We had a good weekend in Masvingo. We met with the new branch president and discussed a few of his concerns. He is young but certainly doing a great job. These young returned missionaries make good church leaders here. We attended their meetings on Sunday and things went well. We are happy to have our branch assignment changed to Masvingo now. (Not that we didn’t like the branches we had.) We go down once a month and we go on a Saturday and stay overnight. We stay at the “Inn on the Great Zimbabwe”. I had forgotten how beautiful and peaceful it is there and the food is good too (served in a ‘fine-dining’ atmosphere with attentive waiters). We open up the drapes so we can watch the sun come up and it is a beautiful sight.
On our way home we came across an accident where a little girl had been hit and killed on the side of the highway. There were a few people there diverting traffic around her. We stopped and Jim got a scarf from someone and put it over the girl so that everyone didn’t have to drive by and look at her. The mother had run off, as I am sure she was very upset. It was very sad! We stayed for just a couple of minutes and drove on. They said someone had gone to get the police. It isn’t really surprising that someone could get hit like that as there are so many people walking along the roads and running across the roads and the vehicles drive kind of crazy a lot of the time. We pray every day that we can drive safely and not get hit or hit anyone else.
Sorry to have missed mom’s 80th birthday party but we wouldn’t miss this experience for anything either. Glad that Tara, Pam and Kim and their families could represent us. We are certain that they had a good time together too. We hear that there were a few manicures, pedicures and facials that took place at Diane’s school. We did get a shower at the ‘inn’ on the weekend and it felt REALLY good.
I’m having a hard time sending photos for the blog lately. I will send more when I can.
We now have a U.S. dollar bank account for LDS Charities. In the past we have had to get cash from the mission office and it is charged against our LDSC projects, etc. There was suppose to be $10,000 put into our account on Sept. 7th so we went to check on it Friday the 11th and found that there was no money in the account. We have heard that sometimes the bank here will hold the money for a while – which is what it seems they did to us. We went back again today and suddenly we have money that was deposited Friday after we left the bank. However, there have been a couple of transfers from our account in the amount of over $2200. We explained that we haven’t taken any out yet so they suggested that there has been a mix-up with another account. They are sorting it out and we will go back tomorrow and check again. It seems we will have to keep a very close eye on things. Everything is done in cash here – no checks, no debit cards, no credit cards. We will have to go get cash when we need to pay for something and then we keep records here of what is spent and send in a report to South Africa.
President Bullock has been doing a few polygamy interviews with people who want to get baptized. It has to be determined that they are not sympathetic towards polygamy and that they have not lived in a polygamy family. There is a fair bit of that here so the church has to be careful. If their parents practiced polygamy then a report has to go to SLC to get approval for their baptism. If it was grandparents then the area authorities in South Africa can approve it.
Time to go home. Love to all, Elder & Sister Bullock
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