After an incredibly busy two weeks leading up to our departure, we boarded a KLM plane headed to Amsterdam. Most people going to Johannesburg from Houston fly Delta through Atlanta. That flight was so full we could not get seats together, so we opted for a KLM flight. We upgraded our seats to an economy plus where we had 4″ more of legroom. Our seats also reclined a bit more. It was worth it! We were in the middle section where LaDawn had an empty seat next to her on both legs of the journey. We are happy to say the flight was incredibly uneventful! We arrived in Johannesburg about 9:30 pm on May 2nd. Abram (area driver) picked us up and took us to 51 Oxford apartment 20. There were probably 10-11 senior missionaries waiting to greet us (this is now 11:30 pm). By the time we made it to the apartment and into bed, it was 1 am. Surprisingly we have not had too many episodes of jet lag. LaDawn has done better than me, but I think I am past it now.

LaDawn and I have had two different experiences over the last two weeks. I have been crazy busy and she has been trying to get access to a SharePoint site so that she can help with missionary applications. Right now there are about 150 applications a month that are received into the Area that need to be reviewed prior to sending them on to Salt Lake City. This includes a thorough medical review and a document review. Often there is additional information that is required that further complicates the process. Sometime ago, a senior missionary set up the SharePoint site and the permissions have been working. Recently, the only couple that had admin rights went home and their Church credentials were removed in 30 days, so there is no one who has admin rights to the site and Church credentials. Working through this with the Information and Computer Services team has been slow.

On the other hand, I have had more work to do than I could get done. Much of this time was spent learning and understanding the processes and the people who can help me as I help the mission presidents. One of the great blessings of coming back to Africa at this time has been Peter Sackley. Peter was our IFR for the last 6 or so months of our mission in Ghana and resides in Accra. We developed a good working relationship and even a close personal friendship. Because there is only two hours difference between our time zones, I can reach out to him long before anyone in Salt Lake is even awake. He has been incredibly helpful to me. He will be going home before the end of the month and I will hopefully be able to pay it forward by helping his replacement the way he helped me. The other aspect of the transition from my successor (Roger Connors), is that there were a number of items that he had started but was unable to finish because he was waiting on either a decision or a response. Getting up to speed on each of these cases took additional time. And then there is a learning curve associated with the system (Missionary Inquiry or INQ for short). Learning the ins and outs of how the system works and the how what I put into the system comes out for someone else has been interesting. In my work at Shell associated with Master Data, what I learned is that the only way to make sure the right data is input is by understanding how the users on the other end use the output. This will be an ongoing learning experience for me.

So what has kept me so busy? There are three different mission languages in the South and Central Areas of the Church. English, French, and Portuguese. Communicating with Mission Presidents who need help/advice in another language that I don’t speak can be a challenge. Google translate is good, but it doesn’t do well with Church lingo. I have tried ChatGPT, and I have been told the translation is better, but still imperfect. This is something I will continue to refine as I learn.

Because we are in Africa, and the health systems are not always great (exception is here in Johannesburg), there are Mission Leaders who need help with managing the health of their missionaries. We have amazing Area Medical Advisors. In the South Area, we have Elder Kerry Johnson (medical) and Sister Julie Shiffler (mental health). In the Central Area we have Elder David Crimin (medical) and Sister Velvalee Reid (mental health). All four are great blessings to these mission leaders. Unfortunately, we have many of our missions without a mission nurse or doctor to work directly with the missionaries. This then falls on the wife of the Mission President which must at times feel overwhelming. Despite all the effort to keep missionaries “physically strong and mentally awake”, there are times when a missionary needs to transfer to a service mission or simply return home for medical care and rest. Sometimes the medical care happens infield, but this too often requires approval from both the Area and the Missionary Medical in Salt Lake. All of these situations involving a missionary returning home require the stake president, the mission president, the area presidency, the Missionary Department Health Services, and the Missionary Department (including a General Authority) all agree that returning home is in the best interest of the missionary and their family. Once everyone is in agreement (lots of emails including the home service mission advisors and the parents if transferring to a service mission), either the South or Central Area Travel group has to be contacted to arrange flights home (even more emails and follow-up). We also have a lot of temporary assignments in both areas because of visa waiting issues. Once the visa comes through, there is a process that when followed does not need my involvement. Sometimes it is followed and sometimes it isn’t. When it isn’t followed, then I get a call from a mission president asking for help to move a missionary off of his roster or onto his roster. My intent however, is to continue the work that Elder Connors started in holding people accountable for their part in all of the processes we work with.

We also have situations where a missionary needs to go home early in order to start college (most African colleges only have one entry time a year). In addition, sometimes we have a missionary who simply cannot adjust and insists on his own that he be released to return home (more approvals and emails). As mission leaders, we would explain to missionaries struggling to adjust that they had to give it their very best for 12 weeks before we would act on their request. Most of the time, they would adjust in that time frame. Sometimes they refused to try and ended up leaving early.

We also face the unfortunate situations where a missionary needs to go home to facilitate the repentance process. These are by far the most difficult. They don’t happen often, but they do happen. Sometimes, an otherwise innocent companion will go home as well because they did not protect their companion from doing something significantly wrong. With over 4200 missionaries serving in the South and Central Areas combined, it is inevitable that these types of issues and concerns arise. Helping mission leaders work through these challenges and obtain the approvals and transportation home is my primarily role. I am also responsible for documenting all of the approvals in the INQ system. I might also add, that we work with the reassignment of missionaries back into the field following a medical leave of absence, a period of repentance, or reinstatement from a service mission. We see the impact of doing all of this for 4200 missionaries. Imagine the effort worldwide for 80,000!

While I have highlighted the majority of issues I am involved in, there are other one off situations that I deal with. For example, arranging transportation for a grown child of a senior missionary needing to travel to Africa to take their ailing parent home. Another example is a missionary with a glass eye that needs a replacement. Sometimes I get involved with returned missionaries. In one case, a returned missionary injured his knee while serving and could not get the medical care he needed in his home country – so has to travel to a nearby country for an operation. I am sure I will yet be involved in situations we have not even considered.

Each senior missionary couple is assigned to serve in a ward or branch in the area to do what we can to help the local congregations. We serve in the Forest Hill Branch which is part of the Centurion Stake where President Nkosi is the stake president. It is about 18 miles north of here in an exceptional building. Here are some pictures.

Definitely the nicest building (converted from a house) that we have seen in Africa. It even has carpet on the floors! The branch president is impressive. His name is Robert Sithole.

The stores here are amazing. Pick n Pay, Woolworths (independent and unaffiliated with all other Woolworths chains), Makro (Walmart purchased 51% of it in 2011 and the rest in 2023 I- a great store and much like a Sam’s Club), TakeaLot (very much like Amazon), and Builder’s Warehouse (also owned by Walmart and much like a smaller Home Depot), PNA (excellent stationery store), and many more. The choices here are endless. Prices tend to be less than US prices and the South African brands are quite good. We have to pinch ourselves at times that we are really in Africa. Wherever one parks his/her, there are parking lot attendants. These are men who we think just work for tips. Their job is to help you find a parking spot, keep the vehicles safe while in the store, and then help you when unload your groceries or cart of goods into your car. The expected tip is 5 Rand, which equates to 28 cents.

The restaurants here are also excellent, and a seemingly better value than in the US. So far we have eaten at Mike’s (steaks, chicken dishes, burgers), Fishmonger (excellent fish, sushi), Rocomamas (smash burgers), and a great gelato place called Gelato Mania. We have also seen Burger King, McDonalds, and KFC but haven’t eaten at any of them.

In the Area Office we work with 41 other senior missionaries (includes one single senior sister). It is an impressive group. Most of us live at Fifty-One Oxford in the part of town called “ParkTown”. We live on the second floor and have a 3 bedroom flat. It is small, but more than adequate for us. We drive a Toyota Corolla Cross (I think the Cross is somewhat new model here in South Africa – think mini Rav4). We have a parking spot under the complex. There is no a/c and no heaters in the units. We first started just using space heaters because in the winter at an elevation of 5500 feet above sea level it gets into the 40’s at night. The Connors had purchased three combination A/C units with heaters but we didn’t hook any of them up originally (each requires an airtube in the window to draw in air.) We purchased the units from them (they gave us an incredible deal) and we have been so grateful. The space heaters are extremely inefficient compared to the Jet-Air heater/air conditioner. One Jet-Air unit can heat most of the apartment. You can see it in the back right in the living room picture. The washer and dryer are in the kitchen. The cycles are extremely long for washing which seems to be a European standard. We are grateful for the level of comfort and convenience we enjoy (5 minutes from the Area Office).

Our third bedroom in our apartment functions as an office for both of us. I have two monitors, LaDawn has one. We also have a color laser printer and a space heater because that back room gets cold and the warm air from the living room doesn’t get there. And while we have this office at the apartment, we still try to go into the office at the Area Offices most days. My biggest interaction is with the Travel group and being able to go down and speak to them from time to time is valuable for me and for them. Other than travel, there are not a whole lot of people that we interact with in the office each day. Although because of the struggles LaDawn has had with access to the SharePoint site, she has been a frequent visitor to ICS. 😊

The first week here was a bit of a blur. I was buried with work and LaDawn was trying to figure out her role. Because of that, we didn’t make it to the temple. The temple here only offers 6 sessions Tuesday – Thursday (10, 11, 3, 4, 5, 6) and on Friday they have 7 sessions (7,8,9,10,3,4,5,6) and on Saturday they have 6 sessions (7,8,9,10,11,12). The good news is we managed to go on Wednesday of this last week to the 10 am session. It was great being in the temple. While the design on the outside is the same as Dallas and Manila, it is slightly different on the inside. Nevertheless, it was a great day for us to be back in the House of the Lord and brought back some fond memories of our experiences in the Dallas and Manila Temples.

The last item I will mention this week is what we are doing to get some exercise. One of the items we received from the Connor’s was a stationary exercise bicycle. It is actually quite good. In addition, I have played golf with Elder Johnson at the Killarney Golf Course for the last two Fridays. We leave the apartment at 6:10 and are playing by 6:30 am. We can play 9 holes in two hours and it costs us $10 each. Elder Johnson bought a hand pulled golf cart and then gave one to me as well so we can pull our clubs. The carts are pretty light duty, but they work great. It is so amazing to be out in nature early in the morning, even if it is 50 degrees!

The other thing we do for exercise is play pickleball with some of the other senior missionaries on Saturday morning. Elder Connors would play Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, but we just don’t have the stamina to play that much. Two hours on Saturday morning is plenty for both of us. We play at “The Country Club” where Elder Johnson has a membership. Here is a picture of the three courts on which we play. They are very nice.

And that is a rundown of our first two weeks in Johannesburg. We are beginning to find a rhythm but we are not there yet. We find great joy in being full-time missionaries and doing our part to help gather Israel and establish Zion as we Serve Together in South Africa.