Wednesday, August 21st trip to Port Elizabeth and East London

Amanda B&B in East London

This morning we had a great breakfast at Amanda B&B. They cook whatever kind of eggs you want and toast, banana bread, fruit, cereal, yogurt, etc. Homemade jams were pretty tasty too. We had omelettes that were delish!

We spent the day getting caught up on our paperwork. We finally had great internet access, so we got a lot done and I got somewhat caught up on emails and credit card charges for church accounting.

Cloudy Day 

We made phone calls and while they cleaned the room walked down to the beach again to see what we could find. We found more interesting rock formations and growing things while we listened to the waves and I tried to keep the hair out of my eyes...impossible.










We had arranged to go to dinner with the Senior Missionaries in that area, Elder and Sister Boyce. They called and said they would pick us up at 4:00. Elder Kyle was thrilled that he didn't have to drive. When they got there we found out that they actually live in Gonubie, which is a suburb of East London, so we felt better about them picking us up. They wanted to go early, because they had a meeting scheduled that evening.

We went to a place called Grazia. It was on the ocean, so quite a view. It was also getting cold outside as the wind picked up and clouds formed making it chilly outside, so we opted to eat inside, but we sat in a room surrounded by windows, so we still had a great view of the ocean. This photo is a picture that the Boyce's took with another group of missionaries that were at a zone conference and they ate at the same restaurant. They Boyce couple is directly in the center of the group. We didn't get a photo while we were there, but it is pretty interesting what you can turn up on a search...Ha.

Elder and Sister Boyce are MLS missionaries, which means member/leadership support. That means that they are very busy. Elder Boyce is one of the few high priests, so he has additional duties in the branches. They are also in charge of the Elders, which is a huge job in and of itself. They cover a large area of townships and deal with problems on a daily basis. We got a pretty good idea of how busy they are and how they wished they had more senior missionary couples there to help them. If enough senior missionaries would agree to go to Africa, the burdens here would be eased considerably for those who are serving here and trying to cover too large a territory. We talked about fresh water and possibly a humanitarian services project for clean water. They also said Helping Hands was going well. Their main problems were families lacking a dad, lack of transportation, lack of employment and no sign of anything changing. The leadership is doing their best to help, but the problems are immense. You would never know it when you see the people. They always have a smile for you. Sister Boyce talked about how difficult it was for the people caring for orphans to keep the clothes clean. She said she really wanted to buy them a washing machine, but they have no electricity. We talked a bit about whether there were some sort of machines that worked without electricity and I told them about the wringer washer my grandmother used to have. We decided anything would be better than rubbing them against a rock, but we didn't actually come up with anything solid; however, I later looked it up on the computer and found several interesting possibilities...check this out: http://zaf.arambla.com/en/video/642
It seems that an enterprising soul could put one of these together, don't you think?

This gave us a lot to think about. We encouraged them to do a couple of things that may help their situation and we agreed to keep in touch. The food was delicious, the company great, but they had to get to their meeting, so they drove us back to our lodging. We talked a lot about what could be done to help them, but were unable to solve the country's problems that night. High unemployment seems to be the biggest problem in South Africa.