Thanksgiving and Other Things

Every year the senior missionary couples plan and cook a Thanksgiving dinner for all the couples, Area Presidency and wives, and some invited guests.  This year we cooked for 72 people.  The only place large enough to accommodate this size crowd is the 3 car garage of the White House, where the Area Presidency lives.  We lovingly call it the basement.  We had so much good, traditional Thanksgiving food that we invited some of the workers to come and fill a plate for themselves.  We had beautiful decorations made from twig trees, rolls of toilet paper decorated up like pumpkins.  Elder Egan said it best when he described our lowly mission Thanksgiving in a garage with twigs and toilet paper rolls as decorations.  It sounds a lot worse than it was.  In fact it was perfect!  It was also time for the Primary Program in all the units.  Since it was a warm spring day, the Primary Presidency in Cosmo City provided watermelon in gratitude of a job well done.  With the heat of the days and the use of high volumes of electricity, load shedding is a constant.  One beauty salon at the mall got creative and came out of their store to use the plugs that were on the generator to finish the hair of their clients.  It is so fun to serve here!

The Joy of Mission President's Seminars

Mid-November all the mission presidents and wives in the Africa Southeast Area converged on Johannesburg for their semi-annual Mission President's Seminar.  We had three days of wonderful, enlightening, spiritual instruction and sharing.  The last day we visited Croc City and the Lion Park.  Both are within half an hour of downtown Jo'burg.  It was fun to get out of the city and enjoy the wonders of this beautiful country.  We saw baby crocodiles, an albino boa constrictor, and big old crocodiles. Chuck was brave enough to hold the boa as well as President and Sister Dunn who are friends of President and Sister Knudsen and serving as Mission President in the South Africa Johannesburg Mission.  We also got to pet the baby lion cubs.  Word of advice, they are still wild animals and they are babies, so they do bite!  Sister Merrill, from Angola, and Liz found that out the hard way!

Our First Visitors - Dennis and Cindy Lange

Combining business with pleasure was a perfect way for us to visit with Dennis and Cindy Lange who came into town. We didn't get much time with them, but it was a joy to take them to Soweto for church on Sunday and to stop by the Soweto home of Nelson Mandela and family.  Thanks for taking the time to visit with us Dennis and Cindy!

Weekly Happenings

When you go to the pharmacy, called Clicks, they put your prescription in a cage.  You then have to take it up to the till to pay. The cage keeps you from stealing the RX.  While in the Killarney Mall, across the street from our flat, this group of women always seems to be resting themselves outside the Pik-n-Pay store.  They are thoroughly enjoying their time together.

First Online Missionary Application in the History of the ASEA!

This is huge.  We had an young man fill out his missionary application online.  Then Stake President Msiza came to our office to finish his portion.  Once the Stake President finished his part, the Area Medical Adviser reviewed all the medical pages and we submitted the first ever online missionary recommendation to SLC!  Now we need to train the local stake clerks on how to fill in their portion and we are on our way to submitting missionary papers like many of the other areas of the church!

Constitution Hill

On the top of a city center rise is Constitution Hill.  Back in the early days of Johannesburg city it was a fort.  It was then turned into a men and women's prison.  This is where native resident, Gandhi spent many years for his outspoken ways and peaceful demonstrations.  Both Winnie and Nelson Mandela were held here too.  The bus driver negotiated the busy, crowded, taxi strewn streets to deposit us to this stop on the tour.  We felt the inhumanity and reverence of this significant piece of world history.

Red Bus Tour in Downtown Johannesburg

One of the best ways to see Johannesburg is by taking the Red Bus tour.  There are many unsafe places downtown. You don't have to get off at any of those places but are still privileged to see what the city center is like.  Graffiti here is not criminal in nature, it is artistically done and left for all to enjoy.We found the sides of these building so much more beautiful sporting zebras and elephants. There is also iron work South African style on the balconies that is reminiscent of New Orleans.  Because this wonderful city was built around gold mines, there are a lot of hillsides all around the outskirts of the city of the leftover tailing's from the mines

More from our Madikwe safari

We saw most of the big name animals.  The only things we didn't see were cheetahs and cape buffalo.  We even saw a family of wild dogs that they feared had been eaten by the lions.

There is an abundance of lions in Madikwe.  The warm asphalt streets are a favorite resting place.  It must have been the lunar eclipse but the lions were definitely in an amorous mood.  One male lion had fought with another male over one of the females and still bore the bloody wounds from the night before. One night we came upon a zebra skull.  Jonny, our guide, showed us the huge teeth and molars still clinging to the jaw bone.  Awesome sights, sounds and smells!

We enjoyed our rides in the early morning and in the evening seeing all we could find.  Sunsets were breathtaking.  Our group of 6 had a lot of fun together.  Besides us, one couple came from Germany.  The Lombardi's, church history missionaries from Utah, were from the ASEA office.  We would stop midway between each 3-4 hour ride to stretch our legs and have a small snack before returning to Mosetlha Lodge for the delicious meals they would fix for us.

Another safari - Madikwe

We had the opportunity to go on another safari.  This time we visited the Madikwe Game Reserve in the northwest corner of South Africa near Botswana and closer to the Kalahari Desert than to Johannesburg.  On the dirt road close to the entrance we noticed that we had a flat tire.  This was no flat, this was a shredded tire.  After entering the game reserve we came upon an elephant drinking from the man-made watering hole.  He stopped drinking and almost seemed to pose for us.  We love to visit the animals in their natural habitat!

The Mosetlha Lodge we stayed at was considered an eco-lodge.  This really means no electricity, no running water, no frills.  But it was actually quite fun.  The grounds were unfenced and lions roamed into camp one night.  We gathered and heated our own shower water in the donkey boiler and enjoyed the simplicity of it all.

.

.

Interesting Events

We've had some fun and interesting events these past few weeks  A local Jewish congregation invited us to their synagogue for a celebration called Sukkot.  We participated in the program and visited with the members afterwards at a dinner.  They usually use wine in their celebration but provided the visiting LDS contingent with grape juice.  The men got to wear the kippah.  One of our Angola missionaries, Taylor Arrington, is living in Angola temporarily with his wife and son.  He came to the area office for some training  It was so wonderful to be with him and relive our wonderful time in the Angola mission.Then our Area Medical Adviser was having medical issues so he and his wife had to go home a month early.  Sister Barton had 4 days to show me all the things she would do to submit the missionary applications to SLC.  They know how to keep us busy!