Ten Years Later...

With former Cape Town Missionary Sheryl
Garner at the Johannesburg Temple

 

This week we had another visit from one of our returned Cape Town missionaries, this time from the USA, Sheryl Garner, our lone African-American sister (actually Haitian-American) from Washington D.C.

Sheryl had a 5 1/2 hour layover in Joburg on Friday between her flights from Namibia and to Port Elizabeth. She is touring her old mission areas, visiting her converts, three of whom have now served full-time missions themselves! Needless to say, she served an outstanding mission, finishing at the end of 2005, and is enjoying the fruits of her labors here, 10 years later. 

 

We took her to a late lunch at Mike's Kitchen and to the temple and Area offices during her layover. She is so fun, and she purposely planned a long layover so she could spend it with us and get fatherly advice and counsel from Bob regarding her future and some important decisions she is facing. 

 

We had another busy week that zoomed by fast. Elder Jones, after considerable discussion with the Area Presidency and with Martha, met with Sean Donnelly and told him Martha would not be sharing her time with public affairs after all, as she was going to be kept plenty busy as assistant executive secretary. He told Martha that if he gave her up half-time it wouldn't be enough, and he feared Sean would fill more and more of her time. She told Elder Jones she is perfectly fine with the decision and loves what she is doing.

We had another very spiritually enlightening Sabbath day, with a powerful block of meetings at the Protea Glen Ward, where our Area President, Elder Carl B. Cook and his wife attended. He presided and spoke in both sacrament meeting and Priesthood meeting and he and his wife attended the YSA Sunday School class with us and about 30 young single adults. In every meeting, he bore testimony and left challenges. 

He challenged the ward members to focus more on the sacredness of the Sabbath and the sacrament and to arrive at church earlier to prepare for the sacrament by the Spirit. The SS lesson was on the Good Shepherd, and he challenged the young single adults to be shepherds and feed the Lord's  sheep and go out and find the lost ones. He challenged each YSA to bring a less active YSA to sacrament meeting, telling them we have enough YSA's in this ward for four wards, if they were all active. And he challenged each Priesthood bearer to fast a full 24 hours on fast Sunday and pay a fast offering of the cost of two meals missed (enumerating the blessings in Isaiah 58:8-12) in addition to coming to sacrament meeting 10 minutes earlier on a weekly basis. 

 

Then tonight we had a zone meeting for all the senior missionary couples, 19 area couples and 14 temple couples, plus the temple presidency, and were blessed to hear from Elder Jackson Mkhabela of the Seventy, whom Bob knew from his previous mission.  

Elder Mkhabela was a black police captain in Johannesburg during apartheid (a very rare, near impossible feat) and joined the Church during apartheid in 1993. He was one of the first black bishops and the very first black stake president in Southern Africa. He earned a law degree through years of evening classes. 

He was just released in General Conference two weeks ago as an Area Seventy, after 5 years, and has been called to be the first black mission president in Zimbabwe, starting in July. 

He quoted President Hinckley that there is no more compelling work than missionary work and no work that brings greater satisfaction. 

His beautiful message was to focus on the Savior and be fixed in our purpose. We left motivated and inspired to do better.