Big move

   
Dear Family

It’s time to give you an update and let you know we are still alive and well.  We have been busy making our monthly rounds to each of the seminary teachers or their classes.  It has been very rewarding to see the classes that have worked out well, but also frustrating to see some which have fallen apart.  These people go through so much just to make a class work.  Most of them have so far to walk to go to and from seminary that it takes several hours.  With the winter season on us and the shorter daylight hours, some of them do not have enough hours to get from school to seminary to home before it gets dark.  It’s unwise to have any of the students, especially the young women, out walking alone after dark, so we are trying to adjust seminary times and do other things to keep the program working.

This weekend we travelled to Mokopane to visit a seminary class.  The teacher is a young man who just returned from a mission and is having trouble finding a job.  The branch president called him to teach both seminary and institute so he has been very busy.  We attended his class and were very impressed with the good job he did.  We spent the night there since it was about 3-4 hours drive, and came home the next morning.

In order to keep the travel cost down for the teachers, we have been having private meetings at teachers’ homes instead of bringing everyone together in a group.  We have one city, for example, where the chapel is located, but there are no seminary kids nearby.  But there are three “at-home” seminaries over an hour away in each of three different directions so we are trying to visit each of them separately.  This makes a much bigger challenge for us, but so far we have enjoyed this approach because we get to see people as they really live, and understand better the challenge they and their students face.

Today is mom’s birthday but it has been too busy to celebrate it.  She had to speak in two different sacrament meetings, teach primary in one and RS in the other, and then we both taught a temple preparation class to a young lady about to get married in the temple.  Tomorrow we are going to spend our P Day with 8 other young elders and another senior couple, providing a lunch for them and playing Jeopardy using the messages from the recent General Conference.  I plan on buying a birthday cake and celebrating her birthday there.

I just took a brief break to chase a large moth (about the size of a canary) out of the house.  It’s still warm enough that we keep our door open most of the time so get surprised with a variety of critters from time to time.

We have decided to move downstairs the end of the month so we have been packing our things the last couple of days in between our trips to some of our teachers.  We like the second floor better for security and view, but will welcome the few degrees cooler next summer after we move downstairs.  There will be no change in phone numbers, addresses, etc. since we go the PO to get our mail.

We are joining a small group of seniors this Thursday to go to Kruger Park, the largest reserve in South Africa.  We are looking forward to that trip.  We will spend Thursday and Saturday traveling (5-6 hours each way), but will have Friday to drive through a portion of the park on a self-guided tour.  Most people who do this see lots of animals so we are hoping for good luck!  We have an entrance to the park only an hour away, but we thought this would be fun to do together, and we have been told this particular area has the highest animal density.

On May 5 the Ambassadors, a BYU singing/dancing group, is going to perform in our city.  It’s unusual that they would come to a place so small so it will be interesting to see what impact they have on the missionary work.  We will be involved in helping provide two lunches for 60-70 people—that’s something the seniors get a lot of experience in.  We’re looking forward to the show.

In June they are having some kind of a Senior Missionary get-together in Johannesburg, sponsored by the mission president and his wife.  We have no idea what we will be doing, but it is always fun to get together and meet new people.

I guess that is all of the news for now.  We are including another photo as an attachment.