May 23, 2016

            Hello everyone,  We were blessed to have the Wall's come and visit over Mother's Day weekend.  We went to some of our favorite  places and here are some of the pictures we took with them.

                             I was right next to this monkey and he was just busy eating and didn't
                      care.

          It was fun watching the girls be brave enough to pet some of the birds.  when we were at the bird sanctuary.

           This ones color was so vibrant it was amazing

                           This thing was like a grasshopper, but huge. With lots of other thing on it that the grasshoppers back home don't have. It was as long as the width of my foot and they are pretty wide.

            Two Grandpas walking the Kenton on Sea beach together and catching up on things.

                                Thought my grandkids would like to see that Grandma's neck and back are feeling better so I was able to have fun doing cartwheels at the beach while we were there.

           It was a little cool and windy that day but better than we expected because here is was like the second week of November for you.   We had a great time with them.

            Our first District Meeting with the new Elders in our District.  I was trying to get Elder Ezom to move over to get in the picture better , but it looks like we are holding hands. (not).   Elder Johnson that lives by us and works with us in Motherwell has his arm on his new companions shoulder, Elder Mumba who is new and from Zambia.  The third Elder from the Left is the first Elder from Mexico to come to South Africa and he is new also.  He is Elder Hernandez.

         P-day for the happy Elders.

                            This is the Wonci family and about half of the family are members.  This little girl will turn six the same day that I turn 60 so we are going to celebrate together that week sometime because our birthday is on a Sunday this year.  Her mom is next to her and she almost died last year when she got TB.  She takes about 15 pills a day for 18 months and has lost about 40 lbs but we are thankful that she is on the mend.

                           This is a picture from a place we drove to last week,  it is Knysna.  We were only there for a few hours so hope to go again sometime.  It is a little over three hours away from where we live.  Because we have fewer missionaries than they used to have we don't have any missionaries serving there right now.

                            Last Saturday Sister Mashiqa got baptised.  She is the mom of the boys who got baptised last month.  We are working with the Dad now.  He is a great guy but has a drinking problem like most of the Males in Motherwell.

           This is part of our Motherwell primary.  We try and learn a new song most weeks.  The little girl in the back thought she needed to stand by Elder Smith and help him with the music that he plays off his phone for us because we don't have a piano.

          This was Sister Makoba's first week at Church and she loved it.  We are teaching them with the Elders.  They have a 16 year old son and a daughter at college as well.  She said she could feel the love in Relief Society.

                           This is Elder Johnson's flat .  We got a call last month at about 6am on a Sunday morning to see if we knew how to shut off the water that was spraying out of a leak from the water heater .  They are up in the attic and it had busted a hole in the ceiling.  They have hot water now but the ceiling still isn't fixed.  Waiting on the insurance company.
                           

              Hello from South Africa!  Happy Mother's Day to everyone.  We love you all and hope all the ladies in our lives have a great day and get pampered and feel very appreciated and loved.   The video above of the pigs is for our son Trent who loves pigs.  He gets it from his mom. 

             These cute boys were out playing in the area that we are starting to work more in,  The Church has bought property near here to eventually build a chapel in Motherwell.   They were excited about the oranges we had for them and the picture of Jesus to give to their moms, from the pass along cards.
 

                         This is a" momma " from Motherwell.  The streets have lots of stores like hers for people to come buy things and they sit out on those plastic tubs all day.
Whenever we take their pictures and bring them back to them they look at the pictures and say "beautiful".  Most don't have any pictures of themselves and so they are very happy when we take them.  It is fun to see how happy it makes them, and how grateful they are.  Very get very humbled everytime we are in Motherwell.


               Most people in motherwell don't have cars.  Especially not ones that look like that one in the back ground.  We have 156 people in the Motherwell branch and I think we have four families that have cars.

            I took this picture because their are a lot of fields in Motherwell and this is a typical one.  I don't think it is illegal to throw trash on the ground because it is everywhere and there are usually people going through it and cows out eating in the fields and garbages.

                        You see lots of kids out playing in the streets with tires.  They always wave at us and are surprised to see white people.  Some think we are albino's because they haven't seen white people before but have seen some black people who are albinos.  The kids are usually very happy and have big smiles on their faces.  He does look shocked to see us and then very surprised when we wanted to take his pictures.

          These were hanging all over from a sea shell shop that we went to in St. Francis Bay.   It is a beautiful area .

                       This is our branch mission leader and we were going to our weekly meeting talk about the week and who was taught or visited.  He has his call to go on a mission the first week of June and will be a great missionary .   His name is Milhali and it is very difficult to pronounce.  It was a beautiful day last week.  It is getting cooler here as were are going into winter, but it was probably about 75 and a rare day with no wind.  We love those days!

                         Last Saturday all us Sr. couples met in Port Alfred where Bro. and Sister Kjar stay.  We met there because they stay in a big place that has room for all of us.  It was a good-bye dinner for the Stapley's.  They leave June 28th.  and will have been here for two years.  She is in the pink sweater, and they are from Arizona.  We have have five more Sr. couples in our mission but we are the ones on the Eastern Cape.  Two couples work in the office in Capetown so we don't see them .  Cape town is about like going from our house in Layton to Vegas so we will just be there when we fly out and we stayed there for two days when we flew in.

          This is a picture I took yesterday of a family we are teaching with Elder Slade and Elder Johnson.  His wife had to work Sunday but he came to Church and he was very touched by the testimony of the kids from Primary and that they could go up front and speak like they did.  He had tears in his eyes as he was telling us what a special experience it was for him to see that.  They are a close family and loved the lesson that we taught about Temples, and families being sealed forever.
           Elder Slade is getting transferred on Wednesday.  He came out in Nov. on his mission and has been here since then.  We will miss him.

                       This picture is Elder Johnson talking to his Mom last night for Mother's Day.  She will be out of the US on Sunday so he was able to call her early before she left.   We have a direct line so he and Elder Slade came and used our phone while we were at Branch Council Meeting.   It is a great day when Moms get to talk to their Missionaries.    We love you all and appreciate the prayers and love.
Will send more pictures soon, have a great week.

April 17, 2016

                              Hello family and friends!  Well, another good two weeks on the 

                        mission to blog about.  We went to a wonderful Elephant Sanctuary.

                        It is about two hours from Bluewater Bay.  They have five elephants

                        there and three are very tame.  We were able to walk them with their 

                        trunk in our hand and they kind of guide you with it.  We got to look

                        inside their mouths and ride them.  They also did some tricks for us.

                        I LOVE elephants and these were very wonderful. 

         Next door to the Elephant Sanctuary is a Monkey Sanctuary and a Bird one also.  We were able
    to see all three and still get home before too late.  We saw ten different types of Monkeys and also
    a big old turtle that was walking around.  Between the Elephants and the Monkeys was a parking
    lot and when we went out to walk over to see the Monkeys we saw a couple of Wild Baboon fam-
    ilies hanging out and playing together.  It was so fun to see all of them and also lots of beautiful
    birds that we had never seen before.

                            Last Saturday after we listened to Conference in a chapel at the town next
                      to our we had a  baptism.  Well, actually three kids got baptized and I think
                      their mom will be baptized soon as well.   This is Elder Slade and also our
                      Branch President, President Zitsu.  I think he is in his early thirties.  Motherwell
                       has been a branch since 2012 and he has been the President the whole time.
                      He is hopeful that when we become a Ward that they find a new Bishop.

                           The youngest boy who got baptized is in Primary with me and is very nice
                      and fun.  He was very excited to get baptized and always had lots of questions
                      for the missionaries when they would go over to teach them.

                          Last Tuesday on our P-day we went to a place called the Joan Muirhead
                     Reserve in Kenton on Sea.  It was such an amazing beach and we were pretty
                     much the only ones there.  I didn't know what the area was called till we got
                     there and it was fun because my sisters maiden name was Joan Muir.  The
                     beaches here are amazing.  It is fall here now but the weather is still beautiful,
                     especially on the couple a days a week when its not windy.

         I took this picture of Grandpa so you could see how nice the beach is but it was about three times that wide and very long as well.  You can kind of get an idea from the map of it above.  It was
a beautiful day and we were wishing we had wore our P-day clothes for the beach.   There was a lady
selling fresh pineapples on one of the corners at Kenton on Sea and they were 10 Rand each or 68 cents.  They were delicious!!!

                           This picture is for Laurie, Elder Johnson's Mom.  This is his happy, surprised
face last Monday when we had the surprise birthday party for him and Elder Slade.  Elder Johnson's
birthday was tuesday the 12th.  It was so fun surprising them.  They thought they were going
to meet a new Family at a members home for family home evening.
                       
                                They are great missionaries and we really feel blessed to get to work with
                           them.

                           This picture is for Marty, Elder Slades Mom.  Elder Slades birthday was

                      the March 21st and were didn't find out about it till last week so we celebrated

                      them together.  The picture below is of them having their  first dinner at our house

                      with Elder Johnson , a couple of weeks ago.  

                      Thanks for all your love, prayers, and support.  We love and miss you all.

April 5th 2016

     Hello ,  Here are some pictures from the month of March.  Some of the Elders in our Dist. have given this site to their parents.  I remember going onto blog sites hoping  to see a picture of Matthew when he was in Samoa, so I thought we would put in some that showed more of the Elders.  The picture above is from Zone Conference the first week of March.

         We had a barbecue after one of our Dist. meetings.  Here they call them a Brie. Elder Taylor was wanting a trim so I tried.  Not sure I will be asked to do that again, but the clipper set got passed on to me just in case.  I thought my daughters who are beauticians would get a kick out of that picture.

 

                           This is a picture of the road that leads down to the Bluewater Bay Beach that
                       Grandpa goes and jogs on most mornings.  I took this picture as we got off
                       our exit coming home from Motherwell.  We live about two minutes from the Exit.
                       We usually have big ships out in the Indian Ocean, like the one in this picture.
                        They usually are there for several days waiting for customs to clear them to go
                         to the Coega Port , that is a few miles south of this picture.  That Port is the
                       deepest one in the Southern Hemisphere and seems to stay pretty busy.

                          This is a fairly common site.  These ladies are coming from the Walmer Shopping

                      Center.  We would call it the Walmer Mall.  I am amazed at the heavy loads they can

                      carry on their heads.  They quite often also have a baby on their back also.  I will get

                      a picture of that soon.  The babies seem to enjoy it and it frees up the moms hands.

          This is from our trip to the closest animal park to us.  It is called the Kragga Kamma Animal Park.   It cost us about four dollars to drive in and you can stay all day if you want.  We had fun watching this giraffe try to eat the leaves on this.  Its tongue was amazing but it would have been much easier if it had some arms and hands.

   
         The two mission leaders from our Branch came out to our place for dinner one Sunday so we could do our correlation report for our Branch Council.  Mihlali, is the one sitting down in the middle. He got his mission call to Uganda last month.  He leaves the first part of June.  This is outside of our place.  The one sliding glass door that is open goes to our living and kitchen area. The other one goes to our bedroom.  The missionaries are suppose to have a member go with them on their visits so these two and one other take turns spending the day with the Elders.  None of them have jobs
so it is nice that they can spend their days helping.  They will be great missionaries.

         Elder Smith and I went on a charter boat ride out to Penguin Island.  It takes about an hour to get there.  We were able to see hundreds of dolphins on the way.  The above picture is one he took as we were going.  There are two little Islands you see and the first is called Algoa Bay and they have 20,0000 Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins that use the Bay.   It was fun to see so many at once.  They are beautiful to watch and fun to listen to.

         Those were all pictures of the Bay.  It was beautiful.  This is the largest population of bottlenose Dolphins in the world.   The picture below is of St. Croix Island and the African Penguins.  They are small but larger than the little blue penguins we saw in New Zealand.

         This is the largest breeding colony of African Penguins in the World, about 22,000

         This picture is of Port Elizabeth from our boat trip as we were headed back to port.

         Port Elizabeth stays pretty busy also.

                           Grandpa as we were coming back from our trip.  This was March 29th and is
                      the first week of fall here.  It is hard to think of April as October as far as seasons go.

   

         We went to the local penguin hospital after our trip so I could get a closer look at the penguins.  It is about ten min from where our boat ride was.  The one penguin pushed the other one off the diving board.  I love watching them.

                   

                           This is March 25th.  Lunch after District meeting.  Last one before transfers so the 

                      Elders voted to go to Roco Mama's for hamburgers.  Two of these Elders got trans-

                      fered.  One was Elder Henniger who worked in Motherwell with us.   We will be get-

                      ting a new Elder named Elder Johnson. 

   
         Elders Slade and Henninger came to dinner for Easter, also the Zone Leaders, Elder  Taylor and Young.  They were enjoying their Chocolate Easter bunnies and eggs after dinner.   It was a quiet week in Port Elizabeth as most places close from Good-Friday till two days after Easter.  Both Elder Taylor and I spoke on the Atonement in our different wards.

     This is a picture of the great kids we go see at the park in NU11 in Motherwell.

Elder Smith climbed up on the slide to get the picture.  We are teaching the lady

on my left.

         This is Elder Slade and Elder Johnson.  Elder Johnson just got transferred from being assistant to Pres. Merrill and gets to spend his last four months working with us in Motherwell.  We are excited.   He is wonderful and works very hard.  He is from Cache Valley.  He looks young because he is.  He came out right after he turned 18.  Elder Slade just got two packages from home.  His Christmas and Birthday packages came yesterday and they each had a big bag of Skittles in them so we took this picture for his family.  The Elders moved into our complex on Saturday so that will be
very convient.  Elder Slade has been in Motherwell since he came on his mission in November so he
is thinking he will get moved next transfer,  we will see.  Elder Slade is from Arizona and these two make a great team.