Life Gets Busier - Hurrah!

Things have really picked up for us now that people are back from the villages after the holidays. The first of the seminary and institute classes have started. We have been busy distributing cirriculum materials and setting up teachers and classes on the computer. We will have training this week for seminary and institute teachers.

We drove five hours to Johannesburg for Church Education System meetings and training. We took the fun shot of the donkey cart and driver on the way. These carts are fairly common in the countryside. We left early enough in the morning that we had time in the CES office to ask a lot of questions and pick up materials. We went out to dinner with several missionary couples which was really fun and stayed over night with a missionary couple there.  A heavy thundersorm came through while we were eating dinner and the rain came down hard enough to run under the doors and across the floor. Several diners had to move to keep from having wet feet. The next day was full of meetings and training.
We hoped to leave early enough in the afternoon to get home before dark but got away late enough that we drove the last hour in the dark. Missionaries driving at night is discouraged because of animals, potholes, and wreckless drivers. The roads between Gaborone and Johannesburg are generally pretty good but there are a couple of sections full of very large pot holes big enough to swallow cars. You literally cannot drive around them; you have to drive slowly through them. We were glad we could drive through those sections of South Africa when it was still light.

The mission president came to Botswana for interviews. We had him and his wife and the other senior couples in Gaborone to dinner afterwards and played a church-leader game after the meal.

We attended the wedding of a couple from the Young Single Adult Ward. The wedding ceremony was in the chapel. The bishop and his counselor gave very nice talks - mostly in English but with some Tsetswana so that the family could understand. It was very nice. After the ceremony everyone retired to the Relief Society room where there was a "signing ceremony" and all the legal documents were signed. Then everyone sang traditional songs and danced. Everyone looked like they were having a fun time. Many of the women joined arms in a circle with the bride and sang in Tsetswana about the mother-in-law not having to cook any more for her son because the bride would do that.

We have been getting mangos that dropped off our neighors tree into our yard for about a week now. They are small but we pick several up every morning. We call them our manna from heaven. Our trees have now started to produce and give us big mangos. They are really delicious right off the tree.