Week 2 – South Africa

Week 2 – South Africa



This week started with a devotional meeting.  Each day now we will start our day at the office with a devotional and prayer to invoke the Lord’s help and blessing on our work here at the Mission Office.  We are now preparing for mission transfers and the arrival of  12 new elders.  We will receive another office couple, the Oborns.    Sister Oborn  will be doing medical, housing, and utilities and Elder Oborn will be doing cars.  It will be a big job for them to keep 180 + elders in apartment, well and with transportation.  This month we have had 13 accidents with cars. This mission has more cars than most because of the distance from living area and teaching areas.ere is a pictured of our mission offices

                                                         Roodepoort Chapel

This is our mission office sign and the chapel for the three ward that meet there Sunday.  We had a nice Sunday visiting the ward at 10 am.  The chapel was quite nice, but cold.  Everyone wore coats since they don’t heat the buildings. 

We are still working with the landlord to keep our electricity going.  It has went out 4 times now.  It is hard to cook and heat the flat when the electricity goes out. 

                    Well, the Oborns and Mihu couples came this week.  It has been an interesting and busy week with a missionary transfers.  With about 180 + elders, missionary families picking up elders, senior couples, new arriving elders and senior couples, it has been an exciting week and exhausting.  We had the most spiritual transfer meeting where everyone was greeted and inspirational council given by departing missionaries and departing mission president.

                    It was interesting to hear Sister Mihu’s testimony since her grandfather came to South Africa in 1846 and met the missionaries when they started the mission here in 1855.  Both her family, the Bodily family and 50 saints boarded a ship in Port Elizabeth and sailed to Cape Town where my family, the Bourne’s and Day’s got on board to sail to America and crossed the prairie to Salt Lake.  Sister Mihu was able to share more details of this adventure than I had about their time here in South Africa than I had.  I will share it with my family when I can.

                    With all the Elders here for the transfer meeting, the office which is already crowded, it was pandemonium.  I got to exercise my calling by giving out information to the new Elders on the use of their allotment cards and getting them started on their missions.  It was great to meet such wonderful young Elders who have come from all over the world to serve the Lord.  The new Elders were from Riverton, Panguich, and Sandy Utah, Tazmania, New Zealand, Manchester, England, etc. 

                    We finally were able to go to the temple here in Johannesburg.  The temple is the same design as the Chicago Temple, but we noticed that the rooms seemed much smaller.  We were fortunate to catch the last session on Sat.  We did not understand that the temple closed early on Sat.  We hurried around the ground just before the gates were locked. I suppose we need to go early to enjoy all the sights.

                    It was good to go to the temple after a hectic preparation day trying to buy drapes for our flat.   We had a lot of trouble again getting our credit card to work since it was a large purchase.  With our electric heater going out and extreme cold morning which froze and broke our plumbing, it was challenging.  I believe it was the coldest morning for us here in Africa.  The car was completely frosted over.  As I mentioned previously, we have no central heating in the flats and rely on small electric heaters.  Sister Nichols and I have to huddle a lot around a heater to survive.