Travel and Training

May was a busy month for us!  We held several training sessions and did some traveling to train and also for pleasure!

The pictures start with a pleasure trip to Pretoria - the Capital of South Africa.  Pretoria is about 30 miles north of Johannesburg.  We had an unexpected three day weekend so we booked a hotel and drove up to explore the city.  We discovered that Pretoria has a really nice botanical garden and also has the oldest zoo in the country.  

The pictures start off with our visit to the botanical gardens.  Just as we stepped out of our car we saw the people getting out of the car parked right in front of us.  It happened to be friends from the Area Office.  He is the Director of Temporal Affairs for the Africa Southeast Area and she often volunteers in the family history centre. They are really nice folks!  They were in Pretoria celebrating their anniversary.

The following pictures will, hopefully, give you a flavor of this garden.  It wasn't very big but we enjoyed our walk through it on our Saturday in town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

On Sunday, we drove over to visit the Pretoria 1st Ward.  Al was asked to help out the new family history consultant for this ward while I went to Relief Society.  They asked us to come back the following Sunday.  We returned the following week and had a two hour training session.  The first hour with the ward leadership and the second hour with the consultant.  It was time well spent!

While we were visiting this ward, we ran into this young man that we had served with in the Lea Valley Ward during our London Mission!  I was totally amazed that he remembered us!  

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On Monday, we were off to the zoo.  We spent the better part of 4 hours walking around and watching the animals.  They had some really, really nice exhibits.

The pictures are pretty self-explanatory - of course, we start off with the reptiles.  Thankfully, the snake exhibits were too dark for pictures.

 

This little guy was trying so hard to impress ANY female - he wasn't having much luck!  As you can see, he has a ways to go before his tail feathers are going to impress anyone.

Now for the not so obvious animals!  This is an Arabian Oryx.  Those horns are very impressive - especially up close and personal.

Scimitar Horned Oryx

A Sable Antelope

Yes, I know you know what this is!  However, this beauty posed for 30 minutes and was just chillin' in his hammock!

BUT, do you know what this is?

Okapi

The okapi is a mammal native to the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa. Although the okapi bears striped markings reminiscent of zebras, it is most closely related to the giraffe.
We couldn't get this fellow to stand up for us.  They have very unusual coloring.

Once or twice a year, our "boss" Wayne Van As has all of the Area Temple and Family History Consultants come into Johannesburg for training.  They spend two days training how to train the consultants in their areas.  Some of the areas include two countries.  They have a massive job! 

Okay!  I have only one picture of everyone looking like they are busy learning......the rest were taken on the last night when we all went out to dinner.  Believe me - the talk still centered on temple and family history consultants.

 These are children playing in the family history centre while they wait on their parents to get their paperwork in order so they can be sealed together as families.  The children here are so beautiful!  I got to cuddle with a ten month old at the gatehouse this week.  I sat and rocked him while he slept.  Doesn't get much better than that for a grandma!

Aren't they adorable?  They come dressed in their very best - love the little guy in his suit.

Al bought me this orchid over a year ago, along with another one.  The other orchid bloomed and died.  This one bloomed and lost all of the blossoms but it stayed green.  So we pitched the dead one and kept this one in the hopes that it might bloom again.  Well, it took over a year but it did bloom again.  We are really pleased with it and a wee bit proud that we actually kept one alive for a second blooming.  

The weekend of Mother's Day found us flying to the country of Zambia to hold training sessions.  We flew into Lusaka, Zambia on a Friday afternoon and this was the view out our airplane window.  We have been very impressed with South African Airways.....they actually serve you food even on flights

 of just an hour.  This flight took about two hours

Zambia Airport !
We stood in line at Immigration slightly over an hour! We were really sweating it because we had arrived at 3:30 and had to be at the church at 5:30 set up and ready to go; AND, we still had to pick up our rental car.  Happily, we made it in time.

View of the Sunday Market out the window of our hotel.

Another view!

Wooden pillows!  Not too comfy, I think! Glad ours were down-filled!

Security doors at the chapel in Lusaka.

The cultural hall where we did our training.

Getting ready!  We had about 25 attend this session on Friday evening.

Signing in!

Getting set up on Saturday morning.

Getting ready for the Saturday morning session.  This session went until about 2:00 pm.

Signing in, again!!!

 

 Took a few pictures of the outside of this chapel.

As you can see, this chapel has beautiful grounds around it.

 And, again on Sunday.....more one-on-one training!

I am hoping to get some more photos of our training in Zambia.   Will post them next month.

It is hard to believe that they already have our farewell scheduled and we have our itinerary for coming home.  Won't be long now!