Our Travel Schedule(can you say "shedjool") to South Africa

The Church Travel Department has already booked our flights to South Africa. "God willing and the creek don't rise", we will be leaving the country Wednesday August 29th.

We will fly from Salt Lake to Chicago and then on to London England. There was going to be a 9 hour layover in London which would have added considerably to the continuous length of our trip. We therefore requested a full day's layover in London to get a good rest at a hotel before making the last long leg of the trip to Johannesburg.

We will arrive in Johannesburg at 7:00AM (their time) on Saturday, September 1st. This will give us Saturday and Sunday to get acclimated to the time change and catch up on our rest before we go into the office on the Monday.

I am sure that the Stringhams (the couple we are replacing) will be anxious to start "power packing" us with the information that we will need to do our job.

We will be staying in a hotel until the Stringhams leave on September the 11th, at which time we will be able to take over their flat. (South African lingo for "apartment".)

Ralph Duke killed in traffic accident in Uganda

Ralph and Kim served with us in South Africa during our first mission. We didn't serve in the same departments but ran into each other at the Gold Reef Ward in Johannnesburg which we attended while we were serving in the Temple. Later when we were transfered to the Mission office in Roodepoort (a suburb of Johannesburg) our offices were in the same Church compound which included a chapel, the South Africa MTC, CES(Church Education) offices and our Mission offices. Ralph was the CES coordinator for the area.

After returning home to Heber City Ralph was called to be their Ward Bishop. He only served a little over four months when he was called to serve as the Mission President for the Uganda Kampala Mission. This mission includes Uganda and Ethiopia. We were looking forward to seeing them in Uganda as part of our new calling because Auditing the finances of their mission would be part of our responsibility. President Duke had asked two senior couples with whom we had also served in South Africa to work with him in this mission. Elder and Sister Williams are serving in Uganda in the CES department and Elder and Sister LaPray are serving as the mission leaders in Addis Abba Ethiopia. Jan has kept in close contact by email with the LaPray's so we were aware of President Duke's death shortly after it happened.

We attended Ralph's funeral yesterday. We greeted Kim at the viewing and she was holding together surprisingly well. She has great support from a very close family and many friends in the area as well as friends, like us, from their missions.

The funeral was wonderful (as good as a funeral can be). The Church was filled with flowers and friends. President Monson from the First Presidency represented the leadership of the Church and gave a wonderful talk as usual. Touching tributes were given by their 3 sons and a daughter.

We had the opportunity to greet President Monson and chat very briefly. We spoke of my parents and his wonderful experiences in Canada. Francis Monson was not with him as she was just recovering from an illness.

We saw several other couples from our Mission in South Africa. President and Sister Fitch have acquaintances who will be serving in the Area offices with us. They are called as the Public Relations coordinators. The Fitch's are going to try and get us together before we leave. This couple will precede us by just a couple of weeks. We also saw the Packs who served as "keyboard/music specialists for the Johannesburg Mission. The Ficklins were also there. He served as the counselor to President Fitch in Mozambique.

Here is a link to the article in today's Deseret News which will give you a few more details.

http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660222276,00.html

The horse drawn hearse was very unique. The cemetery was just across the street and up the block a little, so the mourners walked behind the hearse to the gravesite.

If You Are New to Reading these Posts

These posts are in historical order with the most recent post at the top of the page. As time progresses information from one posting may be carried on in a future posting. If you've missed an earlier posting the current posting might not make sense.

If you are a new reader scroll to the bottom and work your way up - I promise that things may make more sense that way.

The left panel shows the dates of blogs by month. Sometimes it's easier to jump to a certain time frame if you're looking for information rather than trying to read everything from the beginning again.

This may be "old information" to many of you seasoned bloggers but we're new to this and look at each blogging discovery with excitement.

Duties as Posted in the Blue Sheets

In response to questions as to what we'll be doing in this assignment, here is posting as it appears in "the blue sheets":

AUDITING
DEPARTMENT

Full-time Missionary Couples:
Local Unit Area Auditor/Trainer (outside
the USA and Canada)

What you would do:
The local unit auditor/trainer is a
new priesthood calling to train stake/district and
ward/branch priesthood leaders in their duties to
handle sacred Church funds. Ongoing needs arise in
areas throughout the Church, both in the United States
(part-time service assignments) and in foreign
countries (full-time). Currently, needs exist in the
South America South Area (headquartered in
Buenos Aires, Argentina); New Zealand/ Pacific
Islands Area (headquartered in Auckland, New
Zealand), and the Africa West Area
(headquartered in Accra, Ghana). Spanish
speaking skills are necessary for the South America
South Area.

Who you report to:
You will work closely with and
report to the manager of member and statistical
records in the local Church administration office.

Who should apply for this opportunity:
Individuals with leadership, communication, analytical, and
training skills, who have served in bishoprics, stake
presidencies, or stake or ward clerk roles are ideal for
this position. Financial, auditing or accounting
experience is desirable, but not required. Church
Headquarters in Salt Lake City will train couples for
this service mission.

What your spouse would do:
In international areas this service mission can be an opportunity with many
possibilities for your spouse. She could assist with
other Church departments such as Family History,
Temple, Welfare and Humanitarian Service, as time
permits. Your spouse could assist with printing
reports, recording completed audits, and composing
letters and email communications to local leaders.

That's about all we know at this time. As the assignment clarifies we'll post additional information. This is the current month's sheet. You'll notice that the Africa South East Area assignment has been filled and is no longer listed - I guess that means we really do have the job!! Yeah!!

Our Missionary calls

These are the letters we received after submitting paperwork with our Church experience and work experience histories as well as medical status from both our doctors and dentists. We also had to be interviewed by our Bishop and our Stake President. (Local parish minister and region leader.)

We had an idea what we wanted to do before submitting our paperwork. Monthly the Church publishes "the blue sheets" (printed on blue paper, duh!!) of worldwide opportunities available to Senior couples. The opportunities are quite varied from working as leadership couples in existing wards and branches to humanitarian to mission offices to ranches to Church history sights to public relations to family history research to temples, etc. This opportunity list is also available at lds.org/servinginthe church/missionandserviceopportunities. We spoke with auditing department and expressed our interest in South Africa. They later called us back and during a conference call put us through a fairly in-depth interview to determine our work in financial areas, both in the Church and in our careers.

We are quite excited to have survived the screening process and will be serving as Auditor and Assistant to the Auditor in the Africa SouthEast Area. We will be headquartered in Johannesburg South Africa at the Area offices which are adjacent to the temple. This location is a very nice area of the city where the wealthier families of Johannesburg live. It is fairly close to downtown Johannesburg and is nestled in the high hills that make Johannesburg a beautiful and interesting city.

Our letters state that we will be entering the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Provo on July 16, 2007. This date has been revised to August 20, 2007. The couple that we are replacing do not leave until September 11th so the earlier date left too much of an overlap. Our MTC training lasts for one full week beginning on Monday and terminating on the next Sunday. Prior to our MTC week we will spend one full day of training at the Church Offices in Salt Lake City in the Auditing Department. This training will take place on Thursday August 16th. Once we get to South Africa we will receive about a week's training by the couple that we are replacing who will give us training specific to the area.

Our expected date of departure from the U.S. is August 29th.

Any questions or comments feel free to access the "comments" area. We'll either respond in the comments or if it is of general interest, do a posting on your topic.