We attended a zone meeting on the 28th of February and spent most of the day with the mission president and several young missionaries and a few oldies. By the way, there is another Elder Alder here. I assume we are related but our common thread probably goes back about 5-6 generations. If I get time, I check into that.
Mom continues to be busy with her primary calling and gospel doctrine teacher. I have received a couple of new callings. One is to be a financial auditor and the other is to be a district technology supervisor so I am having to learn a little more about computers. So far I have audited three branches. We are traveling to Mokopane tomorrow to audit a fourth branch and at the same time do some training with the seminary and institute teacher (he is an RM who does both). Then on Monday we travel to Polokwane to do the same for a fifth branch. The first trip is 6 hours round trip and the second one is four hours.
We develop our own inservice lessons to teach the teachers. In January we talked about how to choose from the massive amount of data in the OT and other sources to make it fit into an hour lesson each day. The second lesson was how to ask questions to make the students search, ponder and apply them to their lives. The March lesson we developed was the importance of testimony, and how to use testimony in seminary and institute classes. We usually find a short video to go along with our presentations.
Mom had a crown break off her tooth so we are in the process of getting that fixed. We feel good about the dentists we are using. She also did another eye check, particularly regarding her glaucoma, and everything seems to be doing very well. Her good eye is 20-20 corrected, and the bad eye is okay but will never be the same. Overall, we have enjoyed good health so far.
We just returned yesterday from a four-day trip to Johannesburg where we attended a special conference for seminaries and institutes. There were about 65 people in attendance. This included all the southeast part of the African continent so there were several countries represented besides South Africa. It was a great experience where we had a chance to learn a lot and meet a lot of new people. The first day and a half we had training at a conference center near the airport. The last part of the second day included traveling to the area headquarters and listening to Elder Soares, member of the area presidency, speak to us. This was followed by all of us going to the Johannesburg temple together. We had to do it in shifts because the temple could not accommodate such a large group at once. We met people from Botswana, Congo, Zimbabwe, etc..
The next morning prior to driving home we went to the distribution center and purchased some garments for a sister who is in great need, and then visited a huge African Market where they sell all kinds of African things (doodads). Mom only had about half an hour to look around so she wants to go back. I’ll have to find something else to do! There were hundreds of shops and every shop owner was trying to lure you in his shop. One Elder said he felt like an egg which was being constantly pecked at by several baby chickens!
We stopped at the mission office on the way home and paid our March car lease. They changed the policy so we pay part of the expenses here and the other part is taken out of the ward mission fund. We had to set up a bill pay with the credit union to accommodate this new change. The drive home was mostly rainy but very pleasant because it was the first day we never turned on the car air conditioner. We had to drive in the dark the last hour because of construction stoppages.
Check with Kim and see if she has received the photos yet. We will send you one more low resolution photo here just to keep you African animal interest up. We went out to the cycad reserve and saw the monkeys again, but unfortunately there was a bus load of teenagers there so most of them had disappeared.
Hope everyone is doing well.
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