Australia visa. As always, thanks for Tembe!!
We are also surprised when some of the elders do not really clean their flats very well even when they know they are going to be inspected. When we served in the Florida mission the president and his wife would do flat inspections once a quarter. The president would interview the elders and the mission mom would do a good inspection of the flat. Of course the mission was small enough in size that they could do this – it seems yours is much to large for this to work. I have to confess that I did not put the photos of the messiest parts of the flats on the blog.