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.