New Elders and Gondola Ride -- week 51

New Elders in our Durban MTC

Sue made this sign this week.  In the ''old days'' before COVID, all missionaries spent at least three weeks in one of the Missionary Training Centers someplace in the world -- there are 14.  Those learning a foreign language would stay another five to eight weeks for intensive language study.  Those coming to Durban would generally go to the Johannesburg MTC before joining us in Durban.  But, for the last ten months, all MTCs have been closed.  Missionaries in the USA and other developed countries do their MTC online from their homes.  But many African missionaries do not have Internet at home, so now we provide the MTC training remotely from our office.  They come to the Mission, but spend those three weeks in our Conference room from 10AM to 5PM every day online with Johannesburg MTC teachers.

How many new Elders are we getting?  President Lines says he knows the count only when they show up at the airport.  In the ''old days" we knew two to three months in advance.  Four Elders arrive on Monday this week.  They are all South African.  We were also "supposed" to get nine more -- two from Sierra Leone, two from Uganda, four from Zambia and four from the US.  Those from Sierra Leone and Uganda had their visas denied.  South Africa is afraid they will come and not go home because their countries are in upheaval.  From the US, the visa applications are just taking forever -- none issued that we know of since last March (2020)!  The Zambian Elder started his MTC in the Lusaka Zambia Mission, but his visa came through on Thursday, so he is flying to us on Monday, along with one other Zambian Elder who has been serving there in his home country since May waiting for his visa.  It looks like the logjam may be finally breaking up!

When the new Elders arrive, we give them pizza lunch:  They've been on airplanes all morning.  Then we spend a couple of hours in orientation.  Sue talks to them about medical insurance and forms.  She collects their passports and/or ID cards to make copies and gets them certified at the Post Office.  She shows them the baptismal record form and talks to them about keeping their apartments clean.  She gives them fancy water bottles with built-in filters, plus individual thermometers.

Then she hands them over to Ken.  He gives them their Missionary Support Fund ATM card and explains how it works.  All missionaries and/or their families and/or their congregation pay into a world-wide missionary support fund.  Because a mission in Africa or South America costs a lot less than a mission in Tokyo or London or New York, the amount contributed is the same anywhere ($400 USD), but those coming from poor countries are often subsidized if needed.  Then every missionary in one mission receives the same amount on his/her MSF card each month.  In Durban it's about $150/month.  That pays for food, transportation, and other personal necessities.  The mission provides apartments and utilities and phones.

President Lines was thrilled at this batch of new Elders because all four of them have a driver's license!  We've mentioned before that when the foreign Elders went home last March/April for awhile the mission was left with forty vehicles and only five drivers.  As a result dozens of vehocles have sat in remote, inaccessible locations, and batteries have gone irretrievably flat and have all had to be replaced.

The next part of Ken's orientation is to take them for their driving test.  This was pretty easy this week because four South African drivers are all used to driving on the left side of the road.  When Elders come from Europe or USA or Brazil it is a challenge to keep left.  He gave them a tough test: driving a big Ford Ranger.

After Ken is finished, the Elders spend some time with the Assistants to the President.  These are young Elders with particular leadership responsibilities.  They explain the missionary purpose, the daily and weekly schedule, use of phones, etc.

Lastly, each new Elder has an in-depth interview with President Lines.  When those interviews are over, the President and the two Assistants meet and decide who will be companions with whom.  The missionaries always go in sets of two (or sometimes three).  They are responsible for the health and welfare of their companions and are almost never apart.

Our new Elders are all settled into their learning, and we enjoy having them in the office -- it's not so quiet.  When they have breaks they come in and say hi to us.  They are four nice young men who are unselfishly giving up two years in the prime of their young lives to come to a new city and teach people about Jesus Christ and his restored church.  Two are Black, two are White.  There was a time in South Africa where that couldn't have happened.  But now they are all great friends working together for a common good, and being part of a new generation that can know and value each other across races.

Critters in our Lives

This week's monkey story:  Sue spent a couple of days shredding old papers and filling garbage bags with chits.  When Ken hauled the trash to the barrels in the carport under the building, he surprised a troop of native vervet monkeys feasting on the remains of the new missionaries' pizza lunch they had pulled from the barrel and spread all over the floor.  So he shooed them off so he could clean up the mess.  All fled, except one big bull monkey.  He just sat back about ten feet away and stared angrily while Ken picked up the trash, stuffed the barrels with bags of clippings and put brick weights on the barrel lids. The little big guy was not happy, but he finally slunk off down into the thick jungle in the gulch below our office. 

But monkeys got their revenge.  Sunday afternoon on our walk, we discovered that the neighborhood monkey troop had raided the trash barrels at our apartment building and had pulled out our own trash bag and spread it all over the grounds. We picked it all back up.

We know we have a gecko living in our flat, but we haven't managed to get a picture of him. We glimpse him in the back of the kitchen cupboards, and one time running along the wall and hiding behind a picture.  But this week Ken did get a photo of a gecko just outside our front door.  They are considered good luck, so not to be bothered.  They eat spider and cockroach eggs.  Yea!!

Then Saturday night Ken walked into the kitchen and saw a very large cockroach licking the lid of the butter dish.  Ken took a photo while Sue grabbed a small plastic container to try to confine it.  But it was so fast!  It hid under the toaster, then under the pile of masks, then back the other way and went under the microwave.  Then we saw it go under the fridge, so there was no moving that.  Ken found the can of bug spray and shot a generous dose under the fridge.  The bug ran out and started across the living room rug!  

That was its mistake.  Out in the open Ken gave it a good dose of bug killer and Sue covered it with the container, and we let it die.  Then Ken did the research.  It's a smokybrown African cockroach.  Ken took this photo with a pen so you can see how big it was!

Electrical Connectors

Ken, the electrical engineer, likes all the types of plugs here.  It's 240 Volt AC, like in Europe, but the standard plug is huge and three-pronged. 

And then there are all kinds of adapters.  Some for USA-type plugs, and most for the smaller round or oval two-prong plugs with optional ground we used in Europe.  Sue brought her German blow-dryer that also worked in Russia, and it works fine here, too. 

Our Back Yard

As long as we've been here, we had never been down to our backyard.  It's beautiful, and we love looking at it out our third floor windows.  We came home one day and needed to get our keys from the Assistants.  They were out back making a video for the Durban Mission Facebook page, so we wandered down there.  

Ken also took a photo of one of the small waterfalls that drain the little jungle canyon.  It was pretty small then.  A couple of days this week we've had huge rainstorms and then there is quite a spill over this little hill.

Durban Point Waterfront Canal

Friday afternoon Sue was looking up ideas for our Saturday touristy outing.  President Lines said that if we figured out something, they would love to come along.  So all four of us went on a gondola ride on the Durban Point Waterfront Canal.  It's a beautiful park area next to the beach and the uShaka Marine Aquarium.  The gondolas have small electric trolling motors, so the driver doesn't have to pole all that way, and the ride is quiet.

The canal is lined with beautiful new buildings that have businesses on the ground floor and apartments above.  

Sister Lines was smart and wore a big hat.  President Lines ended up with a very pink face from the sun.

There is one space that is fenced off and baby hammerhead sharks live there!  After the gondola ride, we walked over to see more closely.  The Lines got there first and saw one.  By the time we walked up after them it had hidden away.  

The people of South Africa are quite spiritual and interested in religion.  One of the men working at the gondola stand asked us about being missionaries.  President Lines talked to him a bit about the Church, and gave him a card with his personal phone number.  He invited the man to call him and we'd make arrangements for him to visit with the young missionaries.  He was glad to have that introduction.

La Rosa Mexican Restaurant

We had wanted to go back to the 415 Mexican restaurant (named for San Francisco phone area code) but it has permanently closed due to COVID.  Sue found another Mexican restaurant about 5 km (3.4 miles) up the beach from downtown Durban.  President Lines suggested we go there for lunch one day and find out if it was an OK neighborhood to visit for dinner.  (Some places are not.)  It was beautiful, delicious, and quite safe.  It's is part of Sun Coast Hotel/Casino/Mall complex.  You have to go through a security guard to get into the parking lot, and you do not have to go through the casino to get to the restaurants.  Perfect!

And the food was great!  We shared a large nachos platter.  The guacamole was just right.  Ken and Sue and Sister Lines had different kinds of burritos, served wet -- with sauce and cheese on top.  President Lines had two enchiladas with rice and beans.  We all declared it wonderful and will definitely come back.  We sat outside on the deck with an ocean breeze blowing around, so felt COVID-safe, too.  

However, Sue sat with her back to the sun, and ended up really, really pink.  Next week she will be appeeling!

The restaurant is just across the road from the big soccer stadium built for World Cup in 2010.  When COVID is over and games start again, it is on our list to go to a soccer game in this stadium. 

We came home after lunch and Sue cooked the sourdough English muffins she had started in the morning.  We are still doing exclusively sourdough and haven't bought any bread since May!  They were supposed to be for BLTs for dinner.  But our burritos were so huge that we only ate half for lunch and ate the other half for dinner.  The BLTs will wait for another day.

Puzzle Update:  The lion's mane is done, and the horns of the rhino.  But now Sue is a bit stuck.  The rhino body and elephant body are going to take a long time.  

COVID and Us

People are asking us about COVID here, especially with all the news about the South African variation.  We are very careful -- Sue called La Rosa before we went to make sure they had an outdoor area.  Everyone wears masks everywhere.

But first, for some perspective.  South Africa has about 60 million people.  California has about 40 million.  Why are the statistics in South Africa so much better than in California?  Some might be underreporting?  But not as much as the differences in cases as reported by Johns Hopkins and New York Times on 31 January 2021.

The scale on the RSA graph starts at 22 January 2020 -- over a year ago.  It has fewer than half the cases of California.  The difference has been that the South African government has taken the disease seriously, and the citizens have accepted the restrictions as necessary.