Constant Food

 

First antique store in SA ever! 

We started the 16th of January off (which was "P Day") with a fun short trip to the Waffle Hut.  It's on the way to the Drakensburg Mountains which we will climb soon.  Our aim on this short (30 minutes from home) ride was to go to the Spioenkop reservoir and see more animals at the reserve they have there.

 We never made it to the reservoir because it poured but we did explore a former large Africaans town called Winterton and go to our first ever South African Antique store.

 We had to be back fairly soon because Elder DePriest's B-Day Braai was taking place at our place that night.  We had the Elders bring their own meat and we supplied everything else.  Educational--their steaks were as big as the whole grill and it did fill them up.
   We had our last Institute missionary prep class on Tues. with a few make-up classes for Sabe and Sthabiso to follow later.   Nqobile came faithfully and was an utter delight in the class.

 This was a very intensive Preach My Gospel course to rival our MTC experience.
   Sibonelo Zulu came for dinner on Thursday and we had a fun visit.  He is a 30 year old returned missionary looking to get reinstated and we are helping him with that.  He's never been married and goes back home to Newcastle as often as he can to visit the girlfriend.  He has the distinction of being the first person we met in Ladysmith at the Pick & Pay grocery, where he works as the bakery manager.  We had only been in Ladysmith one night when he came up to us and introduced himself (dead give away with those nametags and that white person thing).  This was before we even went to church.

   District Conference started on Sat. in Ezakheni  with leadership training and the adult meeting.  We were done at 12:30 so we could head off for Newcastle and do it all again there.  Our District  is too geographically large to do one meeting, so those of us that spoke, do the traveling.  I think that means that people with cars do most of the speaking. Kent and I mostly spoke about how Seminary and Institute were vehicles to teach and educate our youth and this in the "Savior's Way".  The thing I noticed was the push for visiting teaching and hometeaching.  It is not happening in S. Africa so it was good to mention.  We had fun trying to keep our talks down to 5 and 10 minutes together.  We had dinner in Newcastle with the Mission President and his old home teachers from Alpine, the Browns and the DeKlerks at a place called the "Pint and Pig Out".There are no bathrooms for about a 3 and 1/2 hour span -between towns! (We did take the time and stopped at a little store we knew about and were late for the next meeting...help!) 

The Browns hosted us for the night so we could do the same thing with different talks on Sunday in a Newcastle primary school and then off to Ezakheni where we did it all over again.  Cute Sis

ter Brown thought of bag lunches to eat in the cars.  It went great except that someone stole 2 lunches from the fridge in Ezakheni.  We were more careful on Sunday.
   Tuesday was the most fun we've had for a long time--We continued our class time with all three prospective missionaries and met in class and talked about our free agency and choice.  This was important because they would be making choices about things to take with them and what to buy for their missions.  I had Slungile bring her list from her calling (to Uganda on Feb 8) and we talked essentials and not so essential.  These kids have so little money that they need to make good choices with what they do have.  After 30 min we put them in the car and gave them their missionary planners for note taking and took them window shopping in Ladysmith.  (I told all of them that we would like to give them 1 gift like we give to our stateside missionary kids when they go on a mission--as a going away present.)  We gave money to Elder Xaba when he left, for shoes and we don't think he bought them. We now need to go with all our missionaries because some would just give the cash to their families.
 

 Slungile needed good walking shoes so we found some and it helped to have another girl there for support.  We looked at luggage prices and talked quality and Sthabiso checked his size for shirts (he gets some used Elder shirts from me but not enough).We looked at bags for the girls, how to carry scriptures and books  since Uganda is a walking mission, and all took notes.  We  thought it was a good outing and we topped off with lunch.  We took them to one of our favorite places for lunch--Penelopes.  They couldn't stop talking about it and were all eyes at the menu of choice. The cost was a super-size Wendy's but they hadn't been there before.
   On Wednesday we had a Web-ex meeting (online) for seminary and institute. We learned that our Web-ex  leader (he wrote us an e-mail) is preparing for his wife's eminent passing from a long bout with cancer.  Their attitude was amazing and so inspirational that we both wept after reading the letter.  We hadn't done our homework for the meeting but did so after the meeting.
 The next  day we had a Re-Max morning to see if we  can get our Elders out of  their icky boarding.  The Mission President would like only 2 Elders in a boarding so we will try to work it --but it is going to take time to look.  We live in a small town and good properties go fast.  Later that morning we met the Elders at the real Dr's office to discover that Elder Lowe did have a bad spider bite that needed anti-biotics and extra care.  It was affecting his whole leg and caused headaches.

Kent had his first Friday night Ladysmith Branch Presidency meeting that he suggested they have, since the Pres can never be there on Sunday.   They agreed and the Pres took charge and did discover there were no speakers for Sunday so they would at least not be blind-sided by that.  (They still asked the Elders if they would be the speakers on Sunday when they walked through the door at 10 to 10.) We are still working on things!
 

 Saturday was a big day for us.   We had our kickoff for Dundee Seminary with the 2 Doctrinal Mastery lessons.  10  kids are  matric-ing and 2 others came along with my former Institute student -now seminary teacher.  We fed 20 and next time we'll figure out something more simple.  We started at noon setting up for lunch but kids were not out of matric class on Sat till 12:30 .  These kids go to school 6 days a week when in their last year of secondary-school and some still do not pass and get the diploma.  It was a long day and we got home after 4:30, but who knows how it will go on their first 3 days at 6AM.  3 days of seminary is up from the 2 days of seminary last year.  One step at a time.  Transport is such an issue!

  Some cute Family History missionaries from Joburg, the Lees, stopped by at Church and spoke on how to get started on their family history work here in Ladysmith.  They gave us a packet and told people to get in touch with us if they need help.  We are not experts on everything but it is fun to try with the Lord's help and maybe we will be enough for now.

After living here for 6 months, we finally found our 1 and only Chinese food with Take-away.

   We met and hosted the Dranfields, the new couple going to Lesotho, Sunday night.   They were coming from PJ to show branch clerks a new computer program to help keep track of their people.  2 of our branches don't even have clerks, but they left Monday night to teach a District Clerk all about it-so hope that can help.  We all are pretty isolated from other couples, it is just fun to see and host and talk to others that are in the same boat as us.  Each couple has different duties, but 's those of us in the "bush" have lots of similarities.  This whole blog seems to about or around food!  Could it be that we are fighting our 10 pound spread after Christmas in the summer and we are now facing our winter with possible more poundage to come if we don't get this under control?