Sunday, April 14th - Church

We attended church today with the Murdocks. We first went to a ward in Umlazi (check out the surrounding street names on the map!), which is pretty much an all black ward...just a couple of white people. The talks were great, the people humble and it was a very nice sacrament meeting. We met the leaders of the ward and they were very nice. We spoke to a lady named Zanele Hlongwane. She is putting together a Mother's Day project to honor mothers and she wants to advertise on the radio about the event and try to get sponsors. I didn't know what to say, as Mother's Day is only three weeks away and the scope of the project is huge. We agreed to try and get the radio station to air news of the event and get a speaker from the station. She said the Relief Society in her ward was making the food. When I asked her how many people she expected, she said about 300. My mouth dropped and I squeaked out, "Does the Relief Society know that you are making this much food. She said they did and they were used to making that much food for weddings. Yikes! She is very energized, so I'm sure she will pull it off, but she wants to offer free massages to the women (or very discounted). It's kind of wild, but maybe normal here.???

Recently the Elders in the surrounding areas all painted a mural for the Umlazi Library. It was a sweet thing to do. I thought you might like to see them and the mural they painted. Hopefully I won't get in trouble for copying the photo...ha.

After Sacrament meeting, we went to another ward in Chatsworth. It is an all Indian ward. We attended Relief Society and the sister that taught did a great job. We all sat in a semi circle, only about 10 women, plus Sister Murdock and I. It was fun hearing a lesson "Faithfulness in Times of Trial" in an East Indian accent. There was one woman answering all the questions. Everyone else was kind of quiet...probably because us white folks were there...But they were all very sweet and pretty with their dark skin and black silky hair. The children are really cute and very well behaved. After church, we came back to our flat in Durban and the Murdocks packed up and drove back to Johannesburg. We will miss them, but we are enjoying our peace and quiet and not having to rush off anywhere.