Lessons in History

With our Area Office quiet for the New Years holiday, we began 2010 learning about some of South Africa's history. With Senior Missionaries we visited the Nelson Mandela home in Soweto and visited the Apartheid Museum. We stopped at Pozzy's for lunch which is a house of the same time period as the Mandela home in a township neighborhood.
Near Pretoria we strolled around the Voortrekker's Monument which commemorates 1850-60's pioneering movements into this area. On a nearby hillside we walked through restored 1897 Fort Schanskop from the Anglo Boer War.














Saturday, 9 January we visited nearby botanical gardens which included beautifully landscaped native plants, wooded streams, large grass areas, dry veld shrubbery and a waterfall down a mountain cliff with eagle nests built against the high rock face. We even saw an awesome tortoise on a hillside.

This is a sweet investigator I met Sunday, 3 January who was attending church for the first time with her two LDS granddaughters.

We were given a second assignment by the Area Presidency this week regarding missionaries in Democratic Republic of the Congo. We interviewed three people here, telephoned three people there and worked in our office on our report until 7 p.m. Thursday. Our completed report was submitted on Friday. This incident engaged our interest and our week went quickly.

Today I assisted in Primary in an African ward in Soweto. During meetings in many wards the members move easily between speaking in English and native languages of Tswana, Zulu and Xhosa. It is a delight meeting these members of great faith and insight into gospel principles.