Sunrise in Soweto (or Adjusting to African Standard Time)




The colorfully painted power plant smokestacks from Chris Hani Road in Soweto near the Pimville Chapel

We have found that things are taken a bit more casually here than we are used to at home, especially time. Punctuality seems to be more loosely defined in Africa. Let us share what happened this week.  

We got up extra early Thursday morning and both showered before 7:00, because we had been warned by postings throughout the apartment complex that we would be without water between the hours of 7:00 am and 2:00 pm, while infrastructure maintenance was being performed.  

At about noon, Martha got a call from Facilities Management that some carpet stretchers had an appointment to be at our flat at 1:00 pm to fix the carpet at the threshold of our bedroom. We hurried home and waited over three hours for them, until after 4:00. They never came. We went back to the office just in time to pack up our things and return home for the day.  

And, oh, by the way, we found out that the water never was turned off all day.  

On Saturday, we were invited to the wedding of the daughter of a sister in our branch who Martha has become quite close to. The marriage was to be performed at the Protea Glen chapel at 8:00 am, but she told us to just be sure and be at the larger Pimville chapel at 11:00 am for the reception.  

We got to the chapel a little before 11:00 and there was just a single car in the parking lot, so we waited in our car. When no one else had shown up by 11:10, we decided to go in the building. A DJ was playing music in the Hall and tables were in the process of being decorated. The caterer assured us the reception would start at 11, apparently not realizing it was well past 11 already.  

Pimville chapel at 11:45 Saturday, one car in the parking lot for the 11:00 reception!

 

By 11:45, we decided we had too much to do, as Saturday is our only p-day, and we left, having no idea when or if the reception would actually start.  We found out today that the wedding party didn't show up at the Pimville chapel until close to 2:00, almost 3 hours late, and no one seemed to mind. They did seem a bit surprised, however, that we didn't wait the 3 hours until they got there.  

We found out the newlywed couple decided to drive an hour each way into Johannesburg, between the wedding and reception, to have pictures taken at the Johannesburg Temple, causing the 3-hour delay. Evidently, the reception went until late in the evening, so the wedding ended up being an all-day, free-form event, like last week's branch activity was.  

Today was our first branch conference and the debut of the branch choir. We got up at 5:00 this morning to be sure we would be at our church building for the mandatory 7:00 choir practice, since Martha is the accompanist. We made the drive in the dark and were turning into Protea Glen as the sun was rising.  

There was no one at the chapel and the car park gate was closed and locked. The two new counselors in the stake presidency arrived the same time we did. The branch president arrived a little after 7 and opened the gate. We were the only choir members there until the director, Sister Redebe, arrived about 7:10.  

By 7:30 there were four sisters (counting Martha and Sister Redebe) and Bob, so we started rehearsing. The first verse of "Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd" was men only, so Bob had to sing it solo while the four sisters listened. Martha turned down the volume of the piano to make sure his voice was heard! By 8:00, there were 2 more men and 6 more sisters in the choir. No more men ever showed up, but two of the sisters agreed to sing tenor. Finally, when it was time to sing the two prelude hymns at 8:50, there were 15 women (including 3 tenors) and 3 men (one tenor and two basses) in the choir, and we pulled it off!  

The sisters in the choir were all in red tops and black skirts and the men in black or navy suits and red ties, and we sounded amazingly good, considering how little actual rehearsal time we had together, and Martha has become extremely talented in pushing the buttons on the automated piano. The best news is that her piano skills have revived enough that she can play the individual parts one or two at a time to help in choir rehearsals.  

President Mohabi of the stake presidency went up to Martha after the sacrament meeting and said, "Thank you for bringing the beautiful choir music to this branch!" When she tried to humbly say that Sister Redebe deserved all the credit and that she just pushed the buttons on the piano, he said, "No, I know that you are the one who has made the difference for this beautiful music to happen here today!"

Candid photo of the stake presidency and branch presidency in action at Priesthood session of branch
conference, (left to right) Branch President Thato Rabaholo, Stake President Thabo Lebethowa,
Branch 1st counselor Sakhumzi Mbobo, Stake 1st Counselor Josiah Mohabi (standing),
Stake 2nd Counselor Lehlohonota Mokoena, and Branch 2nd Counselor Thulani Buthelezi.
 

And finally, we were relieved and happy to know that Martha's friend, although she didn't ever see us at yesterday's reception, knew we made the effort to attend.  The caterer had informed her that "two tall white people showed up very early and left for some reason..."

  

Celebrating Nelson Mandela Day in Soweto

"Madiba" - Nelson Mandela's 97th birthday was celebrated 18 July
He said, "What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived.
It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will
determine the significance of the life we lead."

Painted faces on LDS kids in Protea Glen, Soweto, celebrating Mandela Day

 

It was another busy week at work, Bob dealing with a steady flow of missionary issues and Martha dealing with multiple apartments with no hot water (including our own) and with new leadership in wards and stakes, plus practicing the piano 2-3 hours a day to prepare to accompany the branch choir and, as if that weren't enough, she was also asked to speak in sacrament meeting Sunday, and Bob taught the gospel doctrine lesson again.

We also went to out to dinner twice - on Tuesday with the Waltons to celebrate 3 of our 4 birthdays (within a week) at the Cattle Baron Steak Ranch, and Friday at the Cape Town Fish Market in Eastgate with President Robison of the Ghana MTC and his wife and 3 couples who are good friends of theirs visiting from the states, while the Ghana MTC is closed for maintenance. We introduced Waltons to the world's best steaks and the other couples to kingklip, the world's best fish, and no one was disappointed. In fact, they all gave rave reviews to the meals!

Saturday was Nelson Mandela Day in honor of his 97th birthday, and there were celebrations and service projects throughout the country. Our branch had an activity, combined with the ward we were recently split from, and we decided to attend because they really needed us (especially Martha at the piano) for choir practice afterward. It was extremely well attended  There were over 100 people there, and half were probably primary age and half the rest were young adults. 

 

Teams gathered in the four corners of the "Hall" (cultural hall)



Activities continued outdoors on the car park (parking lot/basketball court)

 

They randomly split everyone into four teams by giving everyone a colored sticker. Martha was on the pink team (mostly teenage and YSA girls) and Bob was asked to be one of three judges to determine winners of each event. Sister Mbobo, who was there with three generations of her family, and three YSA women on her committee, did a great job with the competitions, starting in the "Hall" and finishing out doors on the car park (parking lot).

 

Martha ran the 3-legged race with Brother Moyo,
our favorite deacon, and exulted at the finish line

 

 

We arrived at the starting time of 10:00, but they didn't get started with games until closer to 11. We thought it might last a couple of hours, but it was still going strong at 2:00, when we had to leave to address some apartment issues, including meeting a plumber at our own flat, to get our hot water restored. It turns out the activity lasted over 8 hours, until well after dark! The purpose of the holiday, we're told is for everyone in the country to donate 67 minutes of service and volunteerism, in honor of the 67 years of Mandela's struggle for freedom and democracy in South Africa. Mandela believed that every person in the world has the ability to change the world for the better, no matter how small their contribution. We were surprised that the 67 minutes for our branch turned into more than 8 hours, but it proved to be a wonderful team building and unifying activity for the saints here in Protea Glen. A rousing success!

 

The activity started with a song and prayer in the cultural hall and I was asked to give the spiritual thought. I hurried and found these quotes from Nelson Mandela on my iPhone that I combined into my message:

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living,” and "It always seems impossible until it's done."  

 

Sister Mbobo (do you love the outfit?) directs the activities



Representatives of the four teams compete in bobbing for apples

The older sisters were in the kitchen much of the day preparing a feast, but we had to leave before it was served. And the choir practice afterward, needless to say, never materialized.

 

The roads in and out of Soweto were one big traffic jam. We didn't know why at the time, but we found out later that Winnie Mandela, Madiba's ex-wife, was speaking in a major rally at their former home
property in Soweto to mark the occasion.

Not only was Saturday a long day, especially with no hot water, but Sunday proved to be almost as long, as we got home after 4:00, eight hours after we left home. Choir practice lasted from 12:30 to 3:30, as Sister Redebe insisted on practicing until most of the choir members got out of the branch council meeting to join us. They never did. Will the choir be ready for next week's branch conference?






Martha's talk and Bob's lesson Sunday both were very well received with many compliments. Martha spoke about becoming as a little child, and she shared life experiences that she learned from three of the greatest teachers she has known, her three children.

We love and miss our family so much, but we love being here with our South African family, especially the wonderful Protea Glen Branch and Glen Ridge Ward members in Soweto.

Wellness Week and Doppio Zero

Mascots for the yellow, orange, blue and green teams at the Wellness Week Fun Run on Friday

Besides being quite a busy work week for both of us in our assignments, this week was Wellness Week, and the area offices had things going on every day for employees and senior missionary couples including Men’s Wellness and Women’s Wellness sessions by Elder and Sister Barton, a stress management workshop with Elder Peterson, checks of blood pressure, cholesterol levels, vision and hearing tests, etc. and to cap things off, a "Fun Run" relay race on Friday with different department teams competing to see which teams and individuals could walk/run the most kilometers on a marked and measured course, from the temple gates to the Area office building and back, in one hour. All employees were given the afternoon off to dress up in team colors and participate in this “load shedding” event.

If you can’t find us in the photos, it’s because they were taken on Friday afternoon, and we serve in the temple Friday afternoons. There was also a prize for best mascot, but we weren’t there to find out any of the winners. We would have been on the orange team (the "Tiggers") with the Area Presidency and staff, but all the Area Presidency were out of town.

Although we weren’t in the "Fun Run," we have made a conscious effort over the past little while to do more daily exercising, including going for a brisk walk every afternoon around our Killarney neighborhood for a half hour or more. The weather has been beautiful, temperatures in the 70’s and dry. And the days are now getting longer. This is really our kind of winter weather!

Also on Friday, a young 23-year old stake president’s daughter from Cape Town, Kari Kruger, who Martha met at our open house at the Cape Town Mission Home in January, and who we saw again at a sealing here in February, was in town for the weekend, staying with President and Sister Dunn in the Johannesburg Mission Home. She says Sister Dunn and Sister Egan are her two “most favorite people” (She calls them Auntie Linda and Auntie Martha) and she wanted to do a temple session with us and the Dunns and have dinner out with the four of us. We were the officiators of the 4:00 endowment session that she and the Dunns were patrons for, then we went out for a nice dinner at Doppio Zero in Greenside, a fun restaurant the Dunns love that we hadn’t been to before. It was a very fun evening.

Kari Kruger, 2nd from right, with Auntie Linda Dunn and Auntie Martha Egan

We can’t believe how much we are enjoying our mission and how much we love living in Johannesburg as newlyweds in our one-bedroom rental apartment.

Welcoming New Mission Presidents and the 4th of July in Africa

With Joseph Mofokeng, returned Cape Town missionary from 2006, in front of the Johannesburg Temple

This week consisted of more reunions with SACTM missionaries, welcoming new mission presidents to Africa, and an American 4^th of July barbecue in Africa! 

On Monday, Bob was greeted with a call from Joseph Mofokeng, one of his beloved Cape Town missionaries who wanted to get together with us and talk. We scheduled a lunch meeting for noon on Tuesday, and as we entered the reception area to meet him, another of Bob’s Cape Town missionaries, Juan van der Merwe happened to be standing there getting a drink of water. He asked, “So are you on a mission here again?” and was very surprised that Bob called him by name, since he only served under Bob two months, back in 2005. He’s working for his dad’s panel beating (body shop) company that has a contract with the Area to repair damage to church-owned vehicles. 

With Joseph Mofokeng and Juan van der Merwe, Cape Town RMs

We had a great visit with Joseph over lunch at Mike’s Kitchen, as he poured out his heart to us about his divorce and subsequent struggles. But his testimony is intact, and he really needed someone to talk with. Martha’s life experiences were particularly helpful to him. What a great man he is, and we felt he left very rejuvenated and committed.

New mission presidents start “on or about July 1,” and we have eight new mission presidents in Africa, four in each area. The area presidency here in Johannesburg invited us to join them to greet the new presidents Tuesday, 30 June, at the airport, as the four couples all flew in together on the same itinerary from Salt Lake City, spent the night at the Airport Intercontinental Hotel, and flew to their missions in the following morning, 1 July.  It turned out to be a most interesting experience.

The couples are the Footes from Reno, Nevada on their way to Madagascar, the Baehrels from France to the DR Congo, the Kochs from Brazil to Mozambique, and the Mkhabelas from South Africa to Zimbabwe. 

Thankfully, the couples all arrived safely, and even landed a little early. But the “fun” was with the luggage.  The first word was that their luggage had been lost.  Happily it wasn’t lost in the sense of being sent to China or somewhere by mistake.  Two of the couples’ bags had been checked by some well-meaning ticket agent in SLC to their “final” destinations.  So the luggage was not there at the baggage claim, but rather off somewhere in a holding place for the flights to Swaziland or Harare.  The couples wanted their luggage to do some adjusting and to have a change of clothes, so they requested the bags be retrieved.  That ended up taking several hours. 

Meanwhile, our team was there patiently waiting and staying true to the faith.  We arrived at 4:30, the same time the Cooks and Ellises arrived, and stayed diligent until the very end.  After a wait of an hour and a half, one couple made it out where we could greet them.  The Footes from Nevada, on their way to Madagascar, were first at about 6:00 pm, and made it out in time to be greeted by the Cooks before they had to go board their flight home for their annual July leave.  They explained the luggage situation to us. The Footes have their son with them, a recently returned missionary from the France Lyon Mission.  Elder Ellis remarked, “Think of it:  your own baggage porter and French tutor!”  They were safely delivered to the hotel by Francois Nortje of the area staff for a blissful sleep. Francois had checked everyone in ahead of time and had their room keys in hand. 

Next, President Mkhabela (South African going to Zimbabwe) came out with their hand luggage to greet us, but also to meet up with their three great kids who had brought bags from home for final packing for Zimbabwe.  Wonderful Sister Mkhabela opted to stay back with the Baehrels and Kochs to help them through a difficult situation in a strange land.  Francois was able to return from helping the Footes in time to escort Elder Mkhabela to the hotel. 

The whole Mkhabela Family at the Johannesburg Airport



Elder Jackson Mkhabela and Sister Mkhabela
on their way to the Zimbabwe Harare Mission

Then the wait continued, for two more hours!  One thing we did to productively pass the time was to have a rousing game of new mission president family trivia, emceed by Elder Ellis!  These are four great families, and we reviewed and learned interesting things about them.  We found commonalities and differences among them.  The Egans and Sister Ellis were clearly the winners, and the Frischknechts were our correlation team on the sidelines to make sure we stayed in bounds.

The finale happened at about 8:00 pm (yes, that would be 3½ hours of waiting for us, and 3½ more hours of a stressful struggle for our new MP couples who had just finished a 17-hour flight, after a five day fire hose training in Provo)!

But the good news is that Sister Mkhabela, the Baehrels and the Kochs came out WITH THEIR BAGS.  The greeting was great, and we all escorted them to the hotel for some much needed rest.

Unfortunately, we got all the way to the parking garage to find out our parking ticket didn’t work in the machine, so we had to go back down four levels of escalators and stand in line to pay for the parking, extending our airport wait to four hours. We arrived back at our flat a half-hour later at 9:30.

Three other new African mission presidents arrived in Accra, Ghana at the same time, the Cosgraves from Highland, Utah to the Ghana Kumasi Mission, the Carlsons from Midway, Utah to the Liberia Monrovia Mission, and the Egukos from Lagos, Nigeria to the Nigeria Calabar Mission. A fourth couple, the Clawsons from Fairport, New York will arrive later to take over the Sierra Leone Freetown Mission, once the country is declared ebola-free. Which reminds me, Liberia was declared ebola-free once 42 days has passed since the last case, only for three more cases to come up this past week! So the Carlsons will be delayed for some time in Ghana.

Also this week, the senior couple missionaries planned a real American 4^th of July barbecue with American hamburgers and hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob, baked beans, apple pie, chocolate cake and patriotic singing. It was held in the Dukes Court courtyard, and there were 46 of us there, including a couple of South African couples, who seemed to enjoy the food but didn’t know the words to any of the songs. It was a beautiful day, temperature in the 70’s, and a fun, nostalgic time, bringing out emotions and a brief longing for home and family. 

Celebrating the 4th of July with other senior missionary couples at Dukes Court

The lawn extending from the courtyard at Dukes Court

 On Sunday, we had another great block of meetings with wonderful heart-felt, sincere testimonies, another very well-received gospel doctrine message taught by Bob and great Priesthood and Relief Society lessons. And Elder Walter Chatora of the Seventy, a Zimbabwean, addressed, inspired and entertained us with his life story at our monthly zone meeting in the Dukes Court lobby, with 25 senior couples in attendance. He came a long way from being born the 12^th child of a family in abject poverty in Zimbabwe to becoming a successful school teacher, businessman and now temple recorder and Area Seventy. 

The Mnguni family in the Protea Glen Branch. He is the
Elders Quorum President and she is 9 months pregnant
 (due n June) with 5 kids (only 3 shown) on Sunday, ready
for sacrament meeting to begin. She bore her testimony
and he taught the Priesthood lesson on home teaching.

We had to hold back some emotions this 4^th of July weekend as we followed the holiday outings enjoyed by our children and grandchildren at home, and sang our favorite patriotic songs while as far away geographically from America as possible, but we love our mission and are so happy to be companions here in Africa.