Our Mission to Swaziland & Johannesburg South Africa

This was a GREAT weekend! This morning, we were up at 5:30 and left for Manzini at 6:30 a.m. to pick up Pres. Mahlalela. His cousin (that he calls his sister, since they don't use the words cousin or nephew or niece here) Ncamsilie Gwebu and her two daughters, Lindelwa 15 and Sihlelelwe 8, were baptized in Nhlangano Branch at 8:30 a.m. It was a wonderful baptism! What a neat family! The son, Brian Gwebu is already a member and was there to baptize his two sisters. We know him from Mbabane Branch. Thando, the YSA who shopped, came up with the recipes and cooked the food yesterday, is Brian's good friend and is the Elders' Quorum President in Mbabane Branch, so he was also there for the baptism and confirmed Sister Ncamsile. Pres. Mahlalela baptized her. We met this family first, visiting Mbabane Branch last month and then when we were in Nhlangano Branch in January and were so happy to get to be there for their baptism!

Pres. Solomon Enoch Mahlalela, Brian Gwebu, Ncamsile

Gwebu, Lindelwa Gwebu and Sihlelelwe Guebu

Elders Feliciana and Elder Smith taught the family.

Transfers are this Tuesday and Elder Smith is being transferred

to Ezulwini to be the new ZL in Elder Pulley's place. Elder Feliciana

finishes his mission in 6 weeks and returns home to Brazil.

I went to Primary the first hour and was SO pleased to see them using more
pictures and doing some things we trained on 2 weeks ago in our District
Auxiliary Training for Primary! Ü I also LOVED attending Relief Society and
hearing the sisters bear testimony of what the Book of Mormon means to them
during our lesson on Pres. Nelson's talk from last General Conference,
"The Book of Mormon: What Would Your Life Be Like Without It?"

Yesterday, we helped with the District YSA Valentine Activity/Dinner/Dance/Institute. We helped the two groups of YSA reps, Amanda, Fezile, Thando and Skhulile, shop for the food at 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., transported the food from Pick N Pay to the chapel, made two trips home to pick up extra things they needed, helped decorate, helped with a game, taught the Institute lesson and helped with serving the dinner. They did a wonderful job with the food! We had about 50 YSAs in attendance and they had a FUN afternoon. Because of everyone having to travel by khombi, it was held from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. so they could get home before dark. But with "Swazi time", most didn't arrive until 3:30 or even 4:30, and they were having SO much fun the last little while, we let it go until 6:30 p.m. Ü

SWAZILAND DISTRICT YSAs from Mbabane, Ezulwini and Manzini

(Lots of them had already left, and others were in the building and didn't get in the photo. The guy who had my camera took the picture before we even knew it!? Haha!)

While we were shopping, we had to buy a dragon fruit since we have

never seen them before!? It's good but kind of expensive!

When the activity got started (LATE.... "Swazi time") we had only 25 there

so we started with the games. The first one was "speed dating" and they

loved it. We had 3 more guys than girls, so we rotated them into the game.

Amanda did the next game and it was a fun one!

They had to slap hands around the circle in a certain order....

"What is the condition of your heart?"

For our lesson, we put up 20 red 💗s with scripture references on them. The students

went and chose a heart and with a partner looked up the references. We had the small white hearts around the chalkboard and they had to come up and find the kind of heart their scriptures talked about and put it on the big heart and stick it on the board. Then we discussed the different "conditions" our hearts may be in and each decided what kind of

heart we may personally need to work on.

Elder Gerald Lund said:

"Carefully assessing the condition of our hearts is one of the

most essential things we can do in this life. "

Our district YSA reps did an excellent job on the dinner!

(They also had dessert but I didn't get a picture.)

We made 50 Rice Krispie 💗s too. Ü

Our YSAs LOVE to dance!!!

The activity went an extra 30 minutes (until 6:30) because

they just didn't want to stop!! They had a blast!!

(They all travel in khombis and needed to be on their way

before dark...)

How we LOVE serving with the young people here in Swaziland!!

We had to go to Mbabane today and decided to come home the "back way" on MR19 through Mhlabanyatsi and then on MR18 through Malkerns. It was a BEAUTIFUL day and a BEAUTIFUL drive along winding roads through forests of pine trees and also wide open spaces with miles and miles (kilometers) of green rolling hills in every direction! We drove
along a river, passed a sawmill, and even came upon donkeys walking down the road in
two different places. I snapped SO many pictures! But they just don't capture the beauty of the hills! Here are some of the sights we saw...