A Stack of Plastic Chairs

I think a while ago, I might have said something about an institute class that we visited in downtown Joburg. The neighborhood is Hillsborough which is one of the poorest areas in the city, and other missionary couples we talk to are surprised that we work there. The apartment building was old and run down, the halls dark, the elevator tiny and was the room we entered was front room, bedroom and playroom. The class and the students, however, were amazing. The kids participated with thoughtful responses and quoted from memory not only scriptures, but church leaders. The instructor could have been transported to any institute program in the world and been considered excellent. There were about sixteen students and three plastic chairs so the kids all sat against the bed or up against the wall as the class proceeded. When my husband and I talked afterwards, he asked if we should try to get some chairs for the class, but I thought not because I didn't want them to think that what they had was in anyway lacking. That was several weeks ago, and this past week we spoke in the sacrament meeting of that ward. The teacher of that class came up to the stand before the meeting started and said, "Elder and Sister Davie, I've been praying that you would be here today. My class has added another three students and as you know there is no place for anyone to sit. I was wondering if we can get a few chairs." We assured him that we could and this week we delivered a stack of about 15 inexpensive plastic chairs. He and the young man who met us at the car as we delivered them couldn't have been more grateful if a truck from Ethan Allen had pulled up. We are just constantly being humbled by these good people who, with so little, do so much and are grateful for the smallest support.

Reports (etc.)!

It’s been a little while since I wrote a blog post and that’s because for this is the time of the month that we gather and record attendance and assignment reports. When they are finally all assembled (not an easy task) I start inputting for the 25 or so programs that we coordinate here in Johannesburg. I have also been helping with the reports for the Botswana Stake and the Botswana/Namibia mission since they presently have no coordinator in the Botswana mission. Picking up reports, making calls or sending multiple texts and emails requesting them can be challenging and sitting at a computer filling in spaces is not the most rewarding part of our mission but we recognize that it is part of the total effort to strengthen the young people of the Johannesburg mission. As I’m clicking away, I remind myself that if a seminary or institute student goes through the effort that they need to get to a class, especially here, then they deserve to have their attendance recorded and eventually be rewarded with seminary graduation or with a certificate for institute. I like a quote by Elder Henry B. Eyring when he said  “Never, never underestimate the spiritual value of doing temporal things well for those whom you serve.” That same attitude could be applied to other areas of our life—often mechanical, routine activities are necessary to accomplish meaningful goals like raising family—the big picture may be developing happy, contributing adults but part of that effort includes doing the laundry :)

South African Goes to the Polls

Today is voting day in South Africa so another holiday of course (sometime I’ll write a post about the number of public holidays in South Africa!) If it were election day in America, we would be deciding between the Democrats, the Republicans and maybe the Independents. Here people have their choice of candidates from the ANC or African National Congress; the ACDA or African Christian  Democratic Party, The APC or African People’s Convention, the AZAPO or Azanian People’s Organization; COPE or Congress of the People,  the DA or Democratic Alliance; The FF+ or Freedom Front+; the MF or Minority Front; the ID of Independent Democrats; The IFP or Inkatha Freedom Party; the PAC or Pan Africanist Congress; the SACP or South African Communist Party; the UCDP or United Christian Democratic Party or the UDM or United Democratic Movement. Those are just the parties that are represented in the South African Congress. If a voter can’t make up their mind from among those, there are another 70 or so parties that are registered and active but not yet represented in congress. We are told that the sheer number of parties is a problem because the votes are so split (you think? J) You would wonder how a decision is ever reached unless you look at the seats in congress. From the latest information I could find, the ANC or African National Congress has about 70% of the seats in congress with the other 30% being divided among all of the other 14 or so parties. The DA, which is the closest contender, has only about 16%. As you might guess, the majority party has traditionally been the black party, which would be expected since the black population far outnumbers the whites. The DA has been traditionally the white Afrikaans party, but both parties through times have been astute enough to gather members and supporters of all ethnicities, so now, at least in theory, it has become more a contest of political ideals than races. We have seen political advertisements showing people of all ethnicities. Interestingly, one of the faces looks very much like a slightly older version of Sarah Palin and I have read a commentary comparing her to Palin in other unflattering ways. 

As the parties have been vying for voters, among the tactics used have been threats and intimidation with demonstrations and even some rioting leading up to voting day. Because of that, we are having an at home day, not wanting to get in the middle of any political squabbles. Hopefully there will also be great celebrations, since this is the 20^th anniversary the end of apartheid and the beginning of democracy where of all people being able to vote in the country.

Johannesburg Botanical Garden

Today we decided to take a “P” day (preparation day) but we didn’t really prepare for anything. We just went and played for the day with some other senior couples. We went to the Johannesburg Botanical Garden, which is a big park right in the middle of the city. Since it was a weekday and not really the garden time of the year, we had the park almost to ourselves. Most of the area is quite informal and in the more formal part, the roses are almost gone. They had a few pieces of rustic art that were nice and it was fun just to walk around and enjoy the pretty autumn day (here in our part of the world J)

Johannesburg Architecture

Johannesburg is a city of contrasts, and architecture is no exception. Here are some photos of some of the shiny, the dusty, the modern, the old, and I think the most interesting to me--the once shiny and new but now old and dusty. For example, the Vodacom building must have been a state of the art technical hub at one time but has been humbled through the years to a high density apartment building with satellite dishes bristling from almost every window. I can't imagine what happens when elevators stop working for any reason as they often do in the older part of town. I would love to see a time lapse movie of the evolution of this city.

Lesedi Village

One of the places we wanted to be sure to go to here in Johannesburg is Lesedi village. It is set up as a cultural experience on the order of the BYU Cultural Center in Hawaii, but not nearly as slick or elaborate. Still it was a very nice experience where guides take you through forest area in which small villages are set up to represent each of the main five tribes including Zulu, Xhosa, Pedi, Basotho and Ndebele. They claim that families actually live permanently in each of the homesteads, but they didn’t look quite lived in enough to convince me of that. Guests could actually rent the little houses and stay in them though which would be fun. They also have a much fancier part of the village but we went only the cultural center part.

We actually went on this adventure a while ago, but I waited to post it until now. The PegBuddy families of all of my children have now accompanied us to some African location except for Tim’s family so I wanted to make this post in order, but I wanted his family to go to Lesedi because Sydney worked at the Polynesian Cultural Center when she went to BYU. Syd, even though they didn’t have quite the same kind of dancing that you did there, I’m sure they would have found you a spot somewhere in their production. The performers all seemed to really enjoy what they were doing. I wish their energy could be attached to the pictures.

Oliver helped with the drumming

Baby Peter

Our new flat

Sydney wanted to move into this little house.

All of the Tim Davie Family with some of the resident vendors, happy because I bought some things to send home.

This guy loved the PegBuddies; you can tell that he was delighted to have his photo taken with Tim.

Day to Day

            Here’s a little post on what we do from day to day as Church Education System missionaries. I’m sure that these patterns would vary somewhat from one CES mission to another, but many of our activities would be common for such missions.

            We get up each morning at about 6:00 and go for a walk for about an hour, come home and have breakfast (Elder Davie is always the breakfast cook just as he was at home.) Sometimes we study in the morning together, but we usually do it later in the day. At about 8:00, we leave to go the CES office, which is on the same grounds as the MTC training center in Roodepoort. We are not required to be at the office, but because we don’t have a reliable Internet connection at home, and since so much of our work is done online, we need the Internet. Also, that is the way we keep in touch with our family so we do most of that there as well. We do have a mobile wi-fi that we use at home. Sometimes it works quite well and other times it is in and out. They are building a new cell tower at the end of our street so hopefully that will help. The data is also purchased in a pay-as-you-go system. It’s expensive and it often runs out when we don’t expect it. At the office, we set up seminary and institute classes in an online record keeping system called WISE. In WISE we record names, attendance and assignments completed for home study students.

            As you would expect, the system can only find students by the name recorded in church records. Just trying to read their names can be a puzzle because records are almost always handwritten, sometimes badly, and because we are just not used to the letter combinations possible with tribal based names. Students often have several names, which can be a mixture of African and English, and then they may use none of those but instead a nickname that they have gone by all of their lives, sometimes so long that they have no idea what their name is on the church records. So some are difficult to find because of that and others may not have their records in the stake. I still have a number of names in those categories that I’m trying to do some detective work.

            Often the most difficult part of recording is actually getting the records. Some teachers are just not used to doing administrative work as part of a calling, but others have a challenge in getting records to us. They don’t have access to computers or scanners or even phones that can snap pictures and send them, so a few of the records are picked up in person. Others just take lots of reminding. We are also responsible for making sure teachers have the books and supplies they need to teach their classes so there is some messenger work in that way.

            One of the great challenges in our area is transportation—distances are great and many teachers and students rely on taxis or combies to get anywhere. They are not sedan type taxis like in the states, but usually twelve or 15 passenger vans that are stuffed with half again as many riders as will fit. Because of transportation, we give three separate in-services during the month to try to help teachers learn to teach in a way that involves the student in learning and teaching so that they become independent learners and not only know information but understand principles and doctrines and will hopefully choose to apply them in their lives. During parts of the month, preparation for and presentation of those classes take up a good part of our time.

            A little side responsibility is inspecting the flats (apartments) of the full time missionaries. That only takes a couple days out of our month and it is fun to meet the young elders and see how they’re doing. There are no sister missionaries in Johannesburg because the country is not considered safe enough for the young women to be out unaccompanied in villages and townships as they would need to be. In every case except one, the apartments have been well cared for. We’ll go next week and see if the questionable one has improved.

            Saving the best till last in this overview of our work here, I’ll say that the part we enjoy the most is going to visit the classes and meeting the kids. Right now we have eighteen seminary programs and seven institute programs that we visit. We like kids wherever they are in the world, but seeing the challenges that a lot of these young people face and how they are still happy and hopeful and progressing really humbles you. Also being in the classroom settings that vary from the typical chapel classroom to the humblest of homes is such a dramatic illustration that things don’t really matter that much. Some of these young learners would impress anyone with their knowledge and their drive to progress. We just pray for their country, that jobs and opportunities will be there for these young people. There are several programs here that are meant to support that, and we are just learning about a new more orchestrated effort that is being developed that may help young church members find pathways to education and jobs. We will have a small role in that effort and look forward to learning more.

            So that is a little overview of what we are doing day to day when we’re not posting but just working--recording, requesting, planning, teaching, driving, inspecting, administrating, visiting, supporting and best of all learning.