Happenings and Photos of the Week 2 - 8 March 2009

Our entry for this past week is a bit late because we returned late Sunday from Swaziland and Monday was a marathon at the computer! We are somewhat reluctant to share this weeks photos- a little afraid we will loose all sympathy for poor Elder and Sister Mickelsen serving a hardship mission in Africa. This past weekend was spent in Swaziland and this is dinner Saturday evening at the Summerfield Botanical Gardens (http://www.summerfieldresort.com/index.html). The couple on the left are Elder and Sister Pier from Provo, arriving in the mission the last day of January. They were home from a mission to Indonesia only a few months, put their paperwork in and received a call to South Africa. They are in Swaziland until April, when they will replace one of two couples going home elsewhere in the mission. The couple in the back are Elder and Sister Wilson from Parowan who support the four branches of the Swaziland District. He is a retired Institute teacher and coordinator. Their boarding has an extra bedroom, so we stayed with them this weekend.

We took this picture when we first arrived and before it got too dark. This shows one end of the restaurant.

This is a picture looking out from where we are eating. Thought it made a nice evening shot.

This is looking back at the dinner group. We don't know if we have ever eaten at a restaurant with better atmosphere. For the budget minded, an excellent kingklip (a very good white fish) with pesto dinner along with a Waldorf salad and dessert (we decided to splurge) ran about $13.

The weekend in Swaziland was not all play, we had great success meeting with 10 PEF students most of the day Saturday and Sunday morning before heading home. Signed loan paper work for one student, finalized the documentation for loan payment with another, reviewed application worksheets with five others and now they can be entered on line. We helped the others work on various stages of the application process. These are wonderful young people and an inspiration to work with. There were two differences from our normal sacrament meetings-the opening and closing prayers were in Swati and the announcements were given at the beginning in English and repeated in Swati at the conclusion of the meeting. Many times transport doesn't get people to church on time, the reason we are guessing for the repeat of announcements. The rest of the week before heading for Swaziland also kept us very busy. Thursday morning Arlo was on the computer at 3 am to print our new approved loan documents, before the church CES/PEF websites were going down for maintenance. Even though it is night in Salt Lake City, the down time is our working hours here in Durban. Some mornings we wake up, not sure our day will be full, but it always is! It seems we add new students to our working list everyday, and we are so grateful to be a part of this work. Stay Well!!!

Love,
Elder (Dad, Papa, Arlo) and Sister (Mom, Grandma, Sandy) Mickelsen