Dear Family and Friends from South Africa Mission Dec. 11, 2011,
We have had a very busy week this week. Monday on p day we cleaned, did the laundry, and had to grocery shop for the Zone Conference meeting. Tuesday we cooked half the day. I broke the green beans---five bags for the lunch. Elder Hudson cooked onions, bacon for the green beans. He also made Waldorf salad. I think that was four bags of apples. We left here at 2pm to go to Newcastle to meet the President and Sister Von Stetten for dinner. We also had dinner with Elder and Sister Cook. He is a seventy from the States and is serving in Johannesburg in the area presidency. What an experience having dinner with him. President Von Stetten asked each of the couples to tell what we are doing as we serve here in South Africa. The couples are the Blackburn's from Swaziland, the Ward's from Newcastle and the Hudson's from Ladysmith. We got home at 10:15pm and got up at 4:30am to go back to Newcastle for the Zone Meeting that was to start at 9am. We also took the car in to have it serviced. We have to allow two hours to get to Newcastle now because they are doing construction on the road to Newcastle. We can have a 20 min wait while we wait for traffic to go through. They just have one lane of traffic. Elder Cook and his wife talked with each Elder before the meeting started. The senior couples did the lunch. A couple from Newcastle did the decorations. The tables were beautiful. I will enclose a picture of the tables. For lunch we had ham, funeral potatoes, green beans, Waldorf salad, rolls, and carrot cake for dessert. It was a wonderful lunch,
I would like to share just of few things that Elder Cook shared with us. To remind you who he is, his talk at the October General Conference was about getting on the elevator after a long day in the office and the Prophet got on the elevator and said son you shouldn't be looking down but you should look up. Before he gave his talk he was sitting behind the podium and Elder Anderson was giving his talk. He could see the teleprompter and it would give a line and then have a big blank space. He thought the prompter was not working properly. It turns out that Elder Anderson only has one line given for each paragraph of his talk. This had made Elder Cook really worried. Then he was the next to speak and he was next to Elder Holland and he put his arm around him and said things will be alright. He almost wilted completely. I am sure you remember he gave a wonderful talk and didn't look nervous at all. We also found out if you are to talk for nine minutes, that is how long you are to talk. If you go over you will get a letter saying you went over and this was wrong. They look at it this way, if every speaker takes a minute that takes the time away from the Prophet to talk to us. What a wonderful experience to be in the presence of a Seventy.
Wednesday, we left at 5:30 and got home about 8:30. Our plan was to not leave the house on Thursday. But, guess what we had to leave the house. We had to do the bank deposit for tithing. We had a few other errands to run too. Thursday night a sister showed up from Bloemfontein. That is a five hour trip. She came here to see about getting her daughter in the Ladysmith High School. We found out Ladysmith High School is a very good high school. We spent the morning running her around. We also took her to a private school in case her daughter can't get into Ladysmith High School. They told her to come on January 9th and that is when they know how many students will be returning. If they have room for her and after they check the waiting list she might get into the school. We dropped her off along the road side and she said she would get a bus back home. We went and got gas and groceries and when we came back by she was gone. She did call to let us know she got home safely.
Saturday we went to hear the Drakenburg Boys Choir. Some of the senior couples from Durban came up and they had asked if we wanted to go. They had reserved our tickets about a month ago. This was their Christmas program. Also, performing with the choir was the Ladysmith Black Mambazo. They are a living legend and world famous group. They began back in the 60's. The founder now has four sons who sing with the group. The only bad thing was they didn't sing Christmas songs. It rained on us going in and coming out. They had a tent set up with locals selling their crafts. I was able to get a beaded giraffe and lion. We also had some candy coated cashews. The picture is where we had lunch before the program.
Sunday, today we attended church here in Ladysmith. We had three baptised after the meetings. A mother and her daughter and a eight year old boy. It was really nice. The electricity had gone off during our last meeting but came back on in time for the baptism. I played the piano for the baptism. We sang Christmas songs while we waited.
We pray God will bless you all. We love you.
Sister and Elder Hudson
No comments:
Post a Comment