We have had a fun, busy, past 6 days and the next four days will be even BUSIER!!! We had district council in Manzini on Friday morning and then district leader council which we had all of our zone come too! 

Elder Lee (right) and Elder Clawson (our DL), serve in Nhlangano but are in our district. 

We usually do our meeting every Friday over the phone but they were in town!! 

Elder Hlatshwayo and the zone leaders, his trainers

It was the first time meeting with our FIVE new elders in our Eswatini Zone!  It was great! 

Friday night, Sister Tirhani Ngomane, our S&I Coordinator from Johannesburg, came to stay with us and we had our first Inservice meeting for seminary and institute teachers on Saturday morning.  We had only ONE teacher and our district council member come!?!?! (We have always had 12-14!!?)

Seth (Sihle) Nkambule on the right teaches institute in Mbabane and Nkosingphile Ndwandwe is our District Council representative for S&I.

Trevor Zulu below on the left was baptized by Elder Reneer (on the right). Next to Trevor is Elder Hlatshwayo, then Elder Jolley and in the pink jacket is Trevor's brother Lindelwa, who will be baptized in February! 

Sunday, on the way back from our meeting with the district presidency and branch presidents in Manzini, we saw this family of Apostolics, walking home from their church.  They all wear very colorful costumes, so do the Jerichos and the Zionists.

MONDAY

We heard from Sister Truman about the Baobab Batik Workshop in Malkerns. So we went to check it out on Monday!  We had seen a small sign on the highway with an arrow but never drove down to see what it was!  It's an AWESOME place!  We added it to our itinerary and are taking our senior missionary couples there on Friday. (They arrive tomorrow during zone conference and we have 3 days of FUN in Swaziland planned for them before they go back to Johannesburg on Sunday!  We love showing people our beautiful Swaziland! 

Looking across one of many pineapple fields in Malkerns, next to Baobab Batik Workshop

The Workshop buildings

On the left, you can see the fabric hanging to dry, then the place where they dye the fabric,

inside is the room where the women draw the designs, press the fabric, and put the wax on before it goes to be dyed.

Applying the hot wax to the fabrics... 35 women work at the workshop

Pressing, measuring and cutting the fabric...

What a CUTE, friendly bunch of ladies!!!  We LOVED meeting them!

These three met us in the front office. 

There is a little "store" off to the left and I bought a scarf! 

We saw some like this hanging on the line....

TUESDAY

Nearly every 6 weeks for MLC our zone leaders come to our flat and use our laptop to join the meeting in Johannesburg. I found this photo of Elder Reneer and Elder Jolley on the mission blog, at the last MLC on January 29th, as they sat in our office. (We always fix lunch for them since they have a short amount of time to eat while the elders in Joburg have  pizza brought in!

We went to Mbabane to Swazi Mall before lunchtime to order the pizzas for zone conference at Pizza Inn and to buy chocolate chips and nuts at Spice World while the ZLs  had were having MLC on the computer at our flat.  I bought this shorter African dress in Mbabane, so I can wear it to church and not look like I am in a lounging outfit.

WEDNESDAY

We LOVE these two! Sindi, is our neighbor, who lives with our landlady (the owner of all the flats in three compounds).  Futhi Dlamini lost her husband 3 years ago and had Sindi move right in with the family.  Simangaye is four and his sister Tipholele is 11. The two older sisters are at school in South Africa. Sindi has had ALL of the missionary lessons and has had MANY missionaries teach her with us for the past several months.  She has been to church four times, but often has to go to Hlutse to her homestead to care for her mom on the weekends and other times has to take care of meals, etc. for her boss's visitors, go to Mbabane with the kids, etc... so she is not able to attend our branch regularly.  We are hoping she can attend in February and be baptized on our last Sunday here, January 24th...

We had a lesson with Sindi today. Simangaye is always with her.  He is the cutest kid! We were making Carmelitas for zone conference and for dessert for the senior couples on Friday night at our flat, so I fixed some with vanilla ice cream for them. Simangaye told Sindi to just leave him here today and he is going to live with us!! 

He said he just needs his pajamas and toothbrush! Haha!