AllensInDurban: General Conference -- week 86

Twice each year in October and April we get to have General Conference. Instead of regular Church meetings, we receive a broadcast from Salt Lake City, and other places around the world. We hear talks and music from wonderful men and women inspired of God to teach and lead and help us live better lives and grow closer to and more like our Savior Jesus Christ.

It's a little harder to be in South Africa, because Conference runs on Mountain Daylight time, and we are eight hours ahead. We see Saturday morning live on Saturday evening. But we watch Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening sessions streamed delayed on Sunday on our schedule. Then we watch Sunday morning when it is Sunday evening here. We will watch Sunday afternoon sometime on Monday.

If you would like to watch General Conference, the sessions are available for streaming.

While watching, Sue was also making cookies for the Elders this week as we go to do boarding inspections. It must have smelled good outside, because she had an active audience. There was a monkey mom and three babies.

But it's been a week of strange schedules. Our son Keith called on Thursday evening and said he'd made arrangements for us to watch his dress rehearsal. He is in a production of Hunchback at Hale Center Theater in Orem, Utah. He plays the King of the Gypsies, which is a major role. We were sad we would not be able to see his show, but we got up at 3am on Friday morning to watch the dress rehearsal zoomed, just for us!

It was wonderful! If you live in Utah, go see him! It opens this coming week and runs most of October and November. He performs on Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday nights.

Tuesday morning President & Sister Lines and Sue sat down to try to figure out the calendar schedule for the rest of 2021. We'd done this once before, but then things change... .

And all week we had two visitors in the office from Johannesburg--Marc Jackson and Thembinkosi Zwane.

They are Church Tech Support for all of Southern Africa and came to give our office all new computers. And they also changed our shared folders and files all from Google Drive to Sharepoint/OneDrive. They are good guys and very helpful, but it is still a painful process making sure everything gets moved and set up properly.

Wednesday we went flat-hunting down in Amanzimtoti, 25 km south of Durban. In August we were given two-months' notice that we have to vacate the missionary flat there by 31 October. We had appointments to see five flats, but really, really liked the third one, so we took it on the spot and skipped the last two.

It's a very nice place--big and sunny in a good neighborhood. And a nice view. It's been sitting empty for two months, because it's up on the third floor with no elevator. But, our Missionaries are young and spry and don't mind a few stairs. However, at one of the rentals we visited, the downstairs neighbor expressed a serious interest in finding a church for her young family, so we contacted the young missionaries in the area to visit her. When they learned the address, they exclaimed, "The next-door neighbor is a very strong member of the Church!"

President Lines' birthday was on Saturday, but Friday morning Sister Hubrich stopped by with a tray of cupcakes, so we all ran into his office and sang to him.

Then on Saturday morning Ken and the Hubrichs got up at 3am again to watch BYU play football against Utah State University.

Since we'd been up at 3am the day before, Sue had gone to bed at 8pm and slept in until 5am when she came downstairs to watch the second half with them.

It was worth the early rising, because BYU won.

They are now 5-0 for the season and ranked #10 in the country!

Saturday we went with the Lines and the Hubrichs to The Mushroom Farm for lunch. Sue had been there two weeks ago with the Hubrichs, but it was first time for Ken and the Lines. We had a great lunch.