Getting Lost and Transfers -- week 102

We have had another wonderful week!

First, our big news is that we are staying a week longer.  Original plan was to fly home to USA on 27-28 January.  We could go to Utah first, to see family and friends there, then drive down to Henderson and Las Vegas to see family there, then drive home.  We either needed to buy a new car, or pick up our old one.  But the two granddaughters who have the old one are very attached, needless to say.  It's a 2013 Ford C-Max Hybrid, pushing 100,000 miles, so we are ready for a new car anyway.  But we keep hearing about the car shortage in USA.  [No such problem in South Africa.  Why???]

With COVID so bad in the USA we don't really want to go home at all!  This week's COVID rate in South Africa is about 6 cases/100,000 people.  Utah is 337/100,000.  California is 284 cases/100,000.  

Also, our flights were Johannesburg to Atlanta and Atlanta to Salt Lake City.  We were worried about that second flight, because no one has to be COVID tested to fly domestically.  We didn't want to catch something on the flight and then spend the next week visiting family and friends, in and out of lots of homes and restaurants.  We could be our own super-spreader event.  Instead we asked Church Travel if we could move our flights.  Our house renters are moving out on 1 Feb, so we need to wait until after that to come home.  New plan:  We will leave on 4 February and fly Johannesburg to London, then London to San Francisco.  All are international flights so require all passengers to be COVID tested.  It's no guarantee, but it improves the odds.  We will go straight home and isolate for a week or so to make sure we didn't catch anything in the airport.  Since we are not going very far from home, we'll just drive Sue's 1956 Thunderbird until we can buy a "real" car.

Monday was more office work.  The Taylors really are wonderful.  We are not at all worried about leaving the mission in their capable hands.  They also gave us some cookies that they grew to love in New Zealand, and are also sold in South Africa.  The fun part is that the missionaries in New Zealand also "slam."  This was a missionary tradition in Russia, too.  They take a little bite out of the top and bottom of the cookie, and then put one end in their mouth and the other end into a cup of liquid (milk, juice, herb tea) and try to suck the liquid through the cookie.  When the cookie gets soggy you gulp the whole thing into your mouth before it falls apart on the table.  Hard to describe.  Messy to do.  Missionaries love it!

Elder & Sister Hubrich invited us off on an adventure with them on Tuesday.  They needed to visit a school an hour+ southwest of here, where the Church has funded some major repairs and renovations.  The Hubrichs are Humanitarian/Welfare missionaries, so they do these kinds of projects all over.

BUT, there are two routes to get to this school.  We started on the "pretty" route, but the road was closed.  No problem.  Google Maps happily rerouted us.  After about an hour driving over and around a river in the bottom of a valley, we gave up and backtracked and never did get to the school at all!  Maybe we'll try another day this week or next.

We are not sure how this road even got on to Google Maps.  We had to stop and wait for cows to move two or three times.

Sister  Hubrich stood up to get out of the bakkie to take a photo of us crossing this "bridge" over the river.  Her glasses were in her lap.  Oops.  Now her glasses are in the river?  No!  They had landed on a ledge.  She held Elder Hubrich by the belt as he leaned over and retrieved them.  Well done!

We crossed the river about six times in and six times coming back out.  All the bridges were just concrete paths.  Most of them were under three or four inches (8-10cm) of water.  There has been a lot of rain and serious flooding in eastern South Africa the last two weeks.

We did not make it to the school, but we did stop by to visit Pastor Victor.  He runs a drug-rehab facility and a church, just on his own.  He has about 50 people living on his property.  He feeds them and puts them to work and helps them get off the drugs.  

Walking into his small chapel, we could feel the good spirit that is there.  He is a gift from God.

Friday we went to the airport--twice.  The main group of Elders arrived in Durban at 8am.  But Elder Sellers had missed the flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg, so spent the night flying from Atlanta to London to Johannesburg.  That meant he came in on a later flight to Durban.  We took all the new missionaries--just five others--and did all the photo-ops on the second airport run.

We always spend time waiting at the airport, because the Mission runs on PLT.  That is President Lines Time, where everything starts 10 to 30 minutes earlier than planned.

We still had Elder Bascom with us (second from right above).  It was his last day as an Assistant before he goes to spend his last three months as a missionary in Lesotho!  

We took this farewell photo in the office.

We also stopped by the Durban Temple for photos, of course.

And we took the opportunity to have our Farewell photo with the Lines at the Temple.  The building and the people have been such a big part of our mission lives.  We will miss both.

We did all their orientations on Friday afternoon, and then sent them to the Mission Home for dinner and overnight in the Bunkhouse.

Saturday was Transfer Day.  People drive all over the place picking up and delivering Elders.  Hubrichs and Taylors were schedule to drive a van and a bakkie with six Elders and their luggage to Bethlehem--four hours west--leaving Pinetown chapel at 6:30am.  We were scheduled to deliver just one Elder to Ladysmith, leaving Pinetown at 8am.  About 6:15 our phone rang.  "Where is breakfast food?"  Oops!  Sue had forgotten that she had said, when she and Sister Taylor bought the food for incoming Elders for Frida,y they would also buy food for transferring Elders on Saturday.  No 24/7 stores around here.  Sue went to McDonald's drive-thru and ordered 12 breakfast meals to go.  Everyone was sitting in the cars ready to go out the driveway when she arrived about 6:50.

While at McDonald's she also ordered 24 more meals to be picked up about 7:30 for those coming to the 8:00 transfer time.  She was back to pick those up at 7:35 and nothing was ready!  The shift changed at 7:00, and the word about the order got garbled.  The early shift person asked Sue to call a few minutes before arriving so they could have it all boxed up.  The later shift thought Sue was going to call and confirm the order before they made it.  Sue tried to call before coming, but the line was busy...   Mis-communications all around.  But they made the order, and we were out of Pinetown by 8:30.  

Still not smooth sailing.  Big 5km long almost dead-stop traffic jam between Pinetown and Pietermaritzburg. It turned a normal 45 minute drive into a 1.5 hour drive.  And then another, shorter jam further on.  We rolled into Ladysmith at 11:45--over an hour late.

But the trip was worth it.  It was a glorious day.  Blue skies, fluffy clouds, green mountains and fields.  The before-mentioned floods meant there was even more water spilling out of reservoirs.

We went to the home of Elder and Sister Lyon and they fed us a great lunch.  It was good to get out of the bakkie and stretch.  We were so busy eating good food that Ken forgot to take photos.  But someone "stole" his camera and took a picture of him.  He isn't in very many pictures.

Did we mention we were driving the Hubrich's bakkie?  They took the Mission van to Bethlehem.  We no longer have our little Toyota Urban Cruiser.  With the increase of missionaries, it was needed up in Richards Bay.  The only spare car in the mission now is the big H-1 nine-passenger van. 

Sunday we both spoke in Church at Molweni Branch.  It was supposed to be our last Sunday there.  The Branch put on a lovely farewell feast for us! 

Here are all the little kids lined up in the kitchen eating their treats.  Sue wishes she had the photo of them all carrying their chairs down the hall to set this up.  They are wonderful children. 

And we had to have one last photo of Sister Vuzane and her daughter, Emma.  Emma was a brand-new baby when we first went to church in Molweni.  Now she will be two in a couple of weeks.

The adults sat in the Relief Society room and enjoyed eating and visiting.

We took a photo of the whole branch in the garden of the Hillcrest Stake Center.  It's an historic time.  This was their last Sunday meeting there.  Starting next Sunday they FINALLY!! get to go back to meeting in Molweni area where they all live.  COVID shut down all church meetings for months starting mid-March 2020.  When they were finally able to come back to church they had to use the Stake Center, about 15km (10+mi) away, instead of the rented rooms in a school in Molweni.  Many people have not been able to attend because they don't have cars.  Public transport is expensive and runs infrequently on Sundays.

We left that party in time to get to another farewell party.  This was a good-bye to us and a welcome to Taylors and others who have recently moved into the block of flats.  There are 16 flats, and we had a good turn-out for the party, with lots of good food.  Koko the jazz man, who lives in #14 just above us, played his alto sax for all of us.  Sylvie, who lives in #6 below us, made a big pot of breyanie.  That's a favorite South African Indian dish--rice, curry, chicken, lentils, yummy!  Everyone else brought snacks, salads, etc.  We brought Sue's homemade English toffee.  She had a pound of pecans she needed to use up.  Sue's fun dress was a Christmas present from Jeanne, our office and house cleaner.

When we were in Lesotho, Ken met the man there who sews made-to-order suits.  He ordered one with a cheetah-print lining, just for fun.

We have nice guards who watch over our neighborhood.  Sister Taylor got a photo of herself with two of them.  The one in the middle is a woman, Boniswa.  We have at least one other woman guard, too. 

Next week is already upon us!