Kruger Park

Well, a lot has happened since our last email, so here comes the update.  First of all, we did move from upstairs to downstairs.  It turned out to be quite a hassle which took more than a week, but we should finish by tomorrow.  There were a lot of loose tiles in our flat and the one below us so they decided to replace them during our move process.  We won’t bore you with all the details, but it just took longer to get the tile torn out and replaced than planned.  The good news was that the tile workers helped move the heavy stuff downstairs so we didn’t have any broken backs or sore muscles.  We are now officially in apartment 2 instead of 4, but since we use a PO box, there is no change in our mailing address.

We did make it to Kruger Park and had a wonderful time.  There were 9 couples and a friend who made the trip.  We drove through the park with 2 couples/car on a self-guided trip.  We saw an abundance of many different animals except the cat family.  One of the cars saw three different cats—Lions, Cheetah and Leopard, but they were the only ones.  We saw an abundance of elephants, giraffes, wildebeests, hippos, rhinos, zebra, warthogs, cape buffalo, all kinds of animals from the deer/antelope family, pretty birds, etc.  We didn’t think we would be able to get too close in the car, driving on a paved road in the park, but the animals were not bothered at all by the cars.  Perhaps they viewed cars as just another type of animal with wheels instead of feet.  They would cross the road in front of us so we would have to wait.  We spent a total of 12 hours in the park and it was very exciting to sight each new animal type.

On our way to Kruger Park we stopped at a place called pot holes (separate from those found in the road).  We travelled with the Mihu family and took pizza to eat.  While we were eating our first piece of pizza, a monkey jumped up on the table and grabbed the plastic bag with the remaining pizza pieces and ran away.  It bit through the plastic and then it and some of its friends took our pizza up a tree and ate it in front of us.  We never realized they were so aggressive, but soon found out differently. So we had a light lunch! We have attached a photo of the culprits.

Yesterday we had the BYU Ambassadors perform here in Tzaneen.  They put on a wonderful performance which was attended by many non-members.  This is a very small city for a group like this, so everyone we talked to was very impressed.  Hopefully this will be a positive thing for missionary work here.  The Mihu’s (other senior couple in Tzaneen) and us were in charge of feeding the 40+ performers before they did the show.  It was fun getting to know a them and then watching them perform.  Unfortunately, people in the villages could not come because of money and the fact that there are no taxis that run past 7pm.  We did invite a couple of teenage girls from the village to come and we paid their way so they could enjoy it.  They were so excited.

The Ambassadors are going to put on a fireside outside tonight at the church for free and we expect that to be very good.

A week from today we need to travel to Johannesburg for a one-day CES meeting.  We will be staying in the same hotel as a couple who were in the MTC with us and we always enjoy being with them.

Tomorrow we will move our bed from our office to the bedroom and unpack the rest of our things.  We will try to finish up our monthly reports over the next couple of days and then continue with our May training.

Mom stumbled over an extension cord here in our flat and hit her hand real hard on the tile floor the day before we went to Kruger Park.  We waited a few days for the swelling to subside and had it checked by the doctor this week.  Fortunately there was no fracture, just some torn ligaments so the Dr thinks everything will be healed in a few weeks.

The weather has been beautiful here the past several weeks.  We hope it will continue that way, but know it won’t.  We only own one blanket which we have only used a few times so we need to get to the store before it gets too cold.  The mission home delivered a couple electric heaters this week for our use when needed.  None of the flats have any kind of a heat source as we have mentioned before.  Since electricity is expensive, we will have to use the heaters sparingly.  So I guess it is layers, layers, layers.

We have included photos of the thieving monkeys and some elephants.  We took the elephant photos from the backseat of the car and got a little rearview mirror in it so you would know we really took it, and how close we were.  We will eventually send the rest of the photos to Kim.  We have not gone through to select the “keepers” yet.