1 June 2020, Monday
President Leavitt and I celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary (our 4th wedding anniversary celebrated in South Africa) by picking up Elder Paongo from Milpark Hospital in the afternoon and getting him re-settled in the Bungalow behind the mission home. He will have some weeks of recovery, but his surgery went well on Wednesday evening.
At 5 pm, some elders came by the mission home to pick up something one of them needed.
Elder Kunjuzwa and Elder Rakotonindrina, our mission assistants, also came. After eating dinner, we worked on editing the document outlining the schedule for cleaning 60 flats--closing 32 of those (bringing all the contents for the future) and retaining 28 ready for occupancy. President Leavitt has spent quite some time organizing a huge task. Elder Erickson sent letters to the owners to notify of flat closures and arranged for inspection and key return. It will take until 26 June to accomplish. Most missionaries will be on either a move or a clean team that will work two days a week--Tuesday/Thursday or Wednesday/Friday.
(The missionaries became so good at their tasks and COVID-19 was starting to escalate that we ended up condensing the schedule and finished everything on 19 June 2020!)
2 June 2020
We went to the office. President Leavitt went with the first team to clean three flats, two of which we closed. I worked in the office and then took some missionaries grocery shopping and spent two hours training two missionaries on the digital area book app.
9 am photo--getting ready to go.
That night, President Leavitt redid the schedule for the next day to double the work because the missionaries were so effective.
3 June 2020
The missionaries closed 5 flats of 8 they cleaned and brought in all the contents of the closed flats for the sisters and an elder team to sort, fix, clean and store or throw away or give away. The sister teams did a wonderful job of sorting through everything brought in, throwing out, putting some things to be fixed by Elder Dollman and Elder Rattana, cleaning all the appliances and fixtures, washing all the linens and clothing and baptismal clothing and taking it all to the appropriate places for disposal or storage.
I wish I had taken more close up photos of the sisters working in their respective jobs. Many photos which include them that I took to document the progress cannot be published. And I was so busy that most of the time I didn't think about stopping and taking photos--especially as I was working at different locations with the sister missionaries and in the mornings when we got started after their breakfast.
I helped organize activities in the office complex. At lunch, I took a sister missionary to get a wisdom tooth extracted that had recently erupted. To get into the oral surgeon building, sanitize and be wearing a mask. Take a pencil out of the clean pencil box, answer 10 questions, one being your current temperature which is taken from your forehead, put the pencil in the dirty pencil box, put a sticker on your clothes, sanitize hands again and go up the stairs to the office. Sign all the papers sitting in spaced chairs. hand in and in a few minutes, she was called back. I went to the car to eat my lunch. I came back 30 minutes later--skipping some of the process of entering the building because of my sticker--and collected my sister missionary. We stopped at the store to buy some baby food, juice, etc., and I took her back to the MTC. I went to the pharmacy to get her prescriptions and returned to the MTC to deliver the. I went back to guiding and helping the other missionaries in their work.
The cleaning and moving missionaries returned with their loads and we unloaded everything up the stairs into the cultural hall--except the big items which go to storage in different places.
4 June 2020, Thursday
8 am--getting ready to leave. We hired one closed truck and driver. We were glad we had bakkies (pick-up trucks) to handle tall items.
4 pm upon return:
I take home a lot of the dirty mop heads and cleaning sponges and cloths and wash them and lay them out to dry for the next day.
5 June 2020:
8 June 2020, Monday, Sister Nkabinde arrived at the MTC at 6 pm. President Leavitt and I met her. Sister Nkabinde served in Uganda for about four months before being sent to South Africa where she has been at home just before lockdown until now. We look forward to serving with her. President did her interview on Tuesday after sending off the cleaning/moving teams.
9 June 2020, Tuesday, 8:24 am:
Getting organized and ready to leave.
The area office sent us enough cloth masks for each missionary to have three and a lot of hand sanitizer. We won't run out.
5:16 pm:
Besides cleaning and closing flats today, some elders picked up a load of Mealie Maize bags from our Church to distribute to our wards and branches in Florida area and our four districts throughout our mission. They were all delivered as the elders traveled out to clean and close flats.
10 June 2020:
11 June 2020, 8:32 am:
2:32 pm:
12 June 2020, 8:24 am:
A much colder morning! We met inside for the teams to organize and receive the car and flat keys and instructions before leaving to the flats.
14 June 2020, 5:13 pm:
We meet every Sunday at 5-6 pm with Elder and Sister Pitcher--our only couple physically here in our mission. They live in Ezulwini, Eswatini--a country next to South Africa and part of our mission. Since the border is closed, we heavily rely on them. Elder Pitcher is President Leavitt's 2nd counselor in his mission presidency. President Sehloho is his first counselor who lives in Joburg.
14 June 2020, Sunday Zoom Gathering
Mike Leavitt, former Utah governor and USA Health and Human Services Director of President Bush's cabinet and author of a USA pandemic plan. Speaks to organizations throughout the world on Zoom to help them understand and develop COVID-19 pandemic strategies. He gave us a presentation that helps us understand the nature and timeline of the pandemic and how to live with and be safe from the COVID-19 virus. President Palmer also joined us and gave us a wonderful message.
Now that many working sectors are allowed under Level 3 to return to work, the COVID-19 infected persons number is rising as expected. It will continue to rise and peak in July-August. We are encouraged to be safe as we continue to do missionary work from our flats using technology on our mobile devices.
15 June 2020, Monday, MTC
We ate with the sisters and met with them after until about 8:30.
16 June 2020, Tuesday morning:
Three teams are going out across provincial borders in three different directions. They will stay overnight and return Wednesday or Thursday. They have documents from President Leavitt to pass through the border. We only had a problem getting across one and finally realized they had to take a different way home through another provincial border crossing and whisked through.
Even though this photo was taken on 16 June, this activity of washing all the dishes that came in (and laundry) happened every day the teams were working.
...And continual action in the cultural hall--loads coming in, cleaned, fixed, thrown away or stored for future use in the flats as they reopen.
16 June 2020
Elder Tsibogo joined us again. He was with us for three weeks at the beginning of his mission waiting for his visa. He left us 10 July 2019 to serve in Mozambique. Now at Level 3, after being at home since the lockdown in March, he can serve with us.
 |
| Elder Van Thiel Berghuys, Elder Tsibogo, Elder Kani Elder VT Berghuys (10 June) and Elder Kani (22 July) will fly home to Port Elizabeth in July--no planes yet. |
18 June 2020--COVID-19 numbers in Eswatini.
And in South Africa.
19 June 2020, Friday
Our last day to work on the flats' project. We finished a week early--so it took us three weeks, working four days per week. We cleaned 60 flats and closed 32 of those flats with the rest ready to be occupied in the future.
Pretty much cleaned up--except for Elder Rattana's fix-it pile. Pizza time in the late afternoon 18 and 19 June 2020. All done!
We got home and ate dinner at the mission home at 7 pm with Elder Paongo and our assistants, Elder Kunjuzwa and Elder Rakotonindrina. Elder Paongo went to the bungalow and we worked on the MLC agenda for tomorrow and a teaching COVID-19 PowerPoint the missionaries can use to help others they teach, taken and modified from the PowerPoint Mike Leavitt presented to us last Sunday. When we are finished, we will convert it to a PDF document and our missionaries can share it with others via WhatsApp.
It was a frosty morning--first time in three years we have seen this on the grass here!
No comments:
Post a Comment