02 January 2009

Mary called the travel office this morning and we found that we are leaving for our mission on the 29th of January. We will fly American Airlines to Chicago – where we will have a four hour layover so we may get to say goodbye to Jim, Kristy and the girls – and then we transfer to British Airways to travel to London and then South Africa. It sounds like a long, long trip.

The date suggests that the travel office thinks we are going to need for extra training as office missionaries. Since we are not going to do that, we wrote President Mann to see if we could pass on the training and get to the mission earlier. It is interesting that they wanted to keep us here longer than we needed to when we went to Indonesia. We were able to work through that so perhaps we can through this one also.

I checked to see what the luggage limits were and was surprised to find that we not only get two 50 pounds bags each but also we can take as much as 40 pounds as carry on. I don’t think I want to try to carry on two 40 pound bags but it is good to know I can take 25-30 pounds without any problems. This means we can take an extra change of clothes and necessities so if our luggage gets hung up we will have clean clothes and a tooth brush.

“The day dwindles down to a precious few.”

Completely off subject: We have seen two very good movies in the last 8 days. Last week we saw “Valkyrie” and this week we saw ‘Benjamin Button.”

01 January 2009

I managed to write the date without changing an 8 to a 9. Perhaps there is hope for me yet.

This morning as Mary is watching the Rose Parade on two channels, I was at my computer trying to find a new piece of music to listen to on New Years Day. It seemed appropriate at the time. To fill the time while some music was being recorded, I read from the December 2008 Ensign. After reading from page 54 to the end, I opened the magazine to page 26 and Elder Maxwell’s conference talk from 2002 titled “Consecrate Thy Performance.”

How appropriate to read this talk on the 1st day of a new year and just a few of weeks before leaving on our mission. In his wonderful and loving way he pointed out to me some of my weaknesses that I need to work on if I am going to a truly successful missionary and be fully worthy to be called a child of God. I count it as a tender mercy that the Lord had me read this today and I truly acknowledge His hand it this blessing.

Earlier today I ordered a book and cds to help us learn Zulu. Hopefully it will help us be more successful missionaries. Unfortunately the Book of Mormon is not translated into Zulu so Mary and I will not be able to spend our mornings reading and translating as we did in Indonesia. But I am sure there are some church literature that has been translated so we should be able to do some work. We also plan to find a member who can teach us on a regular basis – something we should have done for bahasa Indonesian.

Two Sundays ago – December 21 I think – we had our Christmas program in Sacrament. As usual the Primary and Choir singing was great. But the highlight for me was a talk by Tom Griffith about Christ as creator. It was one of the best Christmas talks I have ever heard. It went right along with a thought that I have been repeating in my mind for a couple of months that came to me as an answer to prayer – “Trust me.”

On the 28th there were two powerful talks by two young people who have been away for a while. Kenneth Brewer has been attending Harvard and then went to China. Megan Shumway has been in Oregon serving a mission. Kenneth talk was about his experiences of being a Mormon in Harvard and China. He recounted that one day at Harvard a young woman asked him “How much of a Mormon are you?” I thought that was a great question and I wondered how I might answer it. Reading Elder Maxwell’s article today re-inforced this question in my mind. As he points out to become Christ like is a step by step process. The important thing is not to be discouraged by my weakness but encouraged to do better.

Megan shared a number of inspiring experiences but one really hit me. She told about a sister they had tracted out and was baptized just before Megan was to come home. Megan got permission to go say goodbye. While they were sharing their love for each other Megan thanked the sister for allowing her to teach her the gospel. The sister responded with thanking Megan for knocking on her door. That really hit me and made me wonder what doors I have not knocked on that I should have. What neighbors did  not hear the gospel because I did not knock on their door. I decided that I would pray to know what doors I need to knock on – not only on our mission but also when I am at home. I need to make the idea ‘Every member a missionary” mean something to me.

Speaking of that I have been spending more time getting mentally and spiritually ready for our mission. I have been re-reading the information that we receieved from President Mann. I also wrote him about a couple of programs that are mentioned in the literature. He wrote back with two websites I could visit. http://durbanmission.blogspot.com/ is the blog Sister Mann keeps up about their experiences and has lots of good pictures. http://sadm.site50.net/ is a mission website that tells about some of the programs and ideas that are being used.

The “Walkabout” program sounds like one that could be used in almost any area of the Church. How great it would be if members and missionaries could work together to bring the gospel to those around them. I sent the website to President Marchant yesterday and I think I will send it to Presidents Barrett and Creer today. I am looking forward to getting involved in it and the other programs that are outlined on the mission site.

OK that is enough rambling for now. However I promise more to come as we get ready to leave on our mission.

I woke up this morning to find for once the weather guessers got it right – 4-5 inches of snow had fallen over night. This is only the second snow storm we have been in since we got home. The other one was while we were traveling in Wyoming on the way home from Jim.

The other exciting thing that happened this morning was that we got an e-mail from President Mann and a couple of booklets about the mission.

For future references our mailing address will be: P.O. Box 1741, Wandsbeck 3631, South Africa. That is for all letters and packages

The mission address for express shipping is: 8 Windsor Ave., Westville 3630, South Africa

He include some advice about what to expect when first arriving and what we need to bring with us. One of the interesting suggestions is that we bring an extra change of clothes in our carry on because luggage is often delayed a day or two.  One of the encouraging comments in the letter was the suggestion to get to know Africa. Which suggests that we will have some time to explore the country while we serve.

He also mentioned that Elder Bednar was recently in Durban and stated that it was not a sacrifice for seniors to serve missions. We of course agree completely with that and have written it often in letters and our journal. We gained much more than we gave while serving in Indonesia. (Also I did not have to shovel snow as I did this morning while there.)

The mission booklet included information of the Mission Objective, what we would be doing and some handy hints. Another booklet was about the culture. It mainly dealt with the Zulu culture and it seems like we will need to learn at least some Zulu. Hopefully it will be easier for us than Indonesian.

In less than 5 weeks we will enter the MTC and in about 6 we should be on our way to South Africa. That is exciting.

07 December 2008

We had a great evening talking to the Nielsen brothers about their missions. David Nielsen went to Indonesia and was there for about 4 months at the start of our mission. Chad Nielsen went to the Durban mission and got home in July. Bob and his family joined us for dinner so they could hear about our mission. It was good to have Shane sitting there hearing about how much the young men enjoyed their missions and their desire to go back and visit.

We spent the first part of the evening, before dinner, talking to David about Indonesia and the missionaries and members we knew. He told us about where he served and who he served with. It was great to be reminded of the wonderful people of Indonesia and all the things we experienced there.

After a nice dinner we asked Chad lots of questions about our new mission area and what we will do as office missionaries. He told us that I will probably be in charge of the mission fleet of 46 vehicles and Mary will be doing the billing and taking care of the missionary apartments.

He said that while there are some dangers in South Africa, if we are careful and follow some rules we will be fine. He said we will have a nice apartment and a car to drive. Since I will be in charge of the cars, we should have a nice one. As he spoke I hoped that we would have time to work with inactives – I feel that is one of the reasons we are going there.

Because of our calling we will be traveling all over the mission so we should be able to see a lot of the country.

We are both excited about having this opportunity to serve in South Africa. What a blessing it is to be able to serve a mission and help God’s kingdom grow.

05 December 2008

As far as I can remember today was only the second time in my life that I have been fingerprinted. The first time was when we got our identification papers in Indonesia. Being fingerprinted is one of those things I do not believe most law biding citizens ever think about – at least not about their own being taken.

As an aside, I just thought about all the times on TV the villians are caught because they leave behind a ‘partial print’ which is enough to identify them. I guess now that my prints are in the system they will be able to match mine if they ever need to.

Provo provides fingerprint service four nights a week and it costs $10 for two sets. During the day we found that Orem does not charge their residents anything for the service but non-residents have to pay $30. There are also places where you can get it done free – such as going to the county jail down in Spanish Fork.

The other thing we got done today was to have our medical forms signed by the doctor. Now all we need to do is send our fingerprints, application and $18 each to West Virginia and hopefully get back a clean FBI report. It should be interesting to read what the FBI actually says about us.

It is hard to believe in just about 5 weeks we will go into the MTC! I am sure the time will rush by.

04 December 2008 –

The mail brought us a letter from the travel department with visa information. Everything seemed about the same as what we needed for Indonesia until we got to the part that said we need to submit a FBI report. This includes having our fingerprints taken at our local police department and sending them off to Virginia where I guess they will check that we are not members of any terrorist groups or things like that. It will be interesting to read what the FBI has to say about us.

One thing that you get when you go on a mission – especially a foreign mission – is a lot of shots. So we decided to go the the public health service and make sure that we had everything we needed for South Africa. It turned out that what you need for South Africa is what you need for Indonesia so we were current and only needed our flu shots. The mission information did mention that we would start on anti-malaria pills a couple of weeks before we go but they will give those to us at the MTC.

We checked about any language training and the MTC said that the only language that was taught to any missionaries going to Africa is French. We do not think that we will be going anywhere where French is needed so we do not have the stress of trying to learn a language while we get ready.

The Lord has already blessed us by giving us access to some folks who have or are serving in South Africa. We should be able to get most of our questions answered so we will be prepared to serve as soon as we get there. We are looking forward to information from President Mann about what we will be doing, living, etc.

The bishopric announced our call in the meetings so we got a lot of congratulations.

One of the returned Indonesian missionaries who got our e-mail about our call, wrote to say that his brother just got back from a mission to Durban and served for 8 months in the mission office. I wrote back and asked him to either give us his brother’s phone number or have him contact us. We should be able to get a lot of good information from him.

It really feels good to know where and when we are going so we can make plans. I have started a list of things we need to do before we go. I am afraid it will get longer before it gets shorter.