Another Senior Couple arrives -- Week 64

Who can believe that it is May already!  Autumn is in the air.  A few trees are starting to lose leaves, although most here are evergreen.

Ken felt better this week so we started walking again, but it's getting dark earlier.  We saw the big full moon rising.

Our big news this week is the arrival of Elder and Sister Young.  They are fellow Californians, but from down south -- Murietta, which is inland and about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.  

We picked the Youngs up at the airport because President and Sister Lines were at the semi-annual Mission Leadership Conference.  

Usually that is an in-person event, and it was supposed to be in Durban this time.  The Presidents and wives from the ten Missions in the Africa Southeast Area all get together for three days of training.  But, this time -- as with the last three -- it was all held via Zoom.  

Elder and Sister Young both worked in education, so they have that in common with Sue.  He was Superintendent of Schools for Riverside County for many years, and she was attendance clerk at a high school.  Now they are retired and coming to South Africa.  They will be serving with Seminary and Institute (S&I or Church Education System) out in Bloemfontein, which is about eight hours by freeway northwest of Durban and up on the plain.

They had spent three days in Johannesburg for some orientation from the Area Office S&I Group, and then they flew to us on Tuesday.  They stayed in the empty apartment downstairs from us for another three days.  One of the first stops was to taking them grocery shopping to put some food in their empty fridge. 

We have a monkey story this week -- but not on us.  When we got back from the grocery store with Youngs, we left them to get settled, and we went back to the office for awhile.  When we returned the Youngs were moving luggage, and they asked us who lived in the top-floor middle apartment.  The tenants had left the bathroom window open, and monkeys were going in and out and bringing out food.  Youngs didn't want to shut the window for fear of trapping a monkey or two inside.  We told the Youngs that the apartment belonged to two young Elders, the Assistants to the President!  We called them and they came home.  The monkeys had eaten cold cereal, pasta, and a loaf of bread.  But these monkeys are like three-year-olds.  They eat the middle out of the pieces of bread and leave the crusts behind.

Wednesday morning we put four broken vacuum cleaners out on the curb.  It's trash pick-up day, and there are always people around finding the "good stuff" in the trash cans.  Sure enough, they were there, and the vacuums disappeared.  We do hope someone else can make them work and get some good out of them.

Wednesday we gave the Youngs mission orientation in the office during the morning, and we then took them sightseeing around Durban.  Of course, the most important stop was the beach!  Sister Young spent her high school years in San Clemente, and her father (age 100!) still lives there.

Sue isn't the only one who always has to put her feet in the water.

We took a walk along the beach promenade.  There was this amazing sand sculpture!

And some informational signs about South African culture.

We found a bench in the beach park and sat to have a serious discussion about Institute.  That is the Church program for 18-30 year-olds, particularly university students.  Bloemfontein has a large university, and so one of the Young's responsibilities will be to help with the Institute program there.  When we served our first mission to Germany in 2005-06 we were at the Institute in Hamburg.  This was our opportunity to share some of the things we did there.  We all decided this was a much better place for a meeting than in the office!

Speaking of Bloemfontein, did you know that South Africa has three capital cities?  Bloemfontein is the judicial capital -- home to the supreme court, etc.  Pretoria is the executive capital, where the President has his home and office and where there are the other executive offices.  Cape Town is the legislative capital -- home to the legislature, etc.  It's an interesting separation of powers!

Thursday President and Sister Lines were done with their conference, so they took over the orientation with the Youngs.  However, we were invited to have dinner with all of them at the Mission Home that evening.  

Usually when missionaries are picked up at the airport we get a photo with the welcome banner.  We realized too late on Tuesday that President had it, and we didn't want to disturb him during his meetings to fetch it.  So we took the welcome photo at dinner on Thursday.

Friday morning all six of us went to the Durban Temple.  When the Youngs are in Bloemfontein they will only be 3.5 hours from Johannesburg Temple, so they will probably get to go there.  This was their opportunity to see the Durban Temple.  It was cold, rainy day, but the rain stopped when we came out.  

There was a couple there getting ready to be married and sealed that evening.  Sue offered to take photos for them, and then Ken took one of her with the couple.  It reminded us of the day over 50(!) years ago when we were married and sealed in the Los Angeles Temple.

After attending a temple session, we all drove down to the beach to have dinner at the best Mexican restaurant in Durban, in the Sun Coast hotel complex.

In the lobby was this classic old Jaguar.

We are all car buffs.

Saturday we had one of our laziest days ever.  Sue was working on a new knit cap pattern.  Ken was reading, uploading, and posting the recorded memorial service for our ninety-six-year-old Palo Alto friend Betty Mantooth, who was blind yet accomplished amazing things (https://youtu.be/zwdl6UqgYE4).  May she rest in peace.

In the afternoon we decided that we needed to get out of the house.  But we were too lazy to get more dressed than sweats and t-shirts.  We decided to explore the hill behind our apartment!  We've lived here six months, stared out at the hill daily, and never walked over there. 

Here is the view from the other side.  We are second from the top floor, far left side.  Left window is bedroom, right window (under the satellite dish--not ours) is our living room.  We climbed up the hill on the other side of the gully to get this photo.  We couldn't climb any higher because the homes across the way have fences around their back yards, and the hill was very steep.  

Here's the bird's eye view.

We took the photo from the red dot on the left.  The blue line is the creek at the bottom of the gully.  We live under the blue dot on the building on the right.  The white roofs on the right are our carport.

All over are these plants with HUGE leaves.  This one is down by our creek.  

Sunday we drove to Hillcrest to attend church with Molweni Branch.  They can now meet every week!  They were renting some rooms at a school for Sunday meetings, but COVID stopped that.  Then they were alternating every third week with Hillcrest Ward, which had to split into A week and B week because too many for the chapel all at once.  Now Hillcrest can all meet together in the morning, and Molweni can use the building in the afternoon. Hooray!  

Everyone in Molweni Branch loves visiting after church, too.

The drive to Hillcrest is interesting.  It's 20 km and almost all uphill.  We live at 300 feet elevation.  Hillcrest is at 2200 feet.  The road is a nice four-lane divided highway, some through forest.  But it is winding.  It goes up and around various mountains, especially in the red circle.  It has been a wonderful week in Durban.