Family Fun Day and Feast of the Tabernacles

The Africa Southeast Area's First Annual Employee Family Fun Day at the Roodepoort Stake Center property,
next to the Joburg MTC on Saturday, 26 September. It was a beautiful sunny day and a tremendous turnout!

 

 

Our former Cape Town missionary, Werner
Heydenrych, was the chairman of the Family
Fun Day and is shown here with his family,
wife and daughter Clara




Martha with Jesse Arumagum and his beautiful daughters.
 Jesse is the physical facilities manager Martha works with.

Malvern Chitiyo let Martha hold his two-month old sleeping
daughter and came back to get her an hour later. This was the
3rd 2-month old baby Grandma Martha got to hold this week,
counting the two babies on Heritage Day Thursday. Malvern
is responsible for all the missionary vehicles in the Area.

They had a photo booth where anyone could put on props and
pose for a funny photo, as Jesse's girls are doing here.

We couldn't resist.

The Chitiyo Family

The food was a boerevors braai (hot dogs on the grill)
and potluck salads, everyone brought their favorite

There were lots of fun water games for the kids

Wayne & Tara Muller brought our dear friend Sister Bobbi Swanepoel
from Parys, about an hour southwest of Joburg. Bob knew Bobbi in
George, South Africa when he was mission president in 2005 - 2008.

Bobbi brought her best friend, 9-yr. old pug Louie

The commemoration of the annual Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles was kicked off on Sunday evening at Beit Emanuel, the Jewish temple and synagogue about three blocks from our flat on Oxford Road.

 

Rabbi Shaked of this "Progressive Jewish Synagogue," who had attended the 30th Anniversary celebration of our Johannesburg LDS Temple  at the Area Presidency's residence last week, invited the senior missionaries to participate.

 

There were about 30 senior missionaries who attended, almost as many as there were Jews present, it seemed. And we were the only ones dressed up in suits and ties. Everyone else, including the rabbi were dressed very casually.

 

There were many faiths represented - a Catholic priest was there with a youth group, a Catholic nun was there, and there were Anglicans, Dutch Reformed and other Protestants, several Hare Krishna in their robes, Hindus, and even a small group of Muslims.

 

We were handed prayer books as we entered and the men were offered yarmulkas to cover the

crown of our heads. We followed along in the prayer book, which opened from right to left and

had prayers in both Hebrew, Hebrew in Arabic letters, and in English. Some of the prayers

seemed quite familiar, as the English translation of the Torah reads much like our Old

Testament. Others were unique. Some were read in Hebrew, others recited aloud together

in English, and others were sung by the small "choir."

 

We quite liked the prayer that they use for interfaith meetings, such as this one was:

 

 

The choir was made up of seven beautiful voices, five women and two men, accompanied by their director at the electronic keyboard. Many of the tunes seemed straight out of "Fiddler on the Roof," some were slow and beautiful and others were very up-tempo and celebratory, accompanied by

serious hand-clapping.

 

After the prayer meeting, we were invited outdoors where a temporary "impermanent" tabernacle

had been constructed between the synagogue and the auditorium (more like a cultural hall with a 

stage). The "tabernacle"  representing the tabernacles which the children of Israel built during their

  40-year sojourn under Moses in the wilderness. They blessed wine and bread, which we had thought was a very Christian thing, and we had a tiny cup of wine (they had grape juice for their Mormon guests) and a torn piece of salted bread. Then we moved into the hall for the buffet dinner, which, according to the rabbi's wife, had to be vegetarian, because they don't have the facilities in the kitchen to appropriately and properly prepare kosher meats.

 

We left the crowd in the hall and ate our vegetarian "feast" with Elder and Sister Davis outdoors

in the temporary "tabernacle." This whole experience was beautiful and quite enlightening. We

left feeling that differences in religious beliefs should not divide us, they should bring us closer

together as we respect each other and each other's beliefs and enjoy our cultural differences.