Sunday, April 21st - In Phoenix

Garbage Dump Neighborhood

The Murdocks wanted to go to Phoenix to attend church today and we said, Great, we love Phoenix. Then they told Elder Kyle that he had to drive...whoops! He knows where Phoenix is but was not quite sure how to get there by car...hmmm. Believe it or not, there is a town called Phoenix in South Africa...amazing. It is actually a mostly Indian city (whoa...another similarity)...East Indian. We started off for Phoenix and right off the bat, the GPS took us to the wrong place. Apparently, there used to be a road going through to the freeway right by the garbage dump, but it's under construction, so we got a tour of the dump and the people who live there...They really do live there, in homes they have built out of various pieces of garbage. If you could see this photo up close, you would see cardboard homes with metal or cardboard roofs, each one very imaginative. They've built a whole town and nobody seems to mind that their town is around the dump. Apparently garbage day is an exciting time for them, as they dig through to see what treasures may be in the new load of garbage that can improve their home or situation. There are hundreds of homemade structures on the hill surrounding the dump!

We got to Phoenix and realized that they hold church in rooms on the second floor of a reform school. We got there a few minutes late, due to our tour of the dump. When we arrived we drove through a path towards a run-down school building. We drove right up on the grass/mud area. There was a member of the ward in a lawn chair guarding the cars that were parked there. We squeezed through the fence and climbed up to the second floor. The door to the room where they hold their sacrament service was closed and we discovered when we opened it that they were showing General Conference with a laptop computer, small projection machine and white sheet over the blackboard. The members were packed into plastic lawn chairs in rows close together watching the conference. We found a place to sit and realized it was the one session that we had already seen. We've now watched that one session three times. It's what happens when you go from ward to ward and aren't able to see Conference until two-three weeks after it happens. The amazing thing...though the room was hot, the chairs uncomfortable and the picture hard to see, there was not a sound in the room. The children sat there without making a sound and the adults were very attentive. I couldn't help but compare that with our beautiful buildings and noisy members and children. No children were being fed
Cheerios or given books to color. They were all sitting there looking perfect in their Sunday best quietly watching conference. Wow. This group of members whose ancestors are from India have been trying to get a new chapel for some time, but cannot find the land that will work for the members and the church. We met with the Branch President between sessions and he said a counselor in the area presidency had taken over trying to negotiate for land. He has lived in South Africa for a long time and is a realtor. They seemed encouraged that he was taking it on.  We offered our support if they needed us. A member came around with a Tupperware dish with cornbread in it and asked us if we wanted some cake. The people in that ward are so optimistic and when you consider they live in a city of Indians that are Hindu, you realize that it is not easy for them to be Mormon in that community. Academicians have often joked of Durban being the largest Indian city outside India. Once home to the young Mahatma Gandhi, Durban has more overseas Indians than any other city outside India. This photo was taken in the Indian spice market.

We left for the airport to take the Murdocks to catch their flight back to Johannesburg. Then we went home to rest up from our whirlwind experience with the Murdocks...fun though.