Animal Reserve! -- week 77

 As mentioned last week, we took our day-off on Monday and went up to Thula Thula animal reserve on Monday with President and Sister Lines and Elder and Sister Hubrich.  Sister Hubrich had read two books --The Elephant Whisperer and Elephant in the Kitchen -- about this park.  When she realized it was only about 2.5 hours north of Durban, we had to go!  

The woman in the middle in the black sweater is Francoise Anthony.  She and her husband founded Thula Thula.  He wrote the first book, and she wrote the sequel.  He passed away in 2012.  He had a remarkable spiritual connection with the seven elephants he had adopted as a small herd in 1999.

It is an amazing story, but we will just have to let you read the books.

They not only have elephants, but lots of other animals, too.  We drove around for about two hours and saw so much! 

 

This little guy (about 8 ft tall) is only about a week old!

Lots of nyala antelope all over.

The reserve has five rhinos.  The horns are trimmed off every few years to make them less interesting to poachers.  The truck behind is the 24/7 security guard that follows them around to also scare off poachers.  So sad that is needed!

And then we finally saw the elephants!

After the safari ride we went back to the Thula Thula lodge for a lovely lunch on the patio.  Francoise is a gourmet cook, and the food was fabulous.

If you read the book, this is the swimming pool where the elephants came to visit one night during dinner.  

There is now an electric fence around the lodge.  But it doesn't keep out the antelope, nor the monkeys.  

The servers were bringing out our first course.  Ken had the cous cous salad.

The kitchen staff bring the food out to this table inside the lodge and then the servers bring it from there out to the tables.  But the lodge has those big open doors.  While our server was bringing out Ken's salad we heard a crash and people yelling.  

A monkey had gone inside and tried to get to Sue's fruit gazpacho.  That blob on the table in front of the vase used to be in a pretty glass, which was now in pieces on the floor.  

The kitchen found Sue more food and all was well.

The lodge has this wonderful carved stone elephant.  President Lines wants to take it home to his office.  We loved Thula Thula and may find some excuse to go up there again!  

We changed from our safari clothes to our missionary attire so we could stop at the airport on our way home and pick up Elder Tom.  He was supposed to come on Sunday evening but missed his flight, so came on Monday instead.  He had never flown before and didn't know on Sunday that you have to arrive at the airport early.  He got to baggage and check-in about 3:50 for a 4:05 flight and they told him he was too late.  There is only one flight per day from Port Elizabeth to Durban, so he made it on Monday evening instead.  It was perfect timing for us because the airport is on the way home from Thula Thula.  

The unrest and riots in Durban are over and everyone is back to work, including those working on McDonalds at the end of our street.  It looks like they are about ready to pave the parking lot and driveway.   

The paving of our big intersection was finished last week, too.  But the lines on the streets have not been painted yet.  That was done first, and then they had to pave over with the last layer of asphalt.  We are afraid that the "lines painted" box has already been checked on the list of jobs, so it will never get done again.

We have about 45 more missionaries scheduled to arrive and join us in the next three months, so we need more apartments!  We have five vacant apartments in Lesotho and a few in other cities for which we have been paying rent for 16 months while they sit empty.  But that still isn't enough.  And the border to Lesotho was closed again this week as COVID cases increase there and in Durban area.

Friday afternoon we went to look at a possible house for new Elders.  As we left we saw this woman walking down the street.  We are always amazed by how much women manage to carry on their heads!

Saturday afternoon there was supposed to be a neighborhood clean-up project at 1:30 at the cul de sac.  We showed up about 1:40 and no one was there.  So we filled the one garbage bag we had with trash and went home.  About an hour later there was a note on the neighborhood WhatsApp chat group about the clean-up project.  Oh well, we were done.  We had Sister Hubrich and the new Elders Masenya and Tom with us.  

We let the Elders carry the very heavy bag up the hill, until we found a house with a wire-cage large box out front for putting out trash bags and keeping out the monkeys!

Otherwise it was a very quiet week.