Today is the Hillcrest Family History Fair that our PA council has been working on for several months. Due to two of our speakers dropping out at the last minute, everyone was wary of how it would turn out. I quickly made name tags for everyone on the computer, because it was a request at our last meeting and I volunteered to do it. Finding the people to put them on was the hard part. The leaders and speakers were invited to a luncheon at 11:00 and someone from the ward was donating the lunch to all of us.
Sisters were in the kitchen preparing the lunch when we arrived. They were very efficient and very sweet to us. I dropped off all the cookies the senior missionaries baked for the intermission at the event. Two of our speakers were there at the lunch and quite a few of the stake leaders and public affairs team, including Sean Donnelly and Elder and Sister Murdock from Johannesburg area office. The lunch was good and healthy...Salad, rolls, couscous with vegetables and grilled chicken. Then they served cake and ice cream (the not so healthy part of the meal). The tables in the room by the kitchen were decorated nicely and Elder Kyle went right to the kitchen to help the ladies get everything ready. They seemed surprised that one of the men was offering to help, but accepted it gratefully, while I was trying to find those who needed name tags.
We had great conversation during the meal. I sat next to Stake President 1st Counselor Thwala. He is a very handsome, distinguished looking man. I found out that his occupation was a teacher and that he could speak Zulu, Afrikaans, Portuguese and English. He was really well-educated, but still humble around the church people from the U.S. He was supposed to pick up our speaker from Johannesburg, the man from the national parliament that spoke at our Bloemfontein family history fare. That man has two doctorates and chairs an organization on African History. He is also the chief whip of the parliament (like the speaker of the house in U.S.). President Thwala said he spent the night before looking up everything he could find about this speaker, so when they drove from the airport he could carry on a good conversation with him. Unfortunately, he was one of the speakers who could not come at the last minute, because of a funeral of a family member. I also sat next to Clive Reddy, a member of our PA council. He is an idea person, so he told me of all the big ideas for public affairs that he thought we should do. I certainly have my share of intellectual (and not so intellectual) conversations. Ann-maree, who is Bishop Smith's wife is the one in charge of family history for the stake. Bishop Smith came and talked to us while we were eating lunch and everyone was teasing him about coming late because he was surfing. He admitted that he had gotten up at 4 am and went down to the beach to surf. He is about 60 years old and has been surfing for 23 years. He loves it.
After the luncheon, Sean Donnelly (our boss and SE Africa Area Director) went to the kitchen and helped the sisters with the dishes. And we gathered soon thereafter in the chapel for the speakers. Anne Maree was all stressed out about the two speakers that dropped out. I told her that it was in the Lord's hands and would all work out, but it didn't seem to make her feel any better.
The first speaker was our South Africa public affairs director, Dominic Tshabalala. He spoke about how hard it is to do black African family history, because many of their ancestors could not read or write. Their history was listening to the old people tell stories. He gave some pretty entertaining examples of his youth. He told us later that he grew up with three other boys about the same age as him and thought they were his brothers. It wasn't until later that their dad came to visit and he realized they had different parents than he. They were his cousins. He also talked about the church and how it changed his life and got him to thinking about his family and their history and his relationship with his Heavenly Father. He spoke of finding out about his family, that they came from Swaziland and their name was changed when they came over to South Africa, because Swazi's had trouble with the SA government and couldn't do certain things, his family changed the spelling of their name to make it seem less like a Swazi name. Then the whole group that came over from Swazi disbursed and settled all over SA, so their names varied...some dropped the T at the beginning. Some just started with S and others changed it to CH, so he found that they were all derivatives of his families name. It was a pretty interesting story and he proved that there were ways to find out where you came from, even if you were a black African.
The second speaker was Anne-Maree Smith (She only spoke because the other two speakers didn't show up). She talked about her Afrikans background of Dutch and German descent and some interesting stories about her family search.
The next speaker was Ravi Govender from the African Arts and Culture department. He spoke about Indentured Indians in South Africa from 1860-1911. His talk was by far the most informative about how the Indians came to SA to achieve freedom and became indentured to the British. Their struggles were varied, but they valued education and no matter how poor they were, they made sure their children were educated...the main difference between them and black Africans. He also gave lots of information about how to identify where they came from. He knew that there were 38 ships that came over from India and they carried 152,000 men, women and children.The first two ships were Christians, but they brought with them their history of Hinduism and Islam. They came with 5 years of indenture, then they could go back to India or they could stay indentured five more years and they could be free and also receive the money that would have been spent to send them back. Only 23% ever returned to India. They estimate that there is now 1.2 million Indians in the Durban area, about 1/3 of the total population. He then said, "The more we understand about how we are connected the better we behave in society. We are more connected than different."
Afterwards, Elder Kyle and I presented Ravi Govender (a non member) with a triple combination of our scriptures with his name engraved on the front. We told him that we knew he was a history buff and we thought he might like to read the history of a group of people that escaped from Jerusalem to the American continents when Jerusalem was about to be destroyed. He seemed surprised and then asked how much it cost. He was not supposed to accept gifts, so we told him it was less than R300 and he asked if we could take a photo of us giving it to him. We didn't think about that being an issue, but he is a government employee, so we will think of it next time.
We then heard from a woman that Sipho asked to
speak in the place of one our missing guests,
Welile Khuzwayo from the Department of Cooperative
Governance and traditional Affairs. She spoke about the same thing that Dominic
did about how she learned her history from the old people surrounding her. She never did accept the request to speak, so we were surprised when she arrived and went up to the stand to speak.
We then broke for a snack of cookies and mango juice outside in the church courtyard. The senior missionary homemade cookies disappeared immediately. There were only store-bought cookies by the time I got out there, but everyone seemed to be enjoying the day.
We then went into a classroom to learn about reading old writing from documents obtained as early as the year 1000. Dave Honour was from the African genealogy society. he showed the different ways certain letters looked back then and how there was no u, just v used. He had pictures of documents that he showed through a projector. They were wills mostly. He showed his family wills and he also showed the author Jane Austen's will when she died. He showed us how to determine what the word is when you cannot make it out, by separating each letter. It was interesting to me, but I wondered if the black people of Africa were bored, because most of it did not apply to them. We gave that teacher a triple combination as well, with his name engraved on the front, and told him the same about reading about ancestors. He was very happy to receive it.
We then went back to the chapel and heard from a woman about indexing records for the church. She gave a good description of how that works and then she told of how she had indexed 23,000 names and then ran across one of her relatives while she was indexing one day, someone they had trouble finding. Then, Wayne Van As spoke (He works for the area office as a family history specialist for the church in Africa). He said that there were ways a black person could find out about their ancestors and gave them some ideas to try. He was very interesting.
Then Stake President Wilford spoke about how he and his wife went on vacation to Scotland to try and find one of his wife's ancestors that they had not been able to find. Their 12-year-old daughter was with them. Unfortunately, when they went to look for the graves, they found out that it was a holiday and none of the places where the records were kept, such as libraries or government offices, were open that day. Their daughter said, "Let's go look at graveyards." So, they drove around until they found a huge graveyard with thousands of graves. Their first thought was that there was no way they would find anything there. They got out of the car and their daughter took off looking for their ancestor's name on the gravestones and mom and dad started looking down the rows. Not ten minutes had passed before they heard their daughter yell, "I found him." President Wilford said, "Do you think that was coincidence?" He read the scripture from the Old Testament that talks about turning the hearts of the children to the fathers and the hearts of the fathers to the children. He then said, "Our ancestors are turning their hearts to their children, as they seek family history information. It was very powerful. It made me want to get busy finding my difficult to find relatives. I found this Internet video of him talking about a product that has something to do with his being a clinical psychologist. It might be fun for you to listen to the way he talks,
http://www.profilessa.com/blog/?p=36
Then the family history fair was over, but the day was not over for public affairs. We had a dinner meeting with our public affairs directors and representatives of the Stake Presidencies. We had the 2nd counselor of Hillcrest Stake and the 2nd counselor of Durban Stake, plus Sipho and Clive of our PA team and some of the wives. The food was so good....wow! We ate at the Olive and Oil restaurant and they had everything from seafood to steak. I got a chicken dish that was the best meal I have had since we've been there. Everyone was equally happy with their food, but Sister Murdock was feeling sick and went out to the van. We heard later that she had been throwing up all afternoon and had a terrible pain in her stomach. We tried to get her to go back to our flat, but she said she would just stay in the van and sleep. She didn't sleep and finally felt so bad that her husband took her back and then joined us later. It was a 30 minute drive, so over an hour round trip.
We discussed the David Glen Hatch tour in August and what we needed to do to prepare for that event, as well as the wheelchair giveaway right before the event and helping hands projects that could prepare the youth centre before the event. We also talked about Elder Bednar coming in October and what we wanted to do with him for three hours on Friday evening as a public affairs activity. Wow. We gave suggestions and then agreed to talk with our PA councils and get back to Sean Donnelly with some suggestions. Everyone was so happy to be there discussing all this stuff. They are amazing people. It is so fun to work with them.
We then went back to the flat and discovered that Sister Murdock was not any better...perhaps worse. She said the pain was worse than labor pains, but once again, said she didn't want to go to the hospital. We all went to bed and at 2:30 am, Elder Murdock knocked on our bedroom door and asked if Elder Kyle could take them to the hospital. He took them and then came back when he found out they were going to keep her for awhile. Of course, neither of us could go back to sleep until about 6:00 AM and then had to get up to take Sean to church to meet with our Cape Town PA person who was here visiting and then to take Sean to the airport. Well, at least it is not dull here! Ha.
Sunday we went to Chatsworth ward again (Indian ward), because we had an appointment with the Bishop after the bloc. There were not many people to begin with, but they started to file in late and ended up having a good group. Late is the Standard in Africa. They have such a nice building. The parking is under the building and it is tucked into a mountain. The grounds are very nice as well. It was fun seeing some of the same people we met before and we thoroughly enjoyed the testimonies that were given. There is always a sweet spirit here during testimonies and the Indian people seem more sure of themselves.
We separated for Relief Society and Priesthood. Elder Kyle was glad to be able to attend High Priest class (most ward here meet all together, because they don't have any high priests). Our teacher talked about self reliance. She wrote money on the blackboard in big letters and asked everyone to comment about the word. Most of the comments were negative and she said, "Wait, money is not a bad thing. Let's talk about what it provides us that is good." They then started naming items like housing, food, clothing, utilities, education, etc. and had to agree that we need money. Then she had the name things they want but don't need. As an example, she put 'Mercedes" on the board and talked about how it's okay to buy a nice car if you have the money, but you don't go into debt for it. She talked about why going in debt is bad and how it can cause you to feel worry and then guilt and then Satan steps in and makes you think you should stop doing the right things, because they make you feel guilty and before you know it, you have fallen away. She explained about how we cannot help other people when we are in trouble...that we don't have anything left to help buoy our spirits of someone else's...that we become not only temporally deprived, but spiritually deprived. She did a good job.
After the lesson, we met with Bishop Chetty about doing a helping hands project for the youth centre. He agreed that he would get people from his ward to come over the Saturday of the concert and clean bathrooms, windows and whatever else needs cleaned. We also talked about how to get people to attend and made plans to get the word out to the Chatsworth community and the Rising Sun newspaper. See the Mandela sign in this photo that they put up at the youth centre.
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