May 26, 2012

 Today Janet doesn’t really have to leave the flat at all.  She will be working more on the talk I have asked her to give tomorrow in Sacrament meeting. She also plans on baking some cookies, rolls, bread and get some primary pictures and sharing time stuff together for the primary president.  I will be helping at the church on a service project spreading gravel around the front of the building and then off to a members home to put gravel in their walk area. It seems that the theory about water running down hill is alive and well in South Africa. The people who live higher up on the hill have it better than those lower down. All the wash water, outhouse drainage and anything else liquid they have ends up in the neighbors place downhill which is exactly where this member lives. The only thing we could do about it was to bring in some fill. Back home you would order up a load, have it delivered and then just spread it out. Not so here. First of all, you can only get to his place by walking and second if you had a load of gravel delivered near his home out on the road, it would be gone as fast as it hit the ground. What we did was have it delivered to the church and then loaded it into buckets, putting them in the boot of ours and the full time Elders car (nobody in the branch owns a bakkie or pick up). We then drove as close as we could, parked and packed it in by hand to his house, then back for another load till it was all hauled. They save a lot of petrol by doing things this way but I can’t say that it’s the way I prefer to do it.

At 5pm I meet with my councilors in our first presidency meeting to work on training them in some of their responsibilities.  They are so new in the church and very unsure of what they are to do.