Well, we have been here one week today. It has seemed like a long week. Much has happened, but I feel like we're not into the work yet. We spent from Tuesday night when we arrived in country, with President and Sister Omer, the Mission President. They are very lovely people. They made us feel very welcome and comfortable. Sister Omer is a very gracious lady. They both have a lot of responsibility. I don't know how they do it. She is basically the Missionary Mom, responsible for all the missionaries. We were at the Mission Home everyday, being oriented to the mission and informing us about the cars, phones, apartments, etc. One afternoon they took Lynn out to practice driving on the left side of the road. He didn't take the car home that night though. We were scheduled to go to Nilspruit on Friday, but they were having difficulty getting the sim card for the phone to operate. Because it was still not working, they didn't want us to go until Saturday so we could have a phone to take with us. So Lynn stayed around the office to do some more practice driving, and I went with Sister Omer and the other Office Missionaries to a warehouse where there are a lot of authentic, handmade African Souvineers. A gentleman who Sister Omer knows travels throughout Africa and buys hand made articles from the village people and keeps them in a warehouse and opens his store occassionally for people to come in and purchase things. There were a lot of interesting things,but many things that I didn't know what I would do with them after I got home, or how I would even get them home. I did buy a couple of things that I thought I could decorate our apartment with.
By the afternoon, they had our phone working, so the plan was to leave early Saturday morning. Lynn and I did a few errands before heading to the Mission Home to pack. I had bought 2 curling irons the day before, 2 different sizes. When I got home and opened them, they were both the same size, in a wrong box, so we had to take them back to exchange it. We spent a lot of time driving around trying to find our way to where we wanted to go. We had a GPS, but had a difficult time finding the addresses of the places where we wanted to go. So we just ended up driving around until we found the kind of store we wanted. It took us about 3 hours to do a couple of things and get back to the Mission Home. Sister Omer had the Assistants over for tacos. President had a meeting so missed dinner for the second night in a row.
We got packed with the few things that we had unpacked to last for a few days. At 9:00 the next morning, we ready to head out. We worried that we would be able to get 5 large cases, 2 carry on bags, a computer bag and a bag of manuals and journals loaded in the small Nissan, but with the help of the President and the Assistants, we were able to get everyone loaded in. It was raining and chilly,but with GPS loaded and Elder Bishop from the Mission Office to lead us out of Johannesburg, we started out. It took about an hour to get out of the area onto the freeway where we would be able to hit the freeway from there. It was a pretty drive. The farther out we went, the prettier it became. It was very green and a little hilly. Through some of the areas, we saw some little villages that I wondered if they were houses or just a junk yard. A litle farther down the road, I noticed some wash hanging out on the line and figured people were really living in them.
We stopped for gas and lunch at a small of the road area. It is very hard to understand the people as they speak very fast and with a dialect. A couple of hours later, we stopped to stretch our legs and potty. A man from Zimbabwe was selling bowls he had made from Mahogony. I couldn't pass it up and thought it would make a lovely fruit bowl. A while later, we stopped at some roadside stands with people selling their bags of oranges, avacados, pecans and macadamia nuts. We bought something from each one of them. We had seen orange trees loaded with oranges a litle earlier.
We finally arrived in Nilspruit about 2:45, but it took us an hour to find the area even with 3-4 phone calls to the couple that we were to be staying with. Our apartment won't actually be ready until about the 25th or 26th. Another couple is leaving and then the mission is bringing in some new furniture and other thngs to fix up the apartment. It is dificult living with complete strangers, but they are very kind and in the gospel, we all feel like family. We're just geting tired of living out of suitcases and trying to adjust to other peoples' lifestyles. We haven't had internet since we left the Mission home, but went to the Mall yesterday and got s "stick", but we can only run one computer at a time. We may look into getting a land line when we get into our apartment.
We went to church Sunday in our Branch. The people seemed very nice. we haven't met with the Branch President yet or the Ward Mission leader to know just where they would like to use us. The Elder's Quorem President invited us to dinner at their home on Thursday, so we will get a chance to get to know him and his family. He seems like a very nice young man. Our Branch meets upstairs in a rented building downtown. It is quite nice for not being an actual chapel. The couple we're living with work with another Branch about an hour away. They just have two rooms in a school that they use. The classes are usually held outside because they have no rooms to meet in. The rooms look just like school just let out. The Branch President has to hold interviews outside, while sitting on a stump. The church has purchased a piece of land for a chapel, but they people aren't paying their tithing, so that is holding them up on getting a chapel.
Well I had better close this epistle. Our love to you all.
