Samantha's Wedding and Baptism

As I went back through my posts, I realized that I had never really posted the pictures of the baptism we had back in February!  I want to add it now because I want to have it here in my record of our mission.  It probably won't  be very long because I don't have that many pictures, but I will include some of the more up-to-date pictures of Samantha and Zamile.

We began visiting them in November of 2009.  The Elders took us to meet them and we had a lot of fun with them from the start.  Later they told the missionaries that we could come over anytime and we started visiting with them once a week in the evening.  At first we mostly talked about marriage because they were trying to decide whether they wanted to be married.  They had been living together for about three or four months and they didn't see any problem with it.  Samantha (her real name is Nomathomsanqua and some people call her Tammy--Samantha is her middle name) had her baby in December and of course I really enjoyed the new baby and we bought her some gifts to help them get started---diapers mostly---they call them nappies. We just got to be close friends as we read scriptures together and shared jokes and things.  Here is the first picture we took of them.  You may have seen this one on Facebook. 

 Samanthat hates this picture because her shoulders are not covered.  It was summer and very hot that day.  We learned about chastity in Relief Society and that women should dress modestly and now she dresses much more carefully.  The baby is about 2 and a half months old here---her name is Ncikilelo -sounds like nseek-ee-lay-lo---they call her Ciki (seeky).  This picture was taken about the time they decided to get married. 
The Branch President is not a High Priest, so he could not perform the marriage.  We decided to talk to the Stake Leaders and a counselor in the Stake Presidency, President Cedrus, offered to perform the marriage.  He wanted to do it that week---we had no time to really prepare very much.  But Zamile said yes, lets do it this week, and so the date was set for Tuesday night.  And it was Sunday.  We know now that we should have insisted it be on a weekend because it made it hard for people to attend, but at least we had the wedding.  Samanthat was very anxious to be baptized, so they set the baptism for the same night.  We were very excited!

Here is the happy couple on their wedding night.

And here are the happy missionaries - Elder Peterson and Elder Haugen! --with them.

Of course we had to get in the pictures - the woman is Zamile's mother - Mama Ndunyana

And there's one of these in every crowd - this is one of the member's little boys. He was fascinated by the cameras flashing everywhere.

There were lots of papers to sign - that is President Cedrus on the right and Zamile's mother and Samantha's Aunt watching them.  President Cedrus is an amazing man - so fine and gentle and spiritual.

Finally all done! And still smiling! Those are some more Aunts.  Samantha's parents have both passed away.  She never knew her father, and her mother left her when she was about six or seven.  She says she just lived on the street for a while until the Welfare people found her and took her to her Aunt.  She has lived with Aunts all her life since then until she moved in with Zamile.  She says she has no where else to go. 

After the wedding, we proceeded to the baptism.  Zamile baptized his wife.

What a super moment for us---and look at adorable Ciki!

Here are some other friends who were important that night.  These are the families of the two counselors to the Branch President.  The people on the left - the Mzayifani family -did so much to help Samantha get her dress and hair for the wedding.  They are the kindest most generous people.  The people on the right ---the Sekori family- are just good friends and great members of the church to have for examples.  We will never forget any of them!   It was a super special night.

A few days later it was Samantha's birthday and we took over a cake - she kept hinting that she wanted one.  These pictures show a change in them I think. 

She looks so happy.  When we said we wanted pictures, she had to run grab that sweater so her shoulders would be covered in the pictures.  The man on the right is Zamile's father.  He is always good to us and seems glad to see us even though he is not interested in the Church. 

So here's the new family photo - I think Zamile was getting ready to go home teaching when we took the picture.

This picture was taken a few months later when Elder Lewis was getting ready to go home.  He had taught them before getting transfered so he managed to get a chance to come see them for a few minutes. He was the one that prepared Samantha for baptism.  Elder Lewis is from Malad and we had lots of fun with him too.  The Elder with the missionary badge showing is Elder Andriamirija from Madagascar.  He is a great missionary and a super great person in general.  We have so enjoyed getting to know him.  He told us a little about living in Madagascar---it is much more third world than South Africa is. 

Did you notice that Samantha has her wig on, but it is much shorter now?  Yes, she cut it.  She said she wanted her hair to be like mine!  They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and bless her heart, she wants to be like Sister Herbert!  She also has her apron on here because she is baking muffins.  She has started baking muffins and selling them out of her home to make a little extra money. 

The baking story is the next chapter in the continuing saga of Samantha.  She told us of her dream to be a cook or at least to bake, but she had no oven.  She had a stove, but the oven didn't work.  She began making plans to get a loan and buy a stove and start her little business.  She asked us to help her with the planning and we started trying to help her.  We prayed together often about the plans and told her to pray.  About this time I was talking to Sister Harms and she asked if Elder Herbert needed any furniture for the mission because she had heard in her building that an older woman was moving to an old folks home and her neighbor ended up in charge of selling all her furniture.  I told her Samantha was looking for a stove and that the Mission might take some furniture if it was in good condition.  When she got back to me a few days later, she said she was sorry but she waited to long to tell me----all the furniture was gone except (of course) the stove.  We went over and looked at it and they wanted 700 rand for it - about $100 American so we were able to help her get it with what she had and she did not need to get a loan.  Then there was the problem of getting it hooked up in the kitchen of her in-law's home.  This is what we saw when we pulled out the older stove they already had.

Black electrical tape on bare wires - and remember this is 240 ---all of their electricity is 240--- nothing is 110. We kinda wondered why the house hadn't burned down.  And we also wondered if this was why the oven never worked---it wasn't wired correctly.  Elder Herbert was undaunted!  He was sure he could put the correct connections on it and sure enough, he did!  It is perfectly connected now and life continues with muffins being baked and sold every day.  He connected a plug like this one into the wall and saved them probably another 500 rand that they would have had to pay an electrician.

Samantha has worked so hard to get her little business going.  And it has been somewhat successful.  She sold lots when she used my recipes, but then she decided that they were too rich and cut the sugar about in half and took out one egg etc, etc, etc.  People still buy them, and it is much cheaper for her to make them, but we bought some and had to feed a few to the birds.  Are we spoiled or what? 

That is not the end however, because Samantha soon decided that she needed a job and started applying for different positions and going for interviews.  She always got disappointed though.  We felt that maybe these jobs were already filled and people were just puting them in the paper to fulfill government requirements.  It is VERY, VERY hard to get a job here.    So last week at our zone conference I was talking to the woman who fixes the luncheon for us.  She is a private caterer.  Suddenly the spirit told me to ask her about Samantha.  I wasn't that brave! I asked her how she learned to cook---whether she had gone to school and where she had gone.  I was thinking I might get some good ideas that would help Samantha.  She said she was entirely self-taught and that she had taught her son and he was now working in a restaurant downtown---not a dumpy one either!  I told her I knew a young woman who wanted to be a cook and asked what school she would recommend and she said - none of them!  I need someone to help me now that my son has a job.  If she will work with me I will teach her to cook for nothing.  She even told me what she would pay her and seemed so pleased.  She will be meeting Samantha next week and if all goes well, Samantha will help her with a dinner she has to cook for 85 people next Saturday.  She said they will cook all day on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and have the meal ready for 6 pm.  She will pay her 120 rand per day and pay for the transport to get her into town.  Samantha is on cloud 9!  that is almost as much as her husband gets paid!  She won't work all the time,because this woman said she doesn't cater continually, but she may have a job for her cooking for some people on the side if she needs more work.  We feel the Lord is blessing Samantha because she is so strong and so ready to go forward in everything she does.  She told me one day that she was fasting so that she would sell more muffins and that when she fasted, she always sold lots more.  I told her it wasn't good to fast when you are nursing a baby - it might not be healthy for you.  She said oh, it's okay---I only fast from about 9:00 to noon or 1:00!  She is really a hoot and so willing to do whatever is needed.  She says I am her angel without wings and I know that the Lord is helping me to help her.  Tune in next time and I'll tell you how the whole job thing turned out!

It's all about power here!!

One thing that really is different here in South Africa is that there is no centralized heating. None!  It doesn't get really cold here like it does at home, but it still gets cold enough to be really uncomfortable.  Even Vic has gotten cold here a few times.  They use small space heaters a lot and have some heaters that are like white boards that must have wires all through them that heat up. We have those in all the classrooms at the church building. You have to sit pretty close to the heater to feel it.

This is our little heater with a fan.  It really puts out the heat quickly, but it is very LOUD.  You can turn the fan off, but then it doesn't heat as quickly.  If you want to talk or watch TV or listen to music, then you can't use this heater.  I put it in the hallway and it takes the chill off the house in the morning while we are getting ready.  Then when we eat breakfast at the table, we move it in there by us (and turn off the fan).  The first thing I do when we come home is run turn one or both of the heaters on.

The other heater is like a radiator and puts out good heat after it warms up for a while.  It isn't really quick with the heat.  When I sit and read or sew, I usually have a blanket around me because it is too cold to just sit around.  But I also pull the heater up close so I can really feel the warmth. 

We don't use the heaters in the kitchen because the stove warms that room quite a bit and we are usually moving around in there, but if you are just doing dishes or making a salad or something it can get pretty chilly too. The dryer helps a little with the heat, because it is not vented to the outside and the heat just comes inside. But you know what that means. Lint everywhere and moisture! The windows and sometimes even the walls are wet with condensation. Things can get a little moldy if you don't open the windows once in a while to dry things out. I did three loads of wash on Saturday and there were puddles of water on the window sills from the condensation. I could hardly get the wash dry because of all the moisture in the air. That is so strange because in Idaho where I live it is so dry---we hardly know what humidity is and we keep our houses nice and cozy warm all winter.
I can't imagine what our home would be like if we had no heaters, and yet I had a woman in the Branch who has a two year old child tell me she has no heater in her house at all and it is freezing all the time. That is something I can hardly bear to think about---yes we are working on getting them a heater. They have been saving for one, but just haven't been able to save up enough money. The one they want costs 600 rand--which is less than $80 of our money. I know there are people at home who can't scrape up $80 to pay the power bill, so I know this happens at home too, but you just can't go without heat in Idaho! It is just too terrible to imagine for me because I HATE being cold!! Vic says I am always freezing, but really I usually have enough heat going in one room to make it comfortable. And I wear my big fuzzy pink bathrobe all the time at home! It's just when I move from the living room to the bedroom that I really complain!

We don't ever heat the bedroom because it is good to sleep in the cool air and we have plenty of blankets to be warm, but those cold sheets can be shocking at about 55 degrees F! The one thing I realize is how much heat we waste by heating every room in the house all day (and night) in the US. We turn all the heaters off at night here, so it is pretty cold in the morning. I get up early and run to the bathroom and then turn the heater on and go back to bed for a half hour. Works great!

South Africans have a way to help you save on electricity.  They make you pay before you use.  Kind of like buying gas for your car.  You buy some, you use it up, and then you go buy some more.  If you can't afford it, then you just don't drive the car.  They do the same thing with electricity.  If you can't afford some electricity, then you just do without it.  Everyone has a meter in their home.  Ours is in our kitchen cupboard.

This meter says we have 248 units of electricity left.  We use about 10 to 20 a day --sometimes more if I bake or do a lot of wash.  This 248 should last about 12 to 14 days although sometimes it seems to drain out really fast.  Vic says we are spending about 600 rand a month for electricity in winter which is about $85, and about half that much in the summer.   

It is actually such a good idea in many ways because you never end up owing a great big power bill. Each home has its own meter and it is completely pre-paid. You go to the grocery store or service station (called a garage here!) and buy electricity. You can buy as much or as little as you want. Your meter has a number and you buy the electricity on that number. Then you take the receipt home and it has numbers on it that you enter into your meter and then you have so many units of electricity. You have to check your meter often and remember to go buy power or you may be out sometime when you least expect it. the Elders have lots of problems with this even though we remind them to watch it when we go check their apartments. We try to buy enough electricity for 6 weeks - a whole transfer--but sometimes they leave their heaters on or something and then they run out.
Sometimes we run out of electricity in the middle of a meeting at church and have to go enter some more electricity. The Branch President has bought different amounts and he keeps the receipts in a safe. If we are at Relief Society meeting and the Branch President isn't there, we have to take ten rand (about $1.50) and go buy about 20 units and that will last us for three or four hours. Then we get paid back by the BP. I am finally getting in the habit of checking it before we start and getting the power we need so we don't have that interruption! We don't want to enter too much power in because there is a pre-school that is in our building during the week and they use up all our power if we have extra in the meter!! We never run out on Sunday because the BP puts plenty in for the day.

Since we are really careful not to use too much power, South Africans use these little stoves with only two burners and a toaster oven.  Most of the shacks and some of the flats we have been in have had these little stoves.  I think they are a great idea when you can't afford a huge stove and you want to cook inside.  They plug in like any other appliance and are pretty good.  When I first saw it I thought it was a microwave with two burners on top.  That might be interesting too!

Most of our Elders use these so we can use as little power as possible. The Elders don't really cook much anyway. At least most of them don't, but we do try to get them some easy cooking devices so they can cook quickly and efficiently. We haven't bought them all microwaves, but we think that might be coming soon.

For one thing they have these kettles to heat water. These are very nifty - they have a coil inside them that heats up so quickly and you put the water right in with the coil. This thing boils a whole pot of water in about one minute. I think it beats a microwave hands down. It is great for ramen noodles, instant cup-a-soup, hot chocolate---whenever you need hot water.

All the Americans we have talked to are trying to think of a way they can bring this thing home with them. You can see the plug laying there behind the glass---that actually goes to the toaster---the plug for the kettle is exactly like that and won't work in the USA.  I guess we'll have to design one at home and start to sell them. 

 One reason we use them so much here is that the stoves heat up really slowly, but once they get going, they are very hot and they stay hot long after you turn the heat off. I have burned things that I have set on a turned-off burner----I burned the bottom of a cake because I set it on a burner that had been turned off for at least two or three minutes. I took the cake out of the oven and set it on top of the stove. We started to smell something burning and realized it was the cake. Ruined! And the cake pan too!


I wanted to add a picture of a typical missionary kitchen here so you wouldn't think that the Elders were picked on too much.  This is one of the cleaner ones, but it is pretty typical.  This fridge is about as tall as I am, but it has a good-sized freezer on the bottom.  The whole kitchen is very small, but not too terrible. 

Of course I can't say this much about power without showing at least one picture of the power cords that we have everywhere.  We have lots of electric things like lamps, a keyboard, a radio, a TV, but only two wall outlets in the living room.  Only one outlet in each of the bedrooms and only one outlet --you saw it in the picture of the kettle---in the kitchen.  Well, there is an outlet behind the fridge for the fridge.  Yes, we can only have appliances on one counter.  That's why you saw the plugs laying there---we have to unplug something to plug in the next thing.  The don't allow ANY plugs in the bathroom, so I have to dry and curl my hair in the hallway, and plug in the washer and dryer in the hallway with a looooong extension cord.  We can't see that it is any safer with all these extension cords lying around than it would be to have a few more outlets in the wall.

The worst thing about this is that old feet don't get lifted up off the floor very far and we often stumble or at least get tangled in all these cords.  This is the cord to the washer, the dryer, and the heater.  When I dry my hair, I have to unplug one of those, but they can't all be going at once anyway.  (Here you can kinda see my pretty parquet floor that I love so much.)

So I have been thinking a lot about different ways to keep warm.  Here is a popular item - a hot water bottle with a cute cover on it and a little stuffed animal to go with it. Can you imagine putting that in bed with a child when they go to sleep.  I'm sure they wake up in the night sometimes and play with it until it pops open.  I remember hot water bottles when I was a child and it seems like they always leaked.  I didn't buy it!  

You can see behind me all the blankets and things they are selling about now. At home we couldn't imagine carrying a small blanket to church to keep warm. Think about all that area we heat every Sunday!!  Even some of the restaurants have blankets folded on every chair so you can keep warm.  Everybody has lots of blankets here.

At least one thing is about the same - the toilets!  They look about the same---but they flush very differently.  I have no idea how they work but they have quite a gush of water when you flush.  This one just has a button on top of that pipe that you push to flush.  Most of the men here say they love the way they work and wish we had the same at home.   

My bathroom in my new flat will have a small room like this which will be nice. Then you can go to the bathroom while someone is showering etc. At my new flat there is also a tiny sink in this room to wash your hands---it is so cute---I'll put up some pictures if you are interested. 


Speaking of our new flat, this is a picture I just took outside the front door of our new building.  And speaking of cute little things, check out that little green golf cart masquerading as a car!!

We see those little cars everywhere here.  Everyone is so energy conscious.  The other car is what we call a Quantum or a taxi.  It's what people use for public transportation.  Let's get a little closer and see if we can meet the driver. 

Does that guy look familiar?  Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you.  We are running Herbert's Airport Shuttle Service on the side.  It just gets us out of the office once in a while.  Our friends Elder and Sister Harms are the Public Affairs directors for most of South Africa, Madagascar, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho and Namibia.  This week they invited Reverend John Oliver of the District 6 Church to come to Salt Lake and be hosted by the General Authorities at the next General Conference.  We want the leaders of other churches here to understand that we are not evil and are not out to get them.  It is a big deal to be hosted they tell me! The Harms travel a lot!  And we often take them and pick them up from the airport.  On this day they had their Area Directors with them, so we have four people and all their luggage plus us, so we had to bring the Quantum.  Elder Herbert is getting pretty good at driving it.  It is a manual transmission and you have to shift with your left hand!  Pretty tricky!  And the funny part is that the blinkers and wipers are on opposite sides from our car.  So he keeps turning on the wipers when he means to signal and turning on the blinkers when he wants the wipers.  Just when he gets used to it, we go back to our car and he does it there for a day or so.  It is a good excuse to give him a bad time!  Those of you who know him well know that he really needs someone to give him a bad time once in a while because he is dishing it out pretty regularly.  We are having our usual amount of fun as you can see----and we are hoping you are too!  Enjoy the summer!  Our spring is coming.