Merry Christmas

Having gotten our Branch Christmas Party out of the way the end of November, we could devote all of December to doing visits to our Branch families.  Of course with visits, came Christmas treats, so I was busy making and decorating 16 dozen Christmas cookies, and a few batches of candy and dipped pretzels.  It took some doing, but we were able to get to almost all of our families.  There were a couple who were not home or who did not answer their door when we stopped, and a couple who were too busy to have us stop by, and then left for out of town for the holiday, so we were sad that their treats got old and ended up in the garbage.  Lots of wasted time and treats!

These are a sample of the cookies.  Because of lack of space to store them, I would frost enough for two families, fix them on a plate, package them and put them on a tray ready for  delivery.

This is our landlady and her grandson.  They had come to do some touch up paint by where they had to repair the  tiles in the kitchen and bathroom which had become loose and were about to fall off the wall.

I sent them each with a Christmas plate of treats.  They were very excited and appreciative.

These were just some of the forty White Stockings that I made
for each of our Branch families for Christmas.

Lynn bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers for the holidays.  The lilies were all still in bud, so I had no idea what color they really were.   When they opened up, the had red centers inside the white lilies.  They looked so festive with the red leaves of some sort that were put there for contrast.  It was a very different, but festive Christmas bouquet!

This is a close up of the centers of the lilies!

For Christmas Eve, we decided to do easy since Sister Hunt and I had been preparing all day for our Christmas Dinner.  Lynn went to pick up pizzas.  I told him we would need 5 pizzas for the eight or us.

They come two for the price of one.  Lynn thought I meant 5 boxes of pizza.  He came home with 10 pizzas!  Needless to say, we DID have plenty of pizza, even for everyone to take home!

The treats and  munchies were all set up and ready.

The table was set and festive.  All we needed were some Elders.

Our guests arrived.  From the left:  Sister Hunt, Elders Kolani, Baxter,  Elungu and Flynn & Saintange.

This is a picture of a full  Elder Saintange.

This is a better picture of Sister Hunt and Elder Hunt.

After dinner, we played a game similar to "Janga" called "Timberrr" 

Elder Flynn holds the record of 27.

Santa came early for the Elders.  They were excited to have gifts to open in the morning!

Notice, they even had bags of left over pizza for breakfast

Santa found his way to our house as well.

Hidden surprises await!

Our District gathered at 11:00 on Christmas morning at the Hunt's  for a Christmas Devotional.  We took turns reading the Scriptures from the Book of Mormon Telling the Christmas Story, and singing the songs that went with each part.  Jeanette had sent us an early Christmas gift which was the illustrated Book of Mormon Christmas.  We enjoyed having the beautiful pictures depict what the scriptures were saying.

After we finished our Devotional, we enjoyed a lovely dinner  of baked ham, twice baked potatoes, Christmas jello salad, fresh fruit, shrimp & cocktail sauce, veggies & dip, cheese ball & crackers, 7 layer dip, chips & dip, pumpkin cake roll, & cookies.  What a feast!

Sister Hunt had set a beautiful table to enjoy our Christmas feast!

After dinner, we were all too full to move, but we managed to make "care packages" for everyone  to take with them.  Our Elders came over here to skype and call their families.  That was, of course the highlight of their day!    When they finished, we went down our list of children and called or skyped with them.  We were able to make connections with 7 of our 10 children.  With 4 different time zones involved,  we felt like that was pretty good.  It was good to talk to them! It was a beautiful way to end our Christmas Day.

 Even though we weren't able to spend Christmas with our own families, the Spirit we felt with our Mission Family, helped to make it a wonderful holiday.  The most beautiful gift of all this holiday, was the blessing that our Savior gave us, that of being our Savior and Redeemer, and dying for all of us so that we may live with him again.

Odds and Ends of South Africa

As we would be out and about going from one place to another, we never cease to be amazed at the interesting sights that are everywhere.  We always have our camera with us to catch some of these sights and moments.

Real live tractors pulling trailers with the trash that they pick up from the sides of the streets. 

Loaded and off they go for another stop.

They will empty large dumpsters like this one.  In many of the areas, if they don't have a dumpster, the people just set their garbage bags on the side of the road waiting for pick up.  As you can see, not all of the garbage is bagged.  This is the sort of thing you will see along the streets everywhere.  Some places are worse than others.  We feel sad when we see this beautiful country littered with discarded cans, bottles, and take away containers all along the sides of the roads.  In the next few feet there will be a sign that says, "No Littering".  But you rarely see trash bins nearby to put the garbage in.

This is a familiar sight.  trailers unloading things in front of stores. 

No these aren't animals!  They are workers being hauled to the job for the day!

Nothing like packing them in tight!

There are taxies everywhere you go.

The bakery area of the store has lots of delicious looking baked goods.

We have found that they always look better than they taste!

There are a lot of pumpkins and squash that are readily available/

More choices of baked goods!

These are muffins with another muffin cut in half and set to look like a butterfly.

At every intersection you see people with goods for sale.

They're always so loaded down, I don't know how they make change for a sale!

This is a display at one of the rest areas at Kruger Park, with information about some of the animals.

Even the dirt areas are well taken care of.  They sweep or rake the dirt areas every day.

 This is one of the many sidewalk shops where people sell their wares. 

These are bags of potatoes and onions.

You can see by the roof that these shops are very crudely constructed.  But it serves the purpose of keeping the rain and sun off from them while they do their selling.

We can't forget my beautiful hibuscus that adorns the sidewalk to our front door.

Simba does a good job of advertising his chips.

Termite wings anyone?

This was the aftermath of a swarm of termites at our porch one night.

They swarmed toward our porch light.  When we came out to go to church, 

we had to sweep before we could even walk to the car.  These were just some of the piles.

These are some of the beautiful hillsides that we experience as we drive to our different areas.

Coming back from Lydenburg, which has an elevation of 7000 feet, 

we saw low clouds sitting on top of the hill.

Sunset and clouds on top of the mountain side of pine trees.

Extremely beautiful sunset and clouds.

On our drive through the pass we came across a hillside where someone had taken the time to 

arrange rocks to spell out the word "Jesus".  It could be seen way across the valley.

What a perfect way to end the day.  It was well worth the two hour drive each way, to deliver our Christmas goodies to our Branch President and his first counselor!

Kruger Revisited

While Joyce and Nadine, Elder Baxter's sisters  were here, we took them to the beautiful Kruger Park to enjoy a real life experience of the wonders of nature.  We left fairly early to be able to catch some of the animals as they came out for their morning breakfast.  They had either slept in or had eaten and run, because we didn't see too many at first.  But as time went on, we did see several!  Although we have another post with some of these amazing animals, we will share some again in a different pose.  You know how you love each of the different poses of your children, even though they still have on the same outfit?  Well, it's kind of the same way with these animals!  We are amazed each time we see them.  Hope you enjoy them too!

A little chimp family including the baby!

One of their favorite past times is to find the lice on each other.  It makes good snacks!

He's being very thorough to be sure none are left in the tail!

They are such quick, agile little things.

We're always glad to see Jumbo the Elephant!

First you snatch the grass with your trunk.

Then you curl your trunk up and put it into your mouth.

Then you start again for something even tastier than the last!  YUM!

You always have to be careful when you're driving because these pedestrians 

always have the right of way!

...even if they do travel slowly!

I really think that the wart hog is one of the ugliest animals in the park!

He looks like he could have just woke up and hasn't combed his hair yet,

and maybe even had a late night as his eye looks a little tired!

They always seem to be on the run.  They don't like to stick around for a lot of conversation.

Most of the hippos we see are in the water.  

We happened to catch this one as he was out for a bit of lunch.

Cheetas are not often seen in the park.  This was our lucky day!

Giraffes are such majestic animals!

This was our lucky day for giraffes!

They are such tall stately animals!

It looks like they're discussing the reason for their friend walking away.

Their tall necks keep the trees' branches trimmed nicely!

These rhinos were out for a lunch stroll.

This one got tired and decided to stop for a rest.

Hippos having some water fun!

Even the zebras came for lunch today!

It looks like this old croc is headed for a swim.

This one is ready for lunch and we didn't want to be part of the menu!

This King of the Jungle was nice enough to pose for us!

This grey heron was keeping an eye on things.

This huge kudu would be a prize catch for someone, but we were only out to enjoy the beauty of it all!

This little lizard represents some of the smallest creatures.

This small fry stopped for lunch.

This was the first wild dog that we had seen.
We were fortunate enough to see her sharing lunch with her little one!

The trees in the large lake or pond, are filled with very large nests.
We were told that the small round things hanging down were bats!

This shows how close together they build the nests.

 Joyce and Nadine were amazed at the wonderful sights of nature that we saw.
It was indeed an enjoyable day!