14 November 2009 – Saturday

The morning again slipped away quickly. We had originally planned to go to the soccer game in PD between the elders and the branch but that was postponed because four of the elders could not be there. The RB elders went out to the deKlerk’s farm and the Empangeni elders had a service project. So instead we ran errands including getting pictures of the Enseleni youth printed, getting ink for the printer – where are the re-fillers in South Afrcia – and going to the pharmacy for some of Mary’s meds.

Sister Khumalo SMS us that she would not be able to come for her computer lesson but 3 out of 4 of Mary’s piano students said they would come. So while she was busy teaching piano I got to take a nap in the car. Before we were through dear sister Ndlovo came to clean the chapel. It was a good thing we were there because she did not have keys to get in so I opened everything up for her.

While Mary was teaching, it had started drizzling a little harder so we drove Zama – her last student – to her house. We then drove out to Port Durnford where we recovered the missing bag of games from the chapel – they were under the pulpit – and then drove to the Kanyile homestead to give them the picture of their family we had printed today. We did not think anyone was home but as we were leaving the son came out and so we were able to complete our task. The father seemed very pleased to have the picture and I was very careful not to mention anything about the church while we were there. Hopefully by showing them our love they will someday be open to hearing the missionaries.

As we drove pass Bungumuse’s house, we saw the elder’s car was out in front but we did not stop because we did not want to interfere with their teaching. Then about 30 yards further down the street we saw his mother and stopped to say hello to her. She is a very nice woman and we need to do more to help her get a job.

On the way out of Esikhawini we stopped to make sure the chapel was locked up – we had arranged for Sazi Mthalane to come over and do that – and drove up just as sister Ndlovo and her son were leaving. It had started to be quite wet so we picked them up and drove them home.

By the time we had finished it was still an hour before we were to meet the Mickelsen’s at the harbor for dinner. This gave us time to do our little bit of grocery shopping and still be on time. We had dinner at a Thai restaurant that the Bs introduced us to. We ended up taking almost 2 hours to eat and talk. It did not seem anything like that long because the company was so good.

We talked about the branches, some of the problems that needed to be worked on, stories about our first missions – theirs to Florida and ours to Indonesia – and we did some planning for our trip down to Durban on Monday.

Back at the boarding we had a couple of quiet hours before heading off to bed. Looking back I am not sure how much we accomplished in furthering the Lord’s work.