Happy Birthday Sue! -- week 65

We got a lot done in the office this week -- but nothing much interesting.  It was getting vehicles serviced, paying bills, and back and forth with who was really going to arrive as new missionaries on 15 May.  Most who were supposed to come do not have visas yet!  Others who have visas do not have COVID vaccines.  On 23 April the Church announced that all missionaries leaving the USA after 1 August for foreign countries had to have the vaccine.  On 30 April the Church changed that to immediately.  It now looks like we are getting just one new Elder next Saturday instead of the ten originally scheduled.  We hope the others will all arrive on our next Transfer date, which is 26 June.

Our animal story this week concerns critters considerably smaller than monkeys.  On Thursday night we were watching a mission-wide Zoom.  The speaker asked everyone to turn to a certain scripture.  (We have our scriptures on our phones.) Ken was sitting at his computer and reached behind him to get his phone from the dining table.  It was covered in ants!  We get ant invasions at home in California, but there is always a trail where they come in, and they are near an outside wall.

Sue took this photo standing just inside the front door -- so against one outside wall.  You can see the other outside wall where the window is.  The wall on the left is with the apartment next door.  The wall on the right has our bedroom on the other side. The table is in the absolute middle of the apartment, and there was no trail of ants anywhere.  No trail along the baseboard or up the table leg -- just a swarm on top of the table.  And it happened within about 20 minutes.  A puzzlement!

A couple of weeks ago, the Mission received a new Renault Triber, a brand new kind of vehicle.  It's an underpowered (70 bhp 1.0L) seven passenger mini SUV.  It has an electric clutch and quirky auto-shift control that has a delay when you press the gas pedal.  And it shudders terribly at low speed.  It has keyless entry and so the electric windows are disabled when the engine is turned off. 

It's pretty but can hardly make it up our driveway.  Ken calls it a "starter car" like a starter home.  Cheap and not something you want to keep.  Ken thinks it should be recalled before it gets in a wreck.  Unfortunately we may the only ones allowed to drive it.  As we get more Elders, we will run out of cars to give them and may have to give up our Duster for the cause.

Thursday Ken drove the Triber to get a haircut and afterwards drove it to our apartment because he couldn't get to the office due to commute traffic and construction.

At the same time, it took Sue twenty minutes to drive the Duster from the Office to our apartment, a half mile away.  

There was this big crane lifting the yellow container-sized construction offices off the hillside on the left and loading them onto trucks across the street.

And the cars were all backed up at the crazy intersection down below.  Yesterday, Saturday, they finally put in a DO NOT ENTER sign where people coming off the freeway were all turning down the wrong side of the street, so people across the intersection had to wait until someone figured that out and switched to the real left lane.  It's hard to explain, but quite the mess.  Recall: STOP signs are ignored, so going across the four-tier intersection is a game of chicken.

Friday morning we drove the Triber to the office, left it and in the evening walked home.  Walking the half mile was faster than driving because of all the traffic at the construction site.  

Friday night we didn't even go out to dinner, because we knew Saturday would be a big day:  Sue's birthday!  Thanks to all who sent email greetings, and to kids who called to sing.

Saturday morning we went to the Durban Temple.  It's nice to be so close.  It was a lovely time, and there is such a good spirit there.  

Afterwards we met up with President and Sister Lines for lunch at the Salt Rock Hotel in Ballito.  There is a beautiful terrace restaurant, right on the beach.  The day was perfect and we enjoyed our lunch together.  

The Lines needed to head home, but we changed our clothes and headed down to the beach.  It was a gorgeous day, but the waves were really big, and crashing right on the shore, so not a good day for boogie boarding for us old people.  There were a bunch of teen-aged boys who were diving under the waves, but the waves were way over their heads -- 8-10 feet.

A group of about ten teen/tween girls came running down to the beach.  One of them had on a pink ribbon with "Happy Birthday" across the front.  Her name was Liladi, and she is now 14 years old.  Sue told her they shared a birthday, so Ken took their picture together.  One of her friends took the picture too.  She will wonder someday who is that strange American woman.

We were at Salt Rock Beach.  Like Thompson's Beach, where we went before, there is a rock wall along the shore to form a swimming pool.  The waves crash over the wall to fill the pool, and then the water runs out the other side.  Sue went in there to swim in calmer waters.

Here you can see the pool on the right, and up on the hill to the left is the Salt Rock Hotel where we had lunch.

There were kids making sand castles -- which kept getting knocked down by the waves.  We wish our grandchildren were here to help.  And this is a somewhat unusual photo.  You don't often see situations where black and white children are playing together.  In spite of apartheid being dismantled in 1992, there is still a lot of de facto racial segregation in South Africa.  It has one of the widest spreads between rich and poor of any country.

Ken is not the beach person that Sue is.  He found his best use for the boogie board -- avoid sitting on the sand.

We left the beach and drove home along the beach-side highway instead of the freeway.

  We saw these signs and had to stop and go back and take photos for Sister Lines.  She makes the most amazing cakes!  (Sue told her NOT to make one for her birthday -- too much sugar, and no Elders around over the weekend to help eat it.)  

But these reminded us of her, so we had to send them along to her.

 

As we drove home it was just starting to cloud over.  Within a couple of hours a big thunder/lightning storm hit, but we awoke this morning again to bright blue skies and sunshine.