We have had some crazy days and some frustrating days.  There was the day Mark tried to book a trip home for an Elder who was due to be released in 3 weeks, when his mother died suddenly.  Mark soon learned that he is unable to book flights that take missionaries out of the mission. He contacted Africa South Area travel, emailing that he needed

a flight from Kasane Botswana to Luanda Angola.

Clear, Bolded, and on a separate line.

Area travel booked a flight from Gaborone to Angola.  The lady who booked the flight said “Well he can use the Gaborone airport.”  Mark said “No….Kasane is 15 hours from Gaborone!”  Her reply was “I wish I knew that before I booked the flight”.

It took more than 10 hours for them to correctly book his flight home.  We had to have the elder drive half-way for 6 hours to Francistown, and then another 6 hour bus ride to Gaborone.  He did make it home for the funeral, arriving at 8am just in time.

Two days later a sister from Kiribati was bitten by a dog. She required a series of rabies shots and some kind of immunoglobulin shot.  The immunoglobulin is not available in Botswana so we needed to fly her to South Africa.  She transited through Johannesburg when coming to Botswana.  However she was not allowed to enter South Africa to get the shot without an Entrance Visa.  To get a visa she has to apply at a consulate office in Australia or New Zealand.  That’s not going to happen.  Now the mission president’s wife (who is an RN) is flying to Johannesburg to pick up the injection and bring it back to administer here.  We hope they do not stop her for transporting medicine into Botswana.

Sometimes it is frustrating and discouraging.

On June 1st we are opening 7 new missionary flats.  Six are in Botswana and one in Namibia.  None are in the city where we live.  We will be very busy trying to get everything done.  We have a senior couple taking care of the flat in Namibia and another senior couple setting up the flats in Francistown.  We have to figure out how to set up the flats in Palapye 3 hours north of us.  There are no senior missionaries there.  The members meet as a small group.  We visited there one Sunday.  There were about 34 people there with a baptism after church.

Most of the converts in our mission are young people.  It could be because the missionaries are young, the young people are drawn to them.  The missionary's greatest joy is seeing lives change.  Not only the converts are changing, the missionary’s lives are changing as well.

Almost every day we have a new incoming missionary pop up on the missionary portal roster. Right now, there are 77 missionaries coming by the end of the year.  In the morning when Mark logs in, that is his happy moment, seeing the new names showing up.

BYU Continuing Education brought the Legends dancers to Southern Africa.  They stopped by Botswana and did their Living Legends performance, which were dances from the Islands and Central/Southern Americas.  The audience was a little sparse, but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

One of our Senior Couples needed to notarize a document needed back at home, so we joined them to visit the US Embassy.  You can’t park near the Embassies; you have to park at the end of the street in a dirt lot.  We had to turn in our phones, which didn’t work anyway because of the Cell service blocking.  Once we got into the Embassy, the counselor was really nice.  He was able to notarize, and invited us to register with the Travel.State.gov website so they could send us warnings, if needed.

DHL was able to send the notarized form to South Carolina, but Overnight delivery means 7 days here.

But we had not seen a rhino.  Our guide took off to the other side of the reserve to try and find them, but in the near distant sky was a massive storm coming.  It struck ferociously and suddenly.  The driver started chucking blankets from the front seat back to us to help keep the rain, which was blowing in sideways through the jeep, off of us.  It was mostly futile.  We bundled up and watched the driver try and get back to the exit while driving, hiding under a blanket.  It kind of looked like he was wearing a burka!

Back at the entrance, we had dinner at the restaurant.  The storm had knocked the power out, except in the kitchen. We enjoyed dinner by candlelight.  They eventually brought out some propane heaters to dry us off.

The experiences we have; you can’t plan nor expect them.  Just enjoy (or endure) them.

But they do make great stories.