Letter to Richard - 23 February 2015

Dear Elder Powrie

This is probably the last letter that you’ll get from me! The last few I’ll print and give to Mom and Dad to give to you in Joburg :) But I’m very glad to hear that you’re still having a great time and sound totally committed, but then I wouldn’t expect anything else from you ;)

Caleb was still sick on Tuesday, so he stayed home again, but it was just as well that I couldn’t really do any work, because I was also struggling with a bad cold, and my eyes were still struggling to focus, so it was really a blessing in disguise. But thankfully on Wednesday he was back at school and I could get back to some work. I made some progress on my literature review, and I also met with another of my colleagues who did a really good quality Masters thesis to get some tips and pointers.

Josh made really great progress this past week! He now has asked me to come to fetch him later every day, so he’s completely wanting to be there :) And in the mornings I’m walking a bit away from the line before the bell goes, he usually comes with me, but then he has to walk back to the line on his own, and we’ll wait outside the fence and watch him go into his class. He’s doing so well!!! One of the days I fetched him first, and then when we fetched Hannah and Caleb all 3 kids wanted to play in the playground at the school, and it was like a reunion! They all had such a fun time together, just like last year :)

And one really cool thing that happened was that Josh was looking for a specific toy, and both he and I couldn’t find it in any of the usual places. So I told him we’d look for it tomorrow. And then a while later he came to me, and he had found it! When I asked him what happened he said that he had said a prayer, and then he was able to find it :) I am so proud of him! That was completely unprompted from me, and he got his prayer answered as well! What an awesome faith building experience for a child :D

We did all of our visiting teaching last week, but the rounds are changing again in March, so it might actually be our last time visiting some of these sisters :( We’ve had a really great time visiting these special sisters, Sis Audrey, Heleen, and the Cerffs. I hope that we don’t get changed just yet…

Saturday was a hectic day! At the end of last year I bought some Groupon tickets for Bugz Playpark, at a nice discount, but Caleb couldn’t go on most of the rides until he turned 3, so we had to wait until after his birthday, and the tickets were only valid till this weekend, so we grabbed our one opportunity and took the kids. Bugz is a really great place to take the kids, with lots of stuff for them to do, and they had a great time! But they were exhausted by the time we left just after lunch! Then we went almost straight to a stake sports activity at the mission office. It was pleasant, but the kids were overtired, so they were very clingy, and I didn’t get to socialise very much, but then I was also pretty wiped, so I wasn’t really in the mood for socialising anyway. But the stake seems to be coming together nicely now :) Oh, and we ran into Elder Cossey, who apparently shared your room at the MTC, and he was really excited to hear about you. He said that you should stop by the mission office on the Thursday morning and you can say hi ;)

My Sunday School class is being decimated during this week! 3 members of the class are leaving the ward, and Leon has been called as the WML, so he’ll be going to the gospel principles class every week now. But at least you’ll be coming home soon, so that will be someone extra :) And we’ve got a YSA who’s in the GP class for a bit longer and then she’ll be coming over. And what it does mean is that the class will be that little bit smaller, so the quiet people who are left will be forced to talk a little bit more, which will always be good :) We had the lesson on Matthew 5 this past week, and there is way too much to discuss in a single lesson, so what I actually decided to do was give the class a couple minutes at the beginning to choose which verses they would like to discuss, and we had a really nice discussion based on that :)

For FHE yesterday was spoke to the kids about work and self-reliance, and then introduced our first pocket money system. The kids were so excited to do some things to earn money this morning that they woke up before me and they had made their beds and gotten dressed before I was even up! Hopefully we can keep the excitement going for a while ;)

So that’s about it! But a good week overall :) I’m just SO glad that Caleb is finished his antibiotic! We wasted hours last week, literally, getting it into him! But he’s on the mend, and everyone else has manageable colds, so we’re all good, really :)

Love you lots!

Shelly

Letter to Richard - 16 February 2015 (Caleb's 3rd birthday)

16 February 2015

Dear Richard

I was having a very blond 20 minutes when I wrote to you last week… I didn’t greet you at the beginning, and then I forgot Caleb’s birthday and said that the next one will be Joshua… Very embarrassing! So Caleb’s birthday was Sunday, and we had his party for his school friends on Saturday morning, and our little baby is now officially 3 years old! He is just so full of character, it is unbelievable! But shame, he was sick for his birthday, and today we finally found out that he has tonsillitis. He has such a high pain threshold that even when Mom had just looked at his tonsils and seen that they were all inflamed he still insisted that he wasn’t sore anywhere! So it’s very hard to know if there’s something wrong with him, because it seems to just not really affect him. Just as well with how often he’s hurting himself ;)

The other big news story last week was that I had the laser surgery on my eyes, and I can’t believe how I’m seeing without anything to assist me :) To be honest it was pretty terrifying, but that was because I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but it was very quick (10 minutes total) and the effects are amazing. If anyone is going I would suggest they need to speak to someone who’s had it done to find out exactly what it’s going to feel like and be like before they have it done! But I am glad I had it done :D

Josh did his first oral at school, and it seems that he did really well :) I taught him a memory trick to help him remember the 6 things he had to say about himself, and he was able to remember them really confidently, and he was so pleased to come home and tell me he’d done it! And today I stood right by the fence to say goodbye to him. Tomorrow I’ll stand outside the fence :)

I carried on working on my literature review, and I’m up to 5 000 words now :) I am planning on using the lit review part of my thesis to do a journal paper, and in preparation for that to present it at a conference in June/July. I submitted the abstract for the conference this weekend, so that’s done at least :)

At Caleb’s party we had a chance to answer some questions about temples and the Angel Moroni statues on them, because of the pictures in our lounge. There is no quick way to explain why we have statues of Moroni on the temples, not that I could figure out on the spur of the moment anyway ;) But it was nice anyway :)

I’m falling asleep here, because of a few really bad night’s sleep with Caleb, plus I’m also struggling with a cold, so I think that will be it for today :) But you get the gist of the week ;)

Love you lots!

Shelly

Letter to Richard - 9 February 2015

9 February 2015

This last week I did quite a bit of work on my literature review for my Masters, and I finally got all the paper work sorted out to register and paid most of my fees. It’s really nice getting a 75% staff discount :) I’ve more or less got a structure now for my lit review, but it’s definitely hard going, slogging through all the literature!

Josh made good progress during the week. On Tuesday he even asked me to fetch Hannah and Caleb first because he wanted to show them his aftercare! And by the end of the week I was pretty far from his line in the morning, with no tears, except on Thursday when I stayed to do IRP with his class, and he was all sad with me being there…?!? But he told me that afternoon that he was sad because he was anticipating having to say goodbye to me. He’s like Andrew in that way. For the last few days of his leave he’ll be all sad because he’s going back to work, instead of just enjoying the moment of being on leave. But the more we figure out Joshua’s psyche the more we can hopefully help him!

One big thing last week was that Andrew travelled for the first time, with his new position at work. It was a really intense day, because he left home at 5:20 to get to the airport to fly to Durban. Then he flew to Joburg at lunch time, and then flew back to Cape Town and arrived back home at about 8:30. Very intense, and he’s decided that he won’t do both cities in the same day again… He was actually in 3 cities in a single day, which is quite something! But the good thing for us was that the kids and I handled things at home really well. I got them to school even earlier than we’ve been managing, and the afternoon and evening also went fine. It’s a big relief to me to see that we can cope, and I’m also really glad that this has only happened now, with the kids being a little bit older.

On Saturday I attended a training session with Elder Tad R Callister, the Sunday School general president. What an inspirational session! He was talking about how we can be better teachers, learners, parents etc, and I’ve definitely got some things to think about and implement. And what was also interesting was he explained how they are planning on changing the curriculum for 2016, where from Primary to the adults we are studying the same set of chapters each week in SS, and the same gospel topics in the second hour. It sounds really exciting!

And in my class yesterday we were able to have one of our best sessions this year, and everyone participated so nicely :) It was nice to also be able to bring in some of the things from Saturday’s meeting, because the lesson was on when the Saviour called his Apostles, and one of the questions was how are we blessed when we follow the Apostles. So we could link it nicely to what we learnt from, not an apostle, but the general authorities the previous day :)

Yesterday was Jesse’s birthday party, but shame, he was sick… But the kids till enjoyed being all together, and hopefully my kids won’t get sick! The next birthday is Joshua’s and we’ll all be together then, just missing Cindy :(

But things are going nicely in general! We’re settling nicely into a routine, and one amazing thing is that we’ve managed to have the kids at school on time every single day since school started. I don’t know what’s changed exactly in the morning, except that I’m pushing Josh to really be independent and do things on his own. But things are going really nicely! And it’s exciting to be part of the next phase :)

But that’s it from us. Love you lots!

Shelly

Letter to Richard - 2 February 2015

2 February 2015

Dear Richard

We’re all pretty much healthy again :) Caleb only needed to stay home for the one day last week, and then he was back to normal, so I finally did manage to get some work done. Although there were still plenty of distractions. This week is pretty clear, so I should be able to get some really good work done now! I’ve started with reading through a couple of other masters theses that are very high quality, to get an idea of what is needed, and today I got to actually look at a bit of literature which is relevant. By the time you get home I need to be finished with my literature review and be onto the actual study.

Some of the distractions were household stuff, like doing the groceries. But we also did all of our visiting teaching and I helped Sister Pam out with a bit of stuff. And then we also had a solar geyser installed, so that was a bit of distraction with having the workers in our house. But we can see that there is less electricity being used already :) And I also went for an assessment at the Eye Laser Clinic, to see if my eyes are suitable for the laser surgery, and I’m booked for next week to have my eyes done! Very exciting :) :)

Josh has been doing really well with school :) During the week I’ve been moving further and further away from him when the bell goes, and he’s stopped crying in the morning now completely :) He’s also been playing nicely with his friends at aftercare, so on the whole he’s doing well. They had their first class swimming lesson, and he’s one of the few in the class that can swim properly, so that will also be a good boost to his confidence :) And tomorrow he does cricket for the first time, which most of his friends are doing too. Fun times ;) Josh was also invited to his first sleepover party, at a friend’s house where we do trust the parents enough to let him sleep over ;) He was fairly excited about going, and it felt very strange to not have him at home, and just be putting Hannah and Caleb to bed alone. Those two really missed him as well. I dropped him off before fetching the others, and they were so distressed at the idea of only seeing him the following morning that I had them both crying! But they did calm down, and we had a nice evening together. And then at about 9:45 I got the message that Josh actually wanted to come home to sleep. I was expecting it, but I’m really proud of him for even getting that far! And I must be honest, it was nice to get him back home and have everyone where they belong ;)

Hannah and Caleb are of course doing great. Caleb is getting so excited about his party, which is in 2 weeks. He wants it to be NOW! You’re going to have a great time getting to know this lovely little boy :)

We went to Fish Hoek on Saturday for our usual visit, and talking to everyone there I was struck again at how clear it is to see that people who live the gospel have lives that just work out better. In our family it’s harder to see the pattern, because we only have 1 person that is less-active. But in Andrew’s family there are 3 and 3, and it is so clear to see that although everyone has difficulties, the 3 that are less-active just have so much more tragedy in their lives. We truly are blessed when we live the gospel! And the January visiting teaching message is also along those lines.

‘The scriptures teach “when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated” (D&C 130:21). Our spiritual growth takes place as we draw close to God through obedience and invite the power of the Savior’s Atonement into our lives.

“As we walk in obedience to the principles and commandments of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” said Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “we enjoy a continual flow of blessings promised by God in His covenant with us. Those blessings provide the resources we need to act rather than simply be acted upon as we go through life. … Obedience gives us greater control over our lives, greater capacity to come and go, to work and create.” ‘

If we’re not obedient we just won’t be able to get through life successfully!

For FHE this week we again used an article that I read in the Ensign during the week, this time on media standards. I also happened to come across a video on the church site that animates the story Pres Packer shared in conference recently about the house finches in the ivy outside his house who were safe from cats, but then a snake came and they weren’t safe. So we spoke about what Satan is trying to do, and why it’s bad, and what to do. I think Josh got the message, but Caleb especially was obsessed about “Saturn” and “What if Saturn tries to…” and then all sorts of funny things. But we persevere, even though our lessons often tend to disintegrate into chaos… But we take heart from Elder Bednar’s example! As long as we’re consistent, that’s the main thing! And we are getting some messages through, at least to Josh who is old enough to understand :)

And yesterday afternoon I went to the launch of the My Path to Self-Reliance program for our stake. Apparently we’re the first stake in South Africa to launch it as a stake. I think the program is really exciting, and I hope that I can be involved in some way.

I presume you know Colleen’s news…? I’ll leave that to her if you haven’t heard from some other source yet.

So a busy week, as always, but overall a good one :)

Love you

Shelly