We have finally finished our in-service training for all of the seminary and institute teachers as they start their new year. We are supposed to meet with them monthly and give them additional training throughout the year. We have a total of 20 teachers scattered over quite a large area so we will start to get busier. We need to also hold a PEF fireside in each of the branches before the end of March so traveling will continue to be one of our main tasks. Many of the roads are currently plagued with chuckholes so that presents a major challenge when driving. And the invisible suicide line poses the other major challenge. When people want to pass on a two lane road, they envision it as a 3 lane road and that works okay as long as the cars on both lanes move to the far outside edge of the road. So one constantly has to look in the rear view mirror to see if someone wants to pass you, while at the same time looking at the oncoming traffic to see if someone else is passing. Most of the time it works, but sometimes the road all of a sudden is narrower and one has to make quick adjustments.
We had a big thunder storm last night. We got over 3 inches of rain in just a few hours. We had two close lightning strikes, but it is somewhat exciting to watch the storm. The last time we had one of these, the wind also blew quite heavily and we ended up with two leaky ceilings, one of which dripped just a few inches from our computer.
The speedometer in our new car never did work correctly so we had it replaced today. We had over 4000 km on it, but our new odometer shows 0.0—so maybe we can look at it as yet another new car! The garage lost the paperwork a couple of times so we have been trying for about two months to get this fixed. The service stations enter our mileage every time we put gas in the car, and the Mission monitors our mileage by reviewing the gas bills they receive by credit card. We’re anxious to see what they do when all of a sudden the car they have been monitoring starts back to zero again. Everyone who drives a car uses a church-provided credit card to pay for gas and any repairs. We have just received our second church credit card for CES expenses. And a third one is in process for any non- ces church expenses such as heaters for our apartment, etc. The paperwork associated with the cards is complicated, but we suppose it is the overall easiest way to deal with things. Reimbursements checks for out-of-pocket expenses are sometimes difficult to cash so this avoids that problem.
One of our seminary teachers has been a member just over a year, and was struggling, so mom taught his first lesson so he could observe. Today he is on his own and we’ll probably drop by tomorrow and see how we can help. He does well in English but some of the students know very little so it makes it hard to communicate. Most speak Sutu and a little English. It is interesting teaching in the villages. We pray for the gift of tongues so they can understand.
Nothing works fast here in South Africa. For example, if robots (signal lights) quit working, it takes several days to get them repaired. Very few people show up to church on time, so they dribble in throughout the meeting. I thought it was bad when I was bishop, but I guess it wasn’t. There is no such thing as “hurry”. I suppose it is a lot like the islanders so just take life as it comes. Also, most people will always say yes whether they mean yes or no so they tell you what you want to hear.
Yesterday on our way to Motupa we had an hour to spare before we showed up at seminary so we went to visit a cycad tree preserve. The cycad is a very large, in circumference, palm tree which used to be very plentiful, but is far less plentiful now. We didn’t know what we would find there, but to our surprise there were hundreds of monkeys feeding on the cones in these trees. It was fun watching them play and fight together. We got a few photos, but needed a tripod to get really good photos because we go into the telephoto mode to get close ups and that becomes very sensitive to any camera movement or shaking. One of these days we will get a tripod and just keep in the car for such surprises.
This Saturday we are trying something different here in the Tzaneen Branch. We have arranged to get a copy of the Legacy and will be holding a movie night. Mom and Sister Mihu are going to make cookies for treats to those who come. We’re anxious to see what kind of a turnout and reaction we get from this event. We believe it is a first for the people here. They certainly have their own pioneer stories here in Africa regarding the church, but this should be interesting. They have a hard time relating to Utah pioneers.
In March we are having some kind of a husband-wife CES event in Johannesburg for a couple of days. There will apparently be about 62 couples there—all of the paid and volunteer CES staff we believe. We don’t know the details yet, so that will be interesting to see what happens there.
This is probably all of the news for now. We hope everyone is doing well.
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