September Activities

 Sorry to have been so long posting.  We have heard from several of you and are glad to know you have noticed.  We will try to do better.  We have assignments to check the young Elder's Apartment at least every six weeks before transfers.  It includes inspection of the boarding as well as inspection of their car, if assigned one.  This is Elder Sincreah on the right and Elder Banda.  They live in an area called Drummond that is in the scenic Thousand Hills area west of Metropolitan Durban.  They asked for screens on their windows because they said that they have snakes in the bush around their flat!  We have seen no snakes there but they certainly could be  some in the area.  As I was checking the car I saw the hole in the bumper (you see in the next photo)and asked what happened?

They said that a lion had bit it!  I said: That is a really good story, very original. Well, it was true.  On their P-day, the whole zone went on a game drive through a little lion park and a lion did come up and sank his fang in the bumper.  Glad it wasn't them.  It made the office fleet manager really happy when I turned in that report.

We went to Hilton College, purportedly the most expensive and exclusive all-boys private school in South Africa.  These girls were from a neighboring all-girls school.  They may be very rich kids but they are far from snobs.  They were ever so polite and well mannered.  They were selling spiral potatoes which appealed to the Idaho girl on the right.





"McKenzie House", one of the very British buildings at Hilton College.  Just for you, Mackenzie Gunderson.

Two future missionaries in the Peitermaritzburg Ward.  We have been teaching a PEF workshop there for the past four Sundays. It is about 60 KM from Pinetown, so we attend a ward or branch in the Durban area and then drive there after Sacrament Meeting for the class.  It makes Sundays go very fast.

Elder Brown and Elder Sapaku.  We also check their boarding.  The picture is in front of these gorgeous lavender and white flowering bushes that have burst forth all over the place.  They smell wonderful.

School children on a field trip.  Uniforms are required for all levels of school, from elementary through high school.  In talking to our PEF students about the uniform requirement, they all like it and realize that it pretty much eliminates the issues over fashion and who has the best finery.  One young lady said that it does away with all the drama over what to wear.  I sense that there is another benefit.  When they get out of high school they continue to like to look nice and dress the part.  Don't ask me where the Terminator picture on one of their buses came from????

Our Planning for Success Workshop Class with Certificates of Completion from the left  Nosipho, Nondomiso, Amanda, Elder Gunderson (as if you could not tell). Phindile, Richard, Nomvula, Suruwani (goes by King) and Nompumelelo.  Great class and really fun to be with.  This is the very best part of our mission and of course the real reason for being here.

Teaching King how to navigate the PEF Website and do the online application.  King is actually from Uganda and is married with three children.

Two of our class from Peitermaritzburg,  Sibusile and Senzo.  We had originally five students but two did not follow through and complete the course.  Bongiwe (not pictured) did a make-up lesson and finished the next week.  Our next workshop will be in Dundee and Ladysmith.  Our plan is to make the 3 1/2 hour drive on a Saturday to Dundee, teach at 11:00 then drive back to Ladysmith and teach annother workshop at 2:00PM.  Then we will drive home.

We found a little park/game reserve about 3 KM from our flat.  It has hiking trails and goes through meadows and jungle.  Great place for our walks when we can make it there.
A termite hill.  As they go, this is a baby, but really quite hard-not just a pile of dirt.  Someone or something had knocked a piece out of this one.

On one of the trails.  Wildflowers are beginning to bloom.

In the jungle on the reserve.  There is a small stream that flows through the property and it is quite dense along its banks.

One of the flowering trees along the creek in the jungle part of the reserve.  We have no idea what it is.

This is a boomslang.  A poisonous garter snake thst lives in the trees.  Years ago, a famous herpetologist was bitten by one of these.  He, thinking that they were not all that poisonous, decided to just record the effects of the bite.  He did so right up to the time it killed him.  They have rear fangs and are not at all aggressive, so he was the first scientist to discover how deadly their poison is.  This was in a glass cage at the reserve's visitor center.

A young black mamba.  Now everyone in South Africa knows these snakes are mean, aggressive, and very fast and very, very venomous.  Not one we ever want to see, except when in a car.  There is an account of one striking the window of a car with people in it as it was passing by on a road.

We heard a loudspeaker from our flat one morning and discovered a three-way track meet at the elementary school that we see from our back deck.  Notice the purple Jacaranda tree in the background. They are very abundant in the Durban area and just gorgeous.

A 400 meter race.  Note that all the participants are bare-footed.  It is on grass though.

We went to Umlazi BB Ward two Sundays ago and came out to find our car trashed with little muddy hand prints smeared all over the front hood, roof, windshield, and on each of the door handles.  We wondered who had done such a thing to our car and then noticed that those parked along the same row had also been muddied.  A couple of men came out and we pointed it out said it must have been children.  They laughed and said baboons then monkeys.  Monkeys, or in Zulu, inkwadu. They had been trying to get into the cars and, if they had, they would have wrecked them.







Nkhosinathi Mthembu one of our PEF Students, his wife and baby daughter at her blessing.  She has her days and nights mixed up and is wearing mom and dad out.  They do not like to let her cry.  Ever heard that before with first-time parents???.