2. Elders at Care Center with Sister Kenny
3. Baptism Font
4. Elder Lebala sign
5. Elder Lebala & Siphokazi
6. Elders at the top of the Big Pineapple on P=Day
7. Elders & Pres O having fun on P-Day
8. Elephant at Game Park
9. Giraffe with President O' Dell & Elders
February 15, 2011
Dear Family Friends & Loved Ones
Greetings again from South Africa. It is past time again to write our letter home. My how the time is flying for us. Sometimes it is hard to find time to do all we need to do and want to do.
Well on Monday for P Day (2 weeks ago) I took all our Elders golfing. They really enjoy it and they have really given us a great rate. It is R58 for 13 holes which is only about $ 8.00. I wish we could do that at home. On Tuesday we got transfer news. We will be keeping Elder Bangerter & Lebala, We are getting Elder Austin as our District Leader who is fro Texas. He has been an AP (assistant to the President). We are also getting and Elder from Madagascar so it will be a long name ad one hard to pronounce. Sister O & I took our Elders to Fish River Sun for breakfast. Elder Moorcroft has finished his mission and is going home to Jo Burg and is going to engineering school. Elder Rigby is going to Capetown South. We understand that Elder Austin is a very by the book person so our elders won't be having as much fun but the missionary work will or should go great. We really like our new Elders we have met Elder Austin before. The other new elder is Elder Rakoloarivelo. We will call him Elder Rako. We took Elder Bangerter & Rako to Kenton-on-the sea to visit a senior citizen community and had lunch there. A sister in our branch fixes meals for them each day. We then visited and older couple from our branch in Alexandria, the Barris's about 50 K away. Then back to Kenton to teach a couple we met at our Spur restaurant. Their son is the owner. He used to be the heavyweight wrestling champion of SA for many years. He is 71 and they really seems like a nice couple. Then back to Port Alfred as we had a number of visits we needed to make.
We had District Meeting at 10:30 on Friday and then we had our audit at 2:00pm. I needed then to meet with Brother Jubber from East London to go over some details on our church that we are trying to get finished. We then took elder Plehn & his wife out to eat Chinese food. Elder Plehn is the one that did the audit.
We got the go ahead yesterday to finish our church building. We are supposed to get 3 AC units, outside security gates, folding dividers for classrooms, bookcases, filing cabinets, door for my office & clerks office, raised floor in front, microphone, new stove in kitchen & etc. This will be exciting to have completed. Plus replace a few broken windows & gravel the front to help keep our building cleaner. I have been really busy on getting bids on this as I have to have 2 bids on everything.
Sister O & I then had to go grocery shopping for a dinner party at the church for our YW & YM to present and work on the Duty to God program and the YW Personal progress.
Sunday was and always is a GREAT day at church. It was fast & testimony meeting, I always really enjoy this as my testimony is strengthened as I listen to members bear their testimonies. We also had a baby blessing. Her name is Caroline Siambwezele. She is really a cute baby. She gave her father the cutest smile during the blessing.
On Monday we met 3 other senior couples ( La Prays, Taylors, & Robinson's and their son & his wife) at the Addo Elephant Park. We didn't see as much as usual but being with the other senior couples is always fun. We then went to Schotia Game Reserve and had a great time. We really saw a lot and I think I got some great videos of lions & rhinos. We didn't get home until well after 10pm We then realized that Sister O left her camera in the safari vehicle and that the spare battery and a couple of full memory cards form my movie camera came out of my case while in the vehicle. So Tuesday morning we were back on the road (105 K) to get them but we were really glad to get them back.
We had a couple of teaching appointments with the Elders on Wednesday & Thursday. The people seem to really be wonderful and golden contacts. The man has a daughter in England and she wants missionaries to contact her so I arranged for that. I spent more time on Wednesday getting more bids for our church building.
We got a small above ground pool to use as a baptismal font. It was a lot of work putting it together. We have a baptism tomorrow (Saturday) and we will be using it. Since Elder Lebala will be the first Elder to use it to baptize someone. I named it the Lebala's Font. He was quite excited about that . Sister O made 7 doz. Cookies and the R.S. Sisters had a work meeting before the Baptism and made 2 chocolate cakes that we enjoyed eating after the baptism. We really had a large turn out at the baptism. The Sister being baptized was Siphokazi Dayile. A great lady with a strong testimony and was so excited wanting to be baptized.
On Thursday I met with our RS president for about and hour. Then later that afternoon Elder Taylor and his wife came from PE for a 4:30 meeting and training of our seminary teacher by the name of Patience Mgadi. We then visited the Cockbain's and then we all went and had chinese food. The La Prays came by about 9:15pm from East London area as they were doing a PEF program. We brought home some chinese food for them. They all stayed the night with us and then the Taylor's left to go home about 7am while we went to play golf with the La Prays. It was really quite sad. I lost my first game of golf since coming to Africa. "Oh well"
We went on a teaching appointment Friday night and it was great. It is so good to see people accept the gospel of Jesus Christ into their lives. Sometimes it is hard to understand people. They supposedly believe in God & the Bible but still most people don't follow the doctrine of Christ as taught in the Bible. So many have followed a simple way because of the convenience or that it is easier. So many people believe in the commandments of God but only choose to obey those that they want or easier for them. That is why it is so exciting to see people accept His Gospel and keep His commandments.
We had a really great Sacrament meeting Sunday (Feb.13) I confirmed our new member and then asked her to bear her testimony. It was so good and powerful. Durning Priesthood meeting we conferred the Aaronic Priesthood upon Brother Hola and ordained him to the office of a priest. I asked Elder Bangerter to do this and he did a good job with a wonderful blessing. We have a number of great investigators and in time I think we will have a number of baptisms.
For P-Day today (Feb 14) we took the Elders to a game park just outside of town and we think they really enjoyed it. There is one giraffe that is really tame. You can walk right up to it and pet it. He is really a big giraffe. We braii'd some steak on sunday night for the Elders and had left overs for lunch before we went to the game reserve.
Well it is time to close. We love you all so much and can't wait to see you. We haven't heard any thing more on our departure plans, but we will let you know as soon as we know. "We hope everyone had a Wonderful Valentines Day"
Love President & Sister O'Dell
Mom & Dad
Linda & Woody
Grandma & Grandpa
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