Greetings from Africa!

Well, it’s been an interesting week – not so much ‘creatively’ as
‘remedially’. What, you might wonder, can I be talking about? Well, for
one thing there was the failure of the battery in Louise’s new laptop,
right when we needed it for the meeting of the congregation last
weekend. Oops. So, we went without music and the PowerPoint that was
the center of her sermon. Oops. Fortunately, it was printed out, so we
just handed out the copies and made do with those. Then, when we had
scheduled to go to Johannesburg to get the battery replaced, there was
a sudden disappearance of unleaded gasoline from all of the stations.
Oops. The minister in charge of such things announced that there was no
crisis and no shortage, but that didn’t suddenly make actually fuel
show up in actual stations. We used the little fuel remaining in the
car to do a strategically designed shopping and banking trip – the
banking part being absolutely necessary in order to pay for our air
tickets to America – when I decided to try my luck at a station close
to the shopping center. And they had fuel! So we quickly reorganized
our day and went to Johannesburg. The good part was that, probably due
to a combination of the schools being out (= people being away on
holiday) and the fuel non-crisis, the traffic was uniquely cooperative.
We went to the computer store, and also to the house of the distributor
of literature for the Institute for Scripture Research for some needed
materials, and got home all without major traffic jams. This, normally,
is utterly impossible in JoBurg, so we were very grateful. 

We also had a sudden burst of more-or-less heavy counseling this week.
It began with a black lady who was doing some work for us learning that
she was NOT getting a job she thought had been promised, and sort of
falling apart here in our flat. Before she even left to go home a
friend just showed up without appointment with various troubles – well,
actually, in just about every area of her life. Then we went off to a
scheduled appointment with a spiritual daughter and her new,
ever-more-serious boyfriend. The good news there is that he is a
terrific young man and all seems well. The young lady was getting ready
to go spend time with her father, with whom there is a lifetime of
trouble, so she needed some encouragement. Then immediately after that
we met with a lady who recently returned from several months in Israel,
during which a huge amount of exciting and/or traumatic things
happened. The next morning Louise went to meet with a lady she knows
who has been through a lot of trauma recently. I excused myself because
the lady in question really doesn’t know me, and so cannot be expected
to be as open with me as with Louise alone. Equally important, the
chairs at the neighboring restaurant where the last many meetings were
held are rather hard and I just couldn’t face another marathon session
sitting on a board. Good thing, because that one went on for 4 1/2
hours. Ouch.

The most creative part was FINALLY getting the tickets for the trip to
America. We kept hearing various stories on possible ways to get
unbeatable ‘deals’, which sounded sufficiently attractive and plausible
that we really couldn’t just ignore them. However, none of them turned
out to really work. So, we finally just booked tickets (arriving in
Kansas City on 1/19 and leaving on 2/15). There was one issue, in that
Louise could have come to America much cheaper by being on different
flights than me. After a little thought – and I’m embarrassed that any
thought was needed at all – I decided that such a thing was simply
unacceptable in principle. There is just no way I was going to leave my
new bride in an airport in one part of the world and hope to meet up
with her some days later on the other side of the globe. Sometimes
reasonable decisions just cost more than stupid ones. Better to
discover that before the time, I say.

We don’t really have any new and exciting pictures for this week. We
realized, too late of course, that we should have taken pictures of
both the signs announcing the absence of any unleaded fuel at the
stations, and the headlines announcing that there was, in fact, no
shortage of fuel at all. Oops. But, since everyone always says how much
he or she enjoys getting pictures in the emails, I decided to include a
wedding picture I don’t think I’ve sent before. The point here is that
this is how ya’ll should be expecting to see me when we are in America.

Love from Africa,
Lary and Louise

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