Work, Play and Devotionals

We are having some lovely "Winter" weather - reminds us of Summer in Alaska.  We haven't needed coats yet and have only had two windy, cold, wet days that felt like winter.  Our flats do not have central air or heat so we have a little space heater that follows me around through a couple of rooms. Works really good and we are more than comfortable.

Work continues to be good.  This week we have patrons from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (French speaking), Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique (Portuguese speaking).  I am still amazed that even without a translator we are able to do the things we need to do to help them prepare their paperwork before going up to the temple.  Google translator is a big help and putting Family Search in whatever language we need to also a huge help.  Of course, the real reason for our success is that we receive help through the Holy Spirit that inspires us and then we all seem to understand each other.  It is fun to see how the Spirit works through, not only us, but our patrons as well.

The temple is going to be closed through the month of August.  That means that the family history centre will also be closed.  So, we will start traveling to do training.  Al and I leave tomorrow for Bloemfontein, South Africa where we will hold two training sessions on Friday and Saturday. When we return we will head off to spend a few days visiting a game reserve in Pilanesburg.  The following Friday we will fly out to East London, South Africa for another training session. After we finish in East London, we plan to rent a car and drive down the coast to Cape Town for a few days.  The nice thing about being a senior missionary couple is that we are always encouraged to go and see the country where we are serving.  We will fly back to Johannesburg from Cape Town and then drive to Swaziland to meet up with Brent, Charlene and three of their children who are coming for a visit.  We will check in with a couple of the wards in Swazi while we are there and see how their family history consultants are doing.  When we train we invite the Ward/Branch Family History Consultants, Stake FH Directors, High Priest Group Leaders, High Councilman over family history and Stake and Ward leaders.  We like to do as much "hands on" training as we can if they have computers.  Unfortunately, places like Mozambique do not have computers yet in their family history centres and most people do not have personal computers to bring with them.  However, EVERYONE has a cell phone and we are learning how to help them that way.  Since internet is not always viable, the church is making a cell phone app that will cut out all of the "fluff" and graphics on FamilySearch so that the app will work better and faster on this continent.

One of our Mondays that we had off we traveled about an hour out of Johannesburg to a couple of game reserves.  The first was a Cheetah Reserve and the second a municple game reserve.  

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Love these guys.  The acacia trees that they love to eat are very, very thorny.  They must have mouths of steel!

This is a black wildebeest.  Not quite as large as the blue wildebeest.  These guys have faces only a mother could love.

The wild dog is an endangered species.  The sound these guys make is ear piercing when only one is making a noise.  When an entire pack is making the same sound it is awesome!

Cheetah #1

Cheetah #2

Cheetah #3!  I love these beautiful cats.  We are told they have approximately 2000+ spots on them and not one is exactly like the other.  They do not retract their claws like most cats and they use their tails to steer, like a rudder on a boat.

Musical Family Home Evening!  We had a lot of fun snging together.  In fact, we decided we sounded so good we would keep at it.  We sang a second time at a recent Zone Devotional.

We've all heard of a barrel full of monkeys.  Well, here is a tree full of Vervet monkeys :)

This is a huge fellow - rightfully called King of the Jungle!

I can't remember which country this little one was from; but I remember that they spoke English.   She was a real sweety.  Very sociable!  This was the day after her family was sealed in the temple.

Helping a new ward family history consultant.  A 17 year old young woman who is absolutely amazing.  She didn't need our help for very long.  The room they use for the Family History Centre doesn't have a working heater and it was always very cold in there.  When our training and travels are over in August, we will move on to another ward to train another consultant.  This is what we do on Sundays :)