Mission President's Seminar

We just returned from the Westcliff Hotel in Joburg where we attended a Mission President's Seminar with the Presidents and their wives from the DR Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The Area Presidency and their wives hosted this conference. It was fun to meet all of the couples who preside over these different missions. We now know who we are sending all of these missionaries to. We were so impressed with their dedication and commitment to their missions and their ability to serve with a cheerful heart and press forward inspite of incredible challenges with the culture, environment, ruralness of the areas, etc. Their circumstances are definitely different than we had in LA! In Kenya, and I suppose other places as well, the missionaries wash their clothes in a bucket! We went into a nice bakery with lots of variety and tasty treats and one of the ladies was so amazed! She hadn't seen anything like it since being in America.

While we were at the conference, the mission president from Cape Town got a phone call that one of his missionaries had drowned. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and a rogue wave washed him out to sea. The missionaries with him were able to get him out, but could not revive him. It was very, very sad and our hearts were heavy all week as we thought of the President and his wife, the missionaries parents, and those who were with him and who served with him.

We spent two days in meetings and then two days having some fun around the area. They took us to the Plumari Big Five Game Reserve, and the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens. We had already been to the gardens so I didn't include pictures from there because I have already published many of those on an earlier post.

On Friday many of the women went shopping at an artisan's home where he does African crafts such as pillows, throws, purses, jewelry, etc. He puts these in shops at the airport and in different venues around the city for tourists to buy. He charges two or three times more in the shops so it was fun to have the opportunity to buy at wholesale prices. (The area presidency wives have an "in" with this guy. He doesn't normally do this.) I bought a few pillows for our apartment. It doesn't have an "African Touch" so I decided to start changing it a bit.