Dear Richard
I have finished all of my marking of the
supplementary exams J I feel like I spent just about my whole week
last week marking L But at least
it’s all done!
I did take time out to go and visit teach
Sis Audrey and Sis Marie though, and we had really nice visits with both of
them. I shared the article “His Grace is Sufficient” from the September 2013
Ensign – what an amazing explanation of how grace works! Using the analogy of a
child having piano lessons just makes so much sense J And it generated really nice discussions
with both of them, although it was very interesting to see how different parts
of the message really touched each of them. And it wasn’t just our great visit,
it’s been coming for a while, but Sis Marie came to church this past Sunday :D
And it was so great how naturally she just fitted in! I think she’ll come again
too J
I also took some time to go and have a
meeting at a company called Getsmarter, who offer online blended courses. UCT
has partnered with them to offer all sorts of courses, including we’re hoping a
full online degree in the next few years. But they’re busy exploring an Excel
course specifically geared towards auditors, and I’ll probably be the UCT
contact person, and do the quality control on the course. So it was mainly an
exploratory meeting, but I’m quite excited J
Then we said goodbye to Elder Burton, who
has been really instrumental in turning missionary work around in our ward!
He’s been serving in our ward for 6 months, first as a zone leader, but then he
actually asked the mission president to move the zone leadership elsewhere in
the zone so that he could concentrate on missionary work. And what a difference
having “full-time” missionaries has made in our ward again, plus having someone
like Elder Burton who just loves the work! He was one of those missionaries
that you felt you could really trust to help things move forward. Like with our
friends we felt that we could actually trust that he would do his absolute
best, and then if they choose not to accept the gospel it really is their
choice, and not because the missionaries weren’t doing their absolute best
(unfortunately we haven’t had missionaries that we really felt we could trust
for a while L) But it was a wonderful experience having
him here, and the whole ward really came to love him. He’s also a very humble
person, who you can tell just really wants to be righteous. So inspiring! But
he’s back home now, and the new missionary came to meet us, and he also seems
pretty solid. So hopefully between Elder Burton’s companion that he helped to
really train well, and our new missionary things will keep on moving forward!
But it’s been a real example to me of how important it is for a ward to trust
the missionaries! Don’t ever do anything to lose the trust of the members!!!
But I’m sure you’re more along the lines of Elder Burton ;)
We attended a parents meeting at the
school last week, where they told us all the things about how the classes work
etc. Grade R is hectic! Josh is going to be getting real homework! And really
what they’re doing in Grade R now is what we all did in Grade 1. Hectic!
We had a nice braai on Saturday at Uncle
Ron’s house, to celebrate his and Mom’s birthdays, and also to spend some time
with Shawn and Annie. A really nice afternoon, and it was great to see how our
kids played so nicely with Saffie! And then to see how she was so happy to go
to Nursery on Sunday because she had some familiar faces J And Cindy phoned us while we were all
together to tell us she’s engaged… So interesting times ahead!
I’ve been attending the Elders Quorum the
last few weeks to give feedback on the lessons. Leon was giving his first lesson
yesterday, which he did really well in. But there were some interesting
comments made, mainly by Sam. The lesson was based on the talk “Be Meek and
Lowly in Heart” from the October conference, and when they were talking about
humility, they were saying that humility isn’t the same as humiliating
ourselves, ie telling people all the time that we’re not perfect. It’s about
recognising that we have failings, and then doing what we need to to change and
repent. Also when talking about meekness they said that if we’re not meek we
might ask God to help us sort something out, but we’re actually planning on
fixing it ourselves. So we’re not recognising our dependence on Him. Then our
faith is vain, because it’s actually pointless. We’re not really expecting Him
to help us. Very interesting insights!
And so that’s about it. Caleb has just 1
week left at Aunty Wendy, and this week I’m planning on taking him to the
school every day to make sure he’s getting comfortable and familiar. I’m
getting things ready for the semester now, although we still have 3 weeks till
the students come back, because the calendar is all strange this year (no
complaints though J) So exciting
and busy times!
Love
Shelly
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