Vivian & David

Dear Fam, here is some March news from my personal journal, as our calling as full time missionaries...

It seems that the month of March just flew by. It began with a very sweet beginning by having our Atlanta friend, John Douglas, fly into Johannesburg and then driving over to come and visit us. We met him right after our very first Sacrament meeting in the Newcastle Branch. But then we took him up to Madadeni Branch One, where Elder Dibb had been serving as their Branch President. It was fast and testimony meeting and we both got to bear our testimonies, and our branch new mission president bore his very humble testimony. After the three hour block, John joined us for our branch baptism as well. We hope he comes back again ;-} He stayed overnight and we did do some good visiting and more fun things. {for those of you planning to coming and visit us, we've planned some good times together}.

Speaking of fun things, we decided to plan a fun Preparation Day to go and stay in a hotel near some water falls with Elder & Sister Uffens and then the next day go see the second tallest water falls in the world -- The Thukela Falls. Just as we were getting ready to get our suitcases into the car the Uffens called to inform us that the hotel had called and said if we see any trouble or anything not to stop but get the police to escort us to the hotel. Then 20 minutes later the phone call informed us that the police had shut down the road because there were two tribes having a war over land.

Well we went to Ladysmith anyway to stay in the Uffen's home and then would evaluate the situation. The next morning, it was still not safe to drive that way, so we took another route. It was raining some, but we figured we would be ok. We were about an hour or so into the trip on a mountain, when the traffic in front us was stopped. We could see 2 big cranes.

They guys went up to look; they saw that a semi truck with a container had gone off the road and was down off in valley. We were delayed for about an hour. Apparently if there had not been a small hill where the truck stopped, the driver and truck would have fallen down about 500 more kilometers. We think the driver was pretty much ok, but what was another interesting beginning to our trip.

We drove on up and after we paid to get into the park, we drove about a steep mile up to where we could hike in to the falls. But when we got there we were driving right into a cloud. We could see about a ten foot perimeter. Well so we made a U turn and came back and drove around a nice other little valley near Ladysmith. Oh well, I guess we were just not supposed to go up the falls; we'll try another time. But it was an interesting day.

For our zone conference we had several couples driving to Newcastle from either Durban, 4 hours SE or from Swaziland, 4 hours north of us. So I organized a dinner for the ten of us with Pres. Mann at a local restaurant. Then we came to our home for a surprise birthday dessert party for Elder Klingler. Then before zone conference the next morning we included about 20 more Elders to come over for a pancake breakfast. It was so fun because these times come so seldom. At our conference, Elder Dibb gave his talk on Repentance and Repentance. Then we traveled to the other zone conferences for him to give his talk again. It was fun getting to see all of the missionaries in the mission at the Zone Conferences.

On March 15th, which will probably be my last Enrichment for the Madadeni Branch, we had our Birthday Fiesta being entertained with some of the cultural dances. Our YW did a special dance for us, and with the YSA's being there, our attendance was good. They were introduced to spaghetti for the dinner. I baked a birthday cake and we had ice cream. It was a great day; my only regret was not taking a photo of them beating on the "rubbish bin" [classroom trash can] with two twigs for the beat of the dance music.

While I was Enrichment, I received a phone call from the new Newcastle Branch President asking me if I would be the replacement speaker for Sacrament Meeting the next day; which I did.

We have been home teaching a brother who was 87 years old in a rest home in Vryheid [about 90 mins. away]. My last memory of him was when Elder Dibb was helping him with an ice cream on a stick that he was so thoroughly enjoying. He died about ten days later. His son came from Saudi Arabia for the funeral, but it was necessary for Elder Dibb and Elder Klingler to do the dressing [we had his clothing here at our boarding].

Elder Dibb and I were asked to do a training session for one of our weekly training meetings. We decided to do it on "Small and Simple Things" since we were showing this DVD the following Sunday for our 5th Sunday Meetings. It began with Elder Dibb opening up Isaiah and reading from a random chapter. Then I walked in dressed totally goofy with mismatched clothes, some that were droopy and others diaper-pinned together while chewing gum. Of course they were totally distracted and we used it an object lesson that small and simple things in the mission do matter, and trying to be strictly obedient does make a difference.

For our 5th Sunday meeting, all of our local branches showed this 20 min. DVD of a young women giving a fellow-classmate a Book of Mormon and of course the dream of the whole family joining the church comes true. We then handed out a Book of Mormon to each member and invited them to write their testimony with the challenge to share it with someone. The Elders will then follow up for hopeful referrals.

Our Elders enjoyed a post-Easter FHE Dinner here with real canned ham, funeral potatoes made from frozen French Fries, fresh broccoli salad, some applesauce that we found. For dessert we had a homemade carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, but at $4.00 for a block of cream cheese, we'll only do that for special holidays.

I'll tell you though we do count our many blessings. We had gone to a township boarding to visit a pregnant 17 year old girl outside of Madadeni. When I walked in she was just covering their individual dinner bowls. I looked and in each bowl was one cooked chicken's foot on the top of the pile of rice for the children and herself.

I just love these people and am working on getting through the transition of changing branches. I did feel better after visiting with the Newcastle Branch President and learning more of what is needed and how we could try to contribute something. We have mostly been working on the transition of changing branches. We met with the former couple missionaries, and the zone leaders who serve in the Newcastle Branch and we went over the branch directory, maps, and began some leadership training with the new leaders.

Happy Birthdays to Owen, Elaine, Steve, and Melinda ~ which was also on Easter Sunday.