Zoning In -- Week 45

 

We had Zone Conferences this week.  This is the opportunity every six weeks to get together with all those serving in our area. With the Mission so small, we are down to just two zones.  One is Durban Zone that runs north/south along the coast.  The other is Hillcrest Zone that runs east/west inland along the main travel route.  We are in Hillcrest Zone, so we spent Saturday with the 17 Elders who serve in this area and also President and Sister Lines.  The two Zone Leaders lead the meeting for teaching and training.  These are such wonderful young men!  Notice we are all sitting in pairs, and only on every-other pew.  It's hard to keep them all social distanced.

This was our Christmas Zone Conference.  President Lines gave a wonderful presentation about Christmas Gifts from the Savior.  We hope you will see this and recognize what the true Spirit of Christmas is.  

After four hours of meetings we had lunch, and Sister Lines had a Christmas treat for each Elder--a giant candy bar and a home-made gingerbread boy. 

We had the premier performance of the 2020 South Africa Durban Mission video.  Ken put it together from lots of photos others gave to him, and a few he took. 

And we played a gift exchange game.  Everyone put a wrapped gift into the middle of the circle (yeah, the social distancing didn't happen.)  One person opens a gift.  The next person can open another one, or take a gift that is already opened by someone else.  In that case, the person without a gift gets to choose another one, or take from someone else.  This goes on until everyone has a gift. 

One that is taken can only move three times.  After that whoever has it gets to keep it.  The most popular items were a package of Oreos and these amazing sunglasses.

There always has to be the formal portrait of the group.  President Lines and Ken were busy doing the photography.  (Somewhere is a photo from the timed camera with both of them included.) 

And when Zone Conference is over we give the building a good cleaning so it is ready for Church on Sunday.  Church meetings are starting to happen here, but with smaller groups, of course.

We had Zone Conference at the Pinetown Chapel, about 10 km west of where we live.  It's on the top of a hill and has a wonderful view.  This area is all green and full of very steep hills.

There is some kind of big building project that is going to happen next door to us.  All week from 7 am to 5 pm a bulldozer has been carving out a flat place from the steep hillside.  It will be interesting to see what that area looks like in a year when we go home.

Every home or apartment has its quirks, and ours here is no exception.  Our geyzer (pronounced geezer) hangs above the bathroom sink.  That's a hot water heater in USA English.  You can see there is an interesting mess of pipes coming out of it.  

We were interested to see this laminated instruction sheet on the shelf next to the bathtub/shower.  And we are so glad to have it!  Because of the way the pipes work, there is always an air pocket in the hot water line to the shower.  We are glad we know how to clear it.

Those not interested in techie stuff can skip this part:  Thursday afternoon we lost our Internet connection in the office.  We could "see" the network printer and our local server, but nothing outside the building.  Sue called Church Tech Support in Johannesburg.  He looked at the network (remotely) and said we had an IP address into the office, but there was none on Sue's computer.  He sent over a local contractor, Len, who helps with this.  He thought he had us up and running, but it would stay up and then go away five minutes later.  Then it seemed to be stable, so we all went home for the night.  Friday morning we came in to no Internet.  Ouch!

The big problem is for Elder Thwani.  He is in the office each day from 10 am to 5 pm for his Missionary Training Center classes.  In the days before COVID, MTC was done live in Johannesburg for three weeks.  Now the African Elders come here and do it online in the office.  (In the USA most missionaries do it from home before they go to their missions because they have home Internet access.  Less common in South Africa.)  We set up Elder Thwani to do his MTC on Ken's iPhone and called Len again.  He spent all day trying to figure this out.  He replaced a 24-port switch and had to bypass the firewall because he didn't have the correct switch configuration settings from Church Tech in Salt Lake.  Ken liked that--it meant YouTube wasn't blocked.  :o)  But Len will come back on Monday with the settings.

We have a suspicion of what caused the problem.  The office has a dual power system.  One side goes through a UPS--uninterruptible power supply.  It runs the computers and monitors when the power is out.  We've talked before about Load Shedding--the planned power outages in two-hour blocks.  The office cleaning lady had come on Thursday and plugged the vacuum cleaner into the power strip in the conference room that has a small switch and two computers plugged into it.  It seems that the small  switch is now bad and was causing lots of grief.  And one of the computers also appears to have a bad network card.  So next week when she comes to clean we will identify where she can plug in the vacuum and where not!

It's hard to believe Christmas will be here in just a few days!  Especially when it is 90 degrees and 85% humidity.  Christmas in the middle of summer just feels a little odd.  In South Africa they call this the Festive Season.  It is a time to be festive and happy and share in the joy of life.

However, no matter the time of year or the weather, this is the day we celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.  He came to give each of us the greatest gift of all--Eternal Life. 

We do hope you each have a wonderful Christmas with family and friends.