June 21, 2016

         Hello everyone,   Hope your all well.  We have had a great month and here are some of the pictures and highlights.  Elder Johnson and Elder Mumba found us a soup kitchen and they let us come and give them messages and pray for them.  Last week we gave out alot of pass along cards and booklets.  We are putting in a garden there today and take  them vegetables for their soup.   A lady that helps there took us to another soup kitchen that is letting us do the same there.

 

     Quite a few can't read english so that is another reason we are starting several English classes. They all still wanted a booklet though.  Very humble and sweet people.

           When we were taking in the vegetables we noticed that the bag of carrotts said "Jesus Saves"
    The young man next to Elder Johnson we call "X".  His name is Xolani or something like that but
     his mom is Sister Oliphant, the primary President that I talk about and love.  He goes with the
     Elders as their fellowshipper almost everyday.  He should get his call to serve any day now and he
     will be an amazing missionary.  He is 18 and has loved the gospel since the first day he heard
     about it.  They are also letting us use this building for the addiction recovery meetings.  YEA!!!

          This is Sister Oliphant with five new primary kids that we were welcoming last week.  I think
    we had about 25 kids.  No one mentioned Father's Day until I did in Primary and had them make
     a card for whoever they wanted to give one to.  About half don't have Dads in their lives.  Other
     than that Farther's Day wasnt mentioned.

          This is Elder Smith helping me with his phone and speaker to play the songs that we sing for Primary.  He usually has to stand because he has so many little curious ones who want his phone.

          Elder Johnson gets a kick out of me and my nursery class that I take outside so the other two
     classes can share our one primary room without too much distractions.  It is getting colder here
     now so it makes it harder to go outside.  Such cute little boys.  I also try to help them with their
     English.

         This is Mihiali Njezula the night before he left for his mission in Uganda.  That is his mom with
    us on the couch.  She isn't a member yet.  We were so excited when he got his call.  He had been
    doing all the paper work etc... for almost a year.  HE also went out with the missionaries some each
    day and will be a great missionary.  We love him.   After we took him to Walmer to the Stake
    House to get set apart they had Elder Smith give him a fathers blessing and it was nice for us to be
     a part of that.

          This is a picture of President Hamilton on the left and Elder Merrill's  cousin and secound Counselor, Elder Pershimg.   He came to tour our Mission for a week.  He just replaced President Cook.   He also did a few training meetings that we were able to go to.  We were at dinner when I took this picture.   We learned alot from him and really enjoyed getting to know him, he is doing an
amazing job.

                           Here we are with the Makoba's.   We have been teaching them together for
                      awhile now.  They are great people.  We hope they get baptized soon.  They
                      love their garden.

                            This is a pre-school across the street from the park where we go take pictures of the kids and give them pass along cards.  She came out and met us and told us she has about 30 little ones who come Mon-Fri to her pre-school.  she is letting us come now and teach them English and some primary.  The children are darling .

         This is a very sweet sister who got one of our pass along cards and asked for the video and loves the gospel.  She walks over two miles each way to the church with her two year old and five year old.  She is twenty five and asked when could she be baptized.  She has a very wonderful testimony.  The work here is so humbling and we feel so blessed to be a part of it.   Hope you all have a great week.

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.