More Piano Students, 3 New Apostles, Goodbye to Dear Friends and Hello to High-speed Fibre Optic Internet

Martha with three of her piano students after church on Sunday in Protea Glen, Soweto. Sipho Redebe is at the
keyboard and his buddy, Thato Mnguni, and his grandmother, Alicia Redebe, look on in awe.  Martha feels
like this entirely unexpected aspect of her mission may be the biggest lasting contribution she will make
toward building the Kingdom in Africa. Both boys in their second lesson are poised to pass right by
Sister Redebe, who has been taking lessons for six months now!

We thoroughly enjoyed watching Elder Scott's funeral and four sessions of a wonderful General Conference this past week from the comfort of our flat, including being able to sustain three new apostles of the Lord. Elder Dale G. Renlund, one of the new apostles, is the past Area President of the Africa Southeast Area here in Johannesburg, just 15 months ago, and everyone here knows him and loves him. We had dinner with him and his wife a year ago, in preparation for our mission here. We have BYU TV in our flat. So we watched the apostles' funerals live, and we watched both conference sessions live on Saturday and Sunday (at 6 pm and 10 pm). 

Our branch watches rebroadcasts of all the conferences sessions a week later, next weekend. They will rebroadcast the two Saturday sessions next Saturday at 9:00 and 11:30 am. Then next Sunday the men will watch the Priesthood rebroadcast at 9:00 am while the women watch the rebroadcast of the general women's meeting. The Sunday sessions will be rebroadcast next Sunday at 11:30 and 2:00.  So yesterday for us was our regular Fast Sunday, Bob taught the gospel doctrine class and Martha taught piano lessons after the block.

We joined 6 other couples for an early Thanksgiving turkey dinner with all the trimmings prior to the Saturday conference sessions. Martha baked the pies - a derby pie (pecan chocolate chip) and a Dutch Apple pie that proved very delicious, as did the entire American-style meal. 

 

Our closest friends here, Dr. Bruce and Sister Connie Barton (Area Medical Advisors), still in their fifties, had to go home from their mission a month early because of his health. He has a nodule on his lung that needs to be surgically removed and, if it proves malignant, he may lose the lower right lobe of his lung. Our prayers are with the Bartons.




Bruce & Connie Barton say their goodbyes to the senior
missionary couples the night before leaving for home

 

Here is a photo of one of Bob's Cape Town missionaries, Sfiso Maramela

who stopped by with his son Njubulo to thank Bob for a Priesthood blessing

he was given the week before. Quite a father to son resemblance!

Martha flanked by co-workers Jesse (right) and Cecil (left)-

Jesse Arumugam is the manager of physical facilities for all the area offices (3 locations) and missionary housing (delegated to Martha) and is Martha's contact and supervisor in her landlady duties. Cecil Wood is the full-time handyman who Jesse and Martha use to maintain the flats and everything in them. An interesting note: At home in the U.S., both these brethren would be considered "black" (African American), but here in Africa neither is considered black. Cecil is coloured (mixed race), a separate ethnic group here, and Jesse is considered Asian (Indian), also a separate ethnic group here. 

 

Much of this week, including all-day Thursday and Friday was spent at Dukes Court because of the installation of high-speed fibre optic Internet service into all our senior missionary flats. Only 9 of the 17 were installed on schedule, as the work was more complex and took longer than planned. And the signal has still not been received yet by those flats that are installed, so that work will continue, and we have to be available to let the installers into the flats. Once up and running, the 20 mbps service with a 300 GB data rate promises to be at least 5 times faster than our current service with 6 times the data rate for 20% less cost!

And, in the world of sports, the South African national rugby team, the Springboks, have rebounded from suffering "the biggest upset in Rugby history," a 34-32 loss to Japan in the opening game, to two straight blowout victories, and the only obstacle to making the quarterfinals of the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England is a win over the winless USA ruggers this Wednesday. Who do we cheer for?