Cape Town Mission Field 

9 February 2018
Day 62
Friday

Today we stopped at the office and Sister Courtright cut up some watermelon to be taken to the "Day Zero" zone conference for everyone in the West Cape. We drove out the repaired vehicle loaded with some supplies for specific Elders along with some snack foods and watermelon for after the zone conference.

President Lebethoa went through the safety issues associated with what could happen on day zero. This includes planning for a 72 hour emergency bucket that we loaded up in the kitchen for every boarding. Everyone should already have 72 hours of food handy all the time in addition to the bucket. Everyone should have a listing of safe haven locations, emergency cash, and 10 L of water. The water will be coming on Monday to be distributed to the Elders. It was a good meeting prepared with the foundation scripture regarding those who are prepared need not fear. This is both spiritual and temporal in nature. The President asked four Elders to bear their testimony at the conclusion of the conference. Elder Keetch spoke to us about his struggle to know what to do during the past two weeks following his fathers death. He felt the struggle to want to stay but eventually realized that the Lord has a purpose for him back home to be with his mother and brothers. So he would be departing tonight with Elder Mauerman that is returning home. This afforded him the opportunity to travel with another elder, as they always need to travel in pairs.

Afterwards Elder Courtright arranged to swap back cars with the Elders who had the spare and the spare would go to the Elders that need to have their car taken in for some body work. It turns out that car had a flat. When Elder Courtright asked Elder Msali to put on the spare, Elder Msali informed Elder Courtright that the spare was flat and that they were going to get it fixed but hadn't had a chance to do so. So Elder Courtright asked Elder Msali to pull off the flat while he looked for a spare from one of the other cars. Elder Msali informed Elder Courtright that their car doesn't have a jack. So Elder Courtright borrowed the spare and jack from the car he just brought to the conference for Elder Msali to use to replace their flat tire. The Elders that got their car back now have a flat spare to get fixed. It turns out that the car that Elder Msali was getting for his replacement had a slow leak in the same front passenger side tire due to a nail. So they now have to contend with getting that fixed.

Once Elder Courtright had make all the adjustments and everyone had their cars loaded he got into the car he needed to take to the body shop and realized that it was a stick shift. Sister Courtright saw the dejected look on his face and asked "What's wrong, you've driven a stick shift before." And Elder Courtright replied "Yeah, but it's on the wrong side.".

So that was a laughable experience.

We made our way back to the office where Sister Courtright picked up our car and followed Elder Courtright to the body shop in Plumstead. This was Sister Courtright's first time driving solo! Woo hoo!

After dropping the car off we stopped at the Makro store to pick up battery powered lanterns for all the boardings to be used in case of emergency loss of lighting. It was late in the afternoon and we decided to call it a day so we headed back home. There was road construction around the perimeter of the apartment complex so we decided to go out to dinner. We stopped back at the Ou Meul restaurant for dinner. It was early for dinner, so we had lunch. Elder Courtright had the chicken curry and Sister Courtright had the fish-n-chips. We also had a nice sauce on the side, something I thick Deon and Sean would appreciate. Mrs H. S. Ball's Original Recipe Chutney (Blatjang). Mmmm.

We decided to drop off the lanterns back at the office because we didn't want to leave them outside the perimeter gate of our apartment complex if we couldn't get inside due to the construction.

When we got to the office we met Elder Keetch and Mauerman who were having their exit interview with the President. It was not a coincidence that we ended up back at the office just in time to wish Elder Keetch a fond farewell. He truly was a great asset to the mission. We will miss him and wish him all the best.