Home Sweet Flat

Hi Everyone,

We are now in our final apartment (flat) in a place called Tzaneen, South Africa.  It is a very nice apartment with two bedroom, a large kitchen, two bathrooms, and a little outside patio on the second floor.  One of the bedrooms is to be an office.  This is a bit further north east than we thought, and much, much warmer.  It appears to be a near tropical area because they grow bananas, mangos, etc. abundantly.  It is a beautiful area about 2500 feet above sea level with mountains surrounding the entire valley. There are about 80,000 people living in the city area and about 600,000 people living in the mountains surrounding the area.  The majority of people are black.

We drove here yesterday which took us about 5 hours, a little longer than usual due to road construction.  The roads, in general, are very good although they are narrower than we have in the states.  The major road up this way was a toll road so we had to stop and pay tolls 4 times along the way, each costing about $5.00.  We followed someone from the CES office and then he returned home today.  We really enjoyed the different landscape on the way up.

There are now two senior couples in this area—us and a couple whose husband is serving as the branch president.  They live downstairs in our same apartment complex and come from the Preston, Idaho area.  They have been very kind to us, having purchased a few food items for us before we got here, and then went out and got us some hangers, milk and cereal last night while we unpacked.  Today the husband went shopping with us so we could find the stores and get some of our essentials.

There will be a zone conference this Saturday in the building close by with Elder Cook of the 70 presiding.  We will probably have a chance to meet our mission president while there since we have not yet met him.  We have not been to the branch yet, but there are 8 missionaries serving and typical attendance, we understand, is about 30. 

We are struggling with the heat, and trying to sort out our tasks, and trying to get all of the computers, printers, etc. up and running.  Our responsibility here will be primarily to try to get seminaries staffed in all of the nearby branches which make up a district.  They have some teachers and have been holding seminary only once per week due to the distance people have to travel and the lack of transportation and money for transportation.  We have been encouraged to get them on a daily seminary to be held in homes near where people live, but time will tell whether that is possible

I guess that is enough for now.  Hope all of you are doing fine.

Love, Mom and Dad