Friday, November 22 Couples Training at Kruger Game Park and the first Safari

New Couple, Cinquinis

Friday, we loaded everyone into two cars and a van and headed off to our training in Kruger...a six-hour drive. The Bybees rode with us. Three couples rode in the car being driven by Elder Jensen, who serves in Kenya. The rest rode in the van with the Murdocks.

Our public affairs couples in Africa total six couples. There are only 32 public affairs couples in the world, so six is a lot for Africa.

The Hansens are serving in Uganda and are responsible for that country plus Ethiopia, South Sudan and Rwanda.

The Humphreys are serving in Zambia and are also responsible for Malawi, Mozambique and Angola.

The Cinquinis, who are taking our place in Durban, are responsible for South Africa, Capetown, Swaziland and Lesotho.

Elder and Sister Bybee are responsible for Democratic Republic of Congo- Kinshash and Lubumbashi, Republic of Congo, Gabon, Burundi, Central Africa Republic and Cameroon.

Our boss, Sean Donnelly is responsible for Madagascar, Mauritius and La Reunion (mainly because he speaks French). However, we can be called to help in all of the countries named above.

Our new job is to support all of them, all of Southeast Africa, and we are directly responsible for Johannesburg, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. It's a big job because Johannesburg has about 14 million people, and Zimbabwe is causing us some concerns about visas for our missionaries.

I will be doing all the financial stuff for all the couples (reimbursements, credit cards, etc.). Elder Kyle will be getting materials to them for open houses, family history fairs, dinners with opinion leaders, etc. I will also be responsible for posting articles on Mormon Newsroom South Africa and posting items on South Africa's Facebook Page. Right now we have a competition going with Kenya to see who can get the most views. I also am responsible for the other countries Mormon newsroom pages- for getting final approval for their articles, positing some myself if need be and training them on newsroom. I am also responsible for Helping Hands 2014, which is very time consuming. Both Elder Kyle and I are responsible for hosting opinion leaders at the area office. We have some coming from the Congo in January to visit our Family History Center and talk about how they can preserve their records. We will have to plan a tour of the building and taking them out to dinner, etc. WE will be BUSY. We will learn more when we return from Kruger.


We stopped for lunch on our way to Kruger. Elder Kyle and Sister Jensen ordered quiche and they both got sick the following day...oops. It was not pleasant for either of them and just when they started getting better, a couple of other people came down with flu-like symptoms.

It's the first time in Africa for either one of us to get sick from food, so it was just unlucky. I actually felt pretty good the whole time.

We got into Kruger about 2:30 pm and we given our keys to our own private cabanas, separate buildings for each couple, except for us. We roomed with the Cinquinis, but we each had our own bedroom and bathroom. We were in #8, which was the closest to the electric fence and the wild life in the game reserve. The first night we heard lions roaring most of the night.

Once we got settled in our rooms, we met back at the lodge for a snack and our first game drive. The vehicles were open and nobody had guns, so I was a little nervous, especially when the first thing we did was find a herd of elephants with their babies.

They pretty much ignored us and it was amazing to be sitting in the middle of a herd of elephants, watching them eat and mangle the trees and protect their young. Just listening to their sound (because the guide shut off the engine and just let us be in the midst of them) was amazing.

This little guy was pretty fascinated by us and our vehicle. His mom eventually pushed him behind her.

Then while sitting there looking at the elephants our guide gets a radio communication that a male and female lion are coming our way. I'll admit I was a bit nervous, especially when we spotted them coming and our vehicle started following them. Eventually they stopped and lay down right in the road. They could have cared that we were there. We shut off the engine and watched them and the elephants. The male lion had been limping a bit and the guide said he probably had picked up a thorn in his paw. The bushes and trees had some wicked looking thorns.

Eventually, the elephant matriarch and largest elephant in the herd was getting nervous having the lions so close by, because they had several young elephants that the lions could overpower if they wanted to, so she came over to the lions and chased them away. They got up and left, but did not act too worried about her...they were in no hurry.

I could not believe that we had just gotten there and we had already seen several animals including the elephants and lions. We were told that our next game drive would leave 5:30 tomorrow morning and we would have breakfast after our game drive. We were tired from our drive there, so we ate dinner and went right to bed. It was such a beautiful place and hearing the lions roar was rather surreal. I imagined it was the ones we had seen today and smiled at the thought. I never would have believed that I would be amidst these amazing animals. There was definitely something spiritual about the whole experience with nature. And seeing these dangerous animals act so docile around us gave me a whole new respect for them and their quest to find food and stay alive.
It was a GREAT day! Except that Elder Kyle got sick about then, and he was throwing up during the night. YUCK - I feel bad for him.