Two Golden Gates in One Week! Week 104

Hard to believe that was two years ago when we started this amazing adventure.  We arrived home in the afternoon, Saturday 5 February 2022.  It has been a marvelous experience.

We had a wonderful last week in South Africa.

Monday morning we went for some last-minute souvenir shopping with the Hubrichs on Umgeni Street in downtown Durban.  There are lots of little stalls selling all kinds of African/Zulu goodies.

Elder Hubrich wanted to buy a Zulu headdress -- like the one they gave Ken.  Elder Hubrich loves to haggle the prices -- and then he pays them what they originally asked.

Tuesday and Wednesday we spent two days with the 16 young missionaries who make up the Mission Leadership Council (MLC).  (Could this be the real reason we postponed our departure for a week?)  They usually meet once each Transfer (6 weeks), alternating between in-person and on Zoom.  But once per year they have an overnight away-retreat activity.  This time it was in Golden Gate Highlands National Park.  We stayed at Wilgenhof Education Centre, which is designed for school groups on environmental education trips.  

It was perfect for us -- a dorm room with 20 single beds, 3 "adult" rooms for President &  Sister Lines, Elder & Sister Taylor, and us.  It was not elegant: We had to bring our own bedding.

There was a large hall for us to hold our meetings and eat.  There was a huge kitchen, and a braai (BBQ) area where we cooked meat for dinner -- after Sister Taylor coaxed the visiting horse and her baby out of the area.

We went for a hike on Tuesday afternoon and again on Wednesday morning.  The Elders all took off racing up the mountain.  We sauntered along at a more leisurely pace befitting our ages. 

The views across the valley and of the mountains were spectacular.  It was a gorgeous day!  We are going to miss the beauties of South Africa, for sure.

 These are such wonderful young men who donated two years of their lives to service.  They are the current leaders of the Mission, and the future leaders of the Church and the world!

The only problem with Wilgenhof was that there is no cell service up the canyon where it is located.  While wandering around the property looking for a cellphone bar or two, Ken and President Lines found the swing-sets.  They are both forever young at heart.

After breakfast was study time with President Lines on the steps of the hall.  The Elders are all learning to love the Gospel of Jesus Christ and carry that love to others.

And then some farewell photos.

We have grown to love these people so much!

We wanted to take a photo of those with matching ties -- but Sister Lines decided to do a photo-bomb.  Here are Elders Mokhoanatsi & Paulsen, Sister Lines, President Lines, Elders Viviers & Naisbitt.

We drove back to Durban on Wednesday afternoon.  It should have been a four-hour drive, but we needed to stop for petrol or diesel.  We were 14 people in 3 vehicles.  President Lines decided to take us all out for lunch at the road-side restaurant.  Unless you go to McDonald's or KFC or some-such, eating at a restaurant in South Africa is always a minimum two-hour process.  We were the only ones there, so we managed to get out in 1 hour and 45 minutes!  But we loved the time to visit with everyone.  We arrived home late and started the painful process of packing.  Packing is hard anyway, but doubly so when you are leaving a place and people you love.

Thursday we were back in the office to continue to help the Taylors.

We took our farewell photo with dear friends Wynn and Bette Hubrich on Thursday because they were leaving early on Friday morning to drive to Lesotho.  Their mission assignment is Humanitarian Aid, so they went up there to see some potential projects where the Church can help with local needs. 

Thursday evening was our farewell dinner with President & Sister Lines.  The Hubrichs and Taylors came along too.  

After dinner (yes, it took 2+ hours), we went to the Mission Home for our last chance at one of Sister Lines' fabulous cakes.  Sue had requested cheesecake, but it also had a chocolate lace decoration around the outside and on top, with raspberry syrup too.  

And there were more photo-ops.

With Elder Hill, who was formerly one of the Social Media Elders, so was often in the Office with us.  He is now our Zone Leader for Hillcrest Zone.

President Lines and Ken had to show off their suits made by a tailor in Lesotho -- with Cheetah-fabric linings.

Elder Dillon Peterson and Elder Paballo Mokhoanatsi are the Assistants to the President -- and also to us.  We loved working with them and enjoyed them as our upstairs neighbors in the West Victoria flats.

Jeanne Birasa is our friend who cleaned the Mission Office and our apartment each week.  She is a refugee from Rwanda, a widow, and the mother of three boys -- two grown, one in high school.  We loved getting to know her and appreciated her work for us.

The bags are all packed and Friday afternoon we were off to the airport.  

President and Sister Lines took us.  They really like to do all the airport runs.  We started with a 70-minute flight from Durban to Johannesburg.  We had to fetch our bags again there and then go check in for the long-haul international flights.

While walking through the airport, Ken was wearing his backpack that says Kilpatrick Townsend on the back.  That was his law firm for many, many years.  A man stopped us and said he had used the firm as attorneys for his work.  He was obviously American, so we started talking.  He is also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!  He did grad school at Stanford in 2017-18 and lived in Menlo Park.  The Church is a very small village (of 16 million people.)  He is now living in Johannesburg with his wife and four children, and they, too, love South Africa.

We managed to re-check our baggage and waited several hour until take-off of our red-eye to London.  This was one of our two new Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787-900's.

After 11 hours on the flight from Johannesburg to London Heathrow, a 4.5 hour layover and another 11-hour flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, we are home!  Our second Golden Gate in one week. 

It was interesting that the SFO airport was giving free COVID tests to all those arriving on international flights, with a kit to do another test at home in 3-5 days.  We thought that was a good process.

We rented a car for three days so Ken has time to get white 1956 T-bird off the blocks and running.  (He did and it does.  On Monday morning as this was being written, he topped up the battery, removed the blocks, pumped up the tires, and primed the carburetor.  It fired right up.)  But on the way home from the airport, we stopped by the cell phone store to get new phones and our numbers on a regular plan.  (We had put them on a $5/month, 30 min/month plan just to save our numbers.)  Sue's phone had died a couple of months ago and so she had been using a mission phone.  Ken decided it was time to upgrade his iPhone 6+ he's had since 2013...  Then we stopped at the Xfinity store to get a modem and Internet service.  

We finally made it into the house.  Notice our life-size Hadida bird on the porch.  These birds were our most-beloved, most-hated Durban neighborhood friends.  Fun to listen to at sun-down, awful at dawn (4:30am!) 

Our wonderful renters, the Hansens, had made welcome-home signs for us!  They were in the front windows when we arrived.

The yard looked so dead!  But then we remembered it is the middle of winter here, so of course the trees are leaf-less and the grass is brown.  However, Sue's daffodils are starting to bloom.  They are always beautiful for Valentine's Day.

Next stop was going to be the grocery store, but the Hansens had left us some basic groceries to get us through the weekend.  We ordered Chinese from Green Elephant Restaurant in our neighborhood and started to sort out what was in the suitcases.  We managed to stay awake until 10pm and then crashed.  Jet lag is the pits.

Our ward has afternoon church, so we went for a walk on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning to see how things have changed.  The new bike/pedestrian bridge over the US 101 Freeway was opened while we were gone.  It's beautiful, and will be open year-round.  The old path went through the creek bed under the freeway and was closed in the winter when the creek covered the walkway with water.

We had to smile when we walked into the Church building and saw this poster on the Bishop's office door.  It was made by the 8-9 year old children.  We love that they are all wearing masks.  Many places in the USA have become complacent about COVID protocols, but not Palo Alto Foothills Ward!  Bishop Covert is a professor at Stanford whose specialty is dangerous viruses.  Everyone wears masks at Church, and every-other row is closed in the chapel, and Zoom meetings are all available for those who still do not want to come.  

That's why we felt comfortable going to Church in person on Sunday.  But it was weird to be there with so many people instead of in our small-but-beloved Molweni Branch.

After Church we went to visit with Stake President Rob Daines to be officially released as Missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It was awful!  We have loved serving and being part of the great work to spread the message of the Restored Gospel to all the world.  We are home and will find other ways to serve, but it is just not the same.

By the time we ate dinner we were beat.  Sue managed to finish her daily-required NY Times crossword in 30 minutes over her usual time, because she kept falling asleep.  The blog had to wait for Monday morning.  So we are done...

We want to invite you all to our homecoming report in Church on Sunday, 20 February.  The meeting starts at 12 noon.  We will speak at about 12:30, or a bit earlier.  Our children and grandchildren are coming from far and farther.  That day is also Ken's 75th birthday!  The biggest treat will be son Reed playing violin with son Tim singing between our two talks.  It will also be on Zoom.  We will try to remember to send out another reminder the day before.

https://zoom.us/j/99672250857?pwd=U3Q5czNMYmY2Wmo5akIwM3JGOFptZz09 

Meeting ID: 996 7225 0857

Passcode: 435516

We love you all.  Thank you for coming along with us on this adventure and supporting our efforts.

Love,

Ken and Sue