September 24-30, 2012 - Finding a little California in SA

A beautiful rainbow in the mist of the rain.

Hi everyone,   We are trying to have spring here in South Africa. We have beautiful California weather temperatures in the high 70's, the in plunges to the 50's.  Yesterday we say a complete rainbow it was awesome. My photos couldn't quite get the whole thing.

 
Elder Richins and I had a cancellation to day so we decided to go for a walk.  On the walk I saw some beautiful golden poppies and they reminded me so much of home.  Going up the Grapevine to Bakersfield especially.

It has been an interesting week.  We had some sadness here in George, one of our missionaries had to go home, really in chose to go home to take care of some things.  We hope he will be back.  That has made our 3 sets of Elders in to 1 companionship of 3.  They have a lot of extra work to do because they must take care of Thembuletu and the George area. At the moment I can't remember if I told you that 1 set of missionary's flat was broken into and they stole all their electronics, cameras, and suit coats, watches and sunglasses.  They didn't care about anything except the camera that had all his photos for his mission.  Now that is said, you can't replace them.

Monday we had the opportunity to go golfing and this rake caught my eye.
It looks as ancient as the golf course.

Well lets not dwell on the sadness, lets look at all the good stuff that we had done.  Golf was a good thing, it got us out and about.  Elder Richins was able to buy about 20 balls @ about 1 Rand each which is about .14 each.  I guy in the field next to the golf course came over and Elder Richins was going to offer him 20 Rand for 6 balls and they said here and gave him the 20 balls for 22 Rand.  Good balls that people have hit to far, including yours truly, Elder Richins.
We also were able to to go Mossel Bay and have a great Family Home Evening with Eunice Alexander.  Her daughter who is 8 is precocious and outgoing.  We told them to invite whomever they wanted, just let us know.  We had the lesson with 4 extra children and 4 extra adults.  When we got to the game Don't Eat Nephi each time someone had a turn we seemed we added a couple more children.  We ran out of Smarties (M&M).  It was a fun and successful eveningl  Sister Alexander even fixed us dinner, a yummy rice dish and a meat patty of some sort.  It was good.

Don't Eat Nephi

Sister Pangel and Sister Moyo

Tuesday was a hard day.  We didn't go to Mossel Bay because of the 3 elders.  I went visiting teaching with Sister Moyo to help her get started.

Sister Day and the missionaries.  She invited us all over for tea, sandwiches and cake, yum!

Now this is an interesting story.  Sister Day has been a member of the church in George the longest.  It has been about 35 years.  She and her husband raised their children on a farm here and then she moved to town.  Their were 4 ladies that belonged to the church and the would get together each Sunday praying that some missionaries or priesthood would be coming through so they could administer the sacrament.  They would have an opening song and prayer and if no one came they would have Relief Society.  She remembers that often their prayers where answered.  She is in her 80's and still comes every Sunday to plays the piano for sacrament meeting.  She has arthritis in her legs but not in her fingers.

I am out of GB for photos on this website.  I will have to figure out how to either delete some of the old blogs or something.  Any help will be appreciated.

It blog won't be very interesting without pictures I'm sure.

Any help will be appreciated.  You know me and technology.

We hope everyone has a wonderful week.
Love, Elder and Sister Richins

PS Is there any way I can save my old blogs and start fresh?