Temple Wedding and More

President and Sister Kwaikwai

Our weekend started out Friday morning with an almost 5 hour trip to the Johannesburg.  We had the wonderful privileged of attending the marriage and sealing of two beautiful young people. Brother Kwaikwai is the President of the Potchefstroom branch and Sister Kwaikwai was a YSA in Welkom before she moved to Spring.  In our last 15 months of working with YSA's this is the first wedding that has occurred and it is so exciting that is was in the temple.  There are many difficulties here with trying to be married and sealed in the temple

We traveled back from Johannesburg to Kroonstad where we stayed at The Elizabeth Bed and Breakfast.  The rain made traveling very difficult especially after dark.   We got to Kroonstad only to find it a muddy mess from the rain and road construction.  We had a terrible time trying to get to the B&B.  We could see it but the roads were blocked off.  After a bit of roaming we were able to finally get to our destination.


On Saturday we were able to talk with Brother Beldon, the group leader and Seminary teacher in Kroonstad, about his seminary and then we took off for Bethlehem were we talked with President Van Der Leek and his wonderful wife Louise.  She teaches her children seminary at home. We had  lunch with this wonderful family.  We love the Van Der Leek family.  They were living in Bloemfontein, where she was our seminary teacher,  but we prayed them to Bethlehem.  We asked the Lord to help the seminary and institute program in Bethlehem and the next thing we knew the Van Der Leeks were moving there.

President and Sister Van Der Leek

President and Sister Van Der Leek

Clarissa, Bronwen, and Tamran with mom

This is Danielle the missionary daughter
we have not met yet.  She is coming home
in June

 After lunch we enjoyed watching a session of general conference at the Bethlehem branch building.  Most of the African wards and branches were viewing their general conference videos this weekend.



At about 5:30 we left the Bethlehem Church and headed to Elder and Sister Bird's (Senior Missionary couple in Bethlehem) home were we had a very relaxing evening with good food and a good nights sleep.






Much to our surprise when we got to the Bird's home there were two of our favorite seminary students.  Lindi and Lindiwe Chibase from Kroonstad.  They were in Bethlehem for a funeral of a family member and had come to visit the Birds.  We were very happy to get to see them and get some warm hugs too.

On Sunday we traveled from "The Birds Bethlehem Bed and Breakfast" to the Phuthaditjhaba Branch to give Lebohang Tsotetsi his Seminary assessments and explain them to him.  After that we saw another wonderful session of conference.  Then we were off for the 4 plus hours drive back to Bloemfontein.  It was a long and very tiring three days but much was accomplished and our lives were truly blessed by the opportunity to rub shoulders with so many wonderful saints.

We enjoyed the beautiful fall colors as well.  Our minds still can not wrapped its way around April being fall but it is what it is.