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| Baby Penquins |
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| In London |
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| London street scene |
Here it is June. We
will be home before the month is out.
Our flat is looking bare as we have taken down all the décor, pictures,
etc. and sent them home by slow boat.
A couple of days this month we were occupied doing a project for the
MSR department. Actually it was for the
Area Presidency and DTA. The presidency
is looking at the stakes and wards and having a goal of achieving “real
growth”, have set a new policy for 1914.
The “ideal” stake would have no more than six to eight units and the
“ideal” ward would have 250 to 300 members with average sacrament meeting
attendance of 100 to 125. The idea is to
work toward such an ideal by dividing units larger than this so that the
priesthood can more effectively shepherd their flocks. One of the main problems of doing this is the
housing (meeting places) for the units.
The goal is to have one owned building that would serve as a stake
center for each stake and then lease or build smaller structures for other
units.
The MSR dept in SLC provided a huge database showing the
total membership, sacrament meeting attendance, number of Melchezidek
Priesthood holders, and MP holders who are full tithe payers for all 500+units
here in the Africa Southeast Area for the last five years. What was needed was a projection of what and
where the growth would be and how many new buildings might be required. So we took the database and came up with a
list of 35 stakes that were “too large” by this new standard and also which
wards and branches exceeded the goal.
The leadership also wanted a list of all units whose sacrament meeting
attendance exceeded 125. There were 219
such units, the largest attendance being 425.
Units here are averaging about 44% attendance at sacrament meeting. The most growth right now is occurring in the
DRC Congo where a new stake is being created about every two years. We saw two new stakes created there just last
year.
The Murdocks who are serving in Public Affairs gave a
fireside. They taught us some about using “social media” to help share the
gospel. We learned about all the
possibilities that are available through the church websites, etc. It was interesting enough to stimulate us to
want to try it.
We went to Benoni to train the new stake presidency,
President Glenn Holmes and his counselors and clerks. We left in what we thought was plenty of
time. We decided to use only the freeways since it
was after dark. There was traffic on the
M1 and we ended up being 10 minutes late.
The training went well. They had
several questions. President Holmes
expressed that he doesn’t want any defalcations on his watch. I had explained that defalcations arose from
not following church policies and procedures so they would want to make sure
that all of their units are well-trained.
I took some cookies which they appreciated.
We also made it to Cape Town. Rodney Siems picked us up and took us to the
stake center in Bellville, a suburb close by.
President Paul Kruger, a counselor in the stake presidency and the audit
committee chairman, presided at the meeting.
There was also in attendance Rodney’s father who is a member of the
committee, and four stake auditors.
Rodney had prepared an excellent power point presentation on the sacred
nature of their calling and the basics of performing online audits. The Area will be doing online audits for the
first time in August for the 2013 MY audits.
Everyone seemed interested and had questions. We had prepared booklets with information for
stake audit committees and auditors from the Resource Library and also the
Getting Started Guides from the training and support section of LUFAS regarding
online audits.
While in Cape Town we took a tour of the Cape
Peninsula. Isadore was our guide and
there were four others who joined us.
One was a single girl from Australia who was here to do volunteer work
with sharks. She will be diving in cages
to observe them. Another was a young man
from Peru who was here with his employment for a few months. A couple from Italy who had only been married
three days were the other two. It was
quite an international group. At first
two young girls from Germany were going with us, but they only signed up for
the half day so transferred to another mini bus. We first saw some very expensive real estate
on the coastal side of Table Mountain. American
movie stars and rich foreigners owned most of these places along the
beach. Our first stop was in Hout
Bay. We purchased a few more African
souvenirs. The weather was sunny and clear.
It had been raining before we arrived in Cape Town, but was very
pleasant while we were there. We went as
far as the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point.
There is a lighthouse on a high elevation at Cape Point. We walked up the hill and the steps as far as
the Funicular House and then Tom walked up the remaining steps while I waited
below. We also had lunch here with our
tour mates. They all ordered spirits
along with their meal, but we toasted with our water glasses. On the way back we stopped at Simon’s Town
and visited a penguin colony. The
penguins were smaller than I thought they would be. There were some young ones with brown fur
which had not molted yet. These were as
big as the parents. Our last stop was at
the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden.
It is world famous and has an amazing variety of indigenous plants. We were only there for less than an hour, so
did no more than get a glimpse of all the plant life. It was a fun and informative day.
Our final week in the mission was one of “lasts” – last time
to serve in the temple, last time to be in Tembisa Ward, etc. We are excited about going home. We leave here Thursday evening (20th),
fly to London, go from there to Seattle and then to Spokane. We will be in Spokane Friday evening which
will be Saturday morning here in South Africa.
So it is a long trip, but we will be happy to be home. We have an eight-hour layover in London. We are hoping to take a two hour bus tour of
the city during that time.
Sunday we attended church in Tembisa as usual, not expecting
to have any responsibility other than to play the keyboard since we gave our
“farewell” talks last Sunday. But the
bishopric invited us to bear our testimony which we were happy to do. One touching thing happened to me at the end
of Relief Society. I have been leading
the music for Relief Society, but for the closing hymn I was invited to remain
in my seat while all the other sisters – about 30 – came to the front of the
room and sang “God Be With You”. I
needed a tissue.
Our farewell with the other senior missionary couples was
really a lot of fun. We prepared our
scrapbook page and each couple gets one and we get one from them. We have been providing one to the others who
have had farewells. The one you prepare for your farewell is usually a little
more elaborate than the ones you prepare for other couple’ s farewells. On each one is the contact information for
you at home; so people can stay in touch if they want to. It is a nice idea since we have so many
couples here and we get pretty close to many of them.
For the farewell Elder DaBell, who has a son in our stake in
Spokane, was conducting the meeting. He
announced the opening hymn and prayer and said some nice things about us, which
was very nice of him. Before the hymn
and the prayer they played a DVD of Kermit the Frog and Ray Charles singing
about how good it was to be green. It
was fun. After the opening prayer they
turned the time over to Elder and Sister Eppel, the other Area Auditor couple,
for a tribute to us. They did a great
job making us laugh and cry before they were through. Elder Eppel has a song for every occasion and
is happy to sing them. For tonight he
told about how we had shared some Tootsie Pops with them and how we only gave
them the flavors we didn’t like. The
song he sang was about lolly pops and he adapted it to us. It was pretty funny. They had refreshments that were all green in
color even the drink. They also had each couple write something on a green leaf
for us. It was a nice evening and we
enjoyed it. We have made some good friends here and they will be missed. The Eppels have particularly endeared
themselves to us. Since they have a
daughter who lives near Vancouver, WA there may be opportunity for us to see
each other again.
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