We are pretty well settled in Blantyre by now. We have a nice flat, with two bedrooms and two baths so that we can have other couples stay with us when they are in the area. The Sister Missionaries were staying here, but we got a new flat for them so we have the house to ourselves most of the time. The Sisters were glad to move, since their new flat is very close to the branch chapel where they are assigned in Ndirande, and that is right at the edge of their area. They were taking the public transportation every day to reach their area, about 4 km from the house, so too far to walk. The buses are the combies, basically nine passenger Toyota's, with 18 people riding in them. All the missionaries use them, but we have never been brave enough to try it.

The weekend of Aug 23, 24 Elder Reynolds went camping with the YM of the Blantyre District, their first ever YM camp. It was quite an adventure. We drove for about 3 hours to reach the mountain, and then another 3km up the forest road in Mulanje National Park. There is a turnaround where we dropped off all the boys and gear for another 30 minute hike up the mountain. I drove back down to the ranger station to leave the truck and the bus we had rented. Then two of the young men and I started back up the mountain on foot to join the others. Silly me, I listened to them when they said they knew a short cut. The African version is based on just a shorter distance, not necessarily the easiest way. Instead of walking back up the road, we took a 40% grade trail over the top of two ridges--the old man was huffing like a hippopotamus by the time we got to camp 90 minutes later. Talk about scouting challenge--the last 100 meters is a scramble, and if I hadn't been able to hear the boys ahead laughing in the campsite, I might not have made it! I was awakened by the laughing of the hyenas about 0300, and several minutes later could hear the sound of munching right next to my head. Several of the boys got up and chased them away, after which they secured our food supply for the night. I wasn't sure how big the hyenas were, so I didn't get a picture, however I did photograph the tracks next to our tent the next morning. The following weekend of Aug 30, 31, both Sister Reynolds and I got to go with the YW of the Blantyre District for their camp. It was another adventure, this time because of the roads and the days we were driving. The main road between Blantyre and Nkopola is under construction, so it consists of many detours--took us 5 hours to cover 200km. Also because it goes through many small villages, and the weekend is their market days, it was an obstacle course of pedestrians, bicyclists, and combies about every 5km or so. There was no hike in, however, since the Nkopola Lodge is right on Lake Malawi. Not only that, but the priesthood advisers were put up in "chalets" (pronounced like pallets) with warm showers, bathrooms, air-conditioning, and electric service. Not quite the same as the week before. We had a marvelous camp, Sister Reynolds taught a first-aid class, and we were entertained by the monkeys and baboons which frequent the camp (stealing any left out food--worse than mice). This campsite was gorgeous, palm trees, sandy beach, grass covered camping area, covered cooking facility, very nice, indeed. It cost us 2000MK per girl, but that's less than $6US.

We waited one more day until Elder and Sister Fisk joined us in Lusaka. President Erickson interviewed both couples and then assigned us to work in Malawi, the Fisk's in Lilongwe (north) and ourselves in Blantyre (south). We boarded Kenya Airways at about 0130 and arrived in our new country at 0300 on the morning of 2 Aug 2013, stayed in Lilongwe Fri and Sat night, then drove down to Blantyre on Sunday 4 Aug after church. We were excited but tired, and glad to be in a more permanent situation (I hope!) Elder and Sister Prete, a counselor in the presidency, drove us down and spent the next few days training. Here's a picture of one of the many villages we drove through on the way down.

Monday we joined the Zone for an outing to Majete Game Preserve, and had a marvelous time. I took about 220 pictures, but will only post a few here.

We saw most of the animals in the park, "But No Elephants". The herd numbers in the hundreds, but they were all hiding, along with the leopards, rhinos, lions. Perhaps we will get to go another time in the next 20 months.

Tonight we are in Lusaka, Zambia in the mission home. President and Sister Ericson have graciously invited us to stay with them until we get our assignment. There are numerous places in the mission where we can be useful, and he and the Lord are trying to decide where to send us. We will wait for his directions.

The second picture is of the little bit of paradise we found out back.

Yes, that's a palm tree, and the darker tree on the right is a mango, and if you look closely you can see bunches of bananas hanging on the tree behind it. The lemon tree is on the far right. This is the back yard of the mission home, and it was 75* when we took the pictures. This is wintertime, equivalent to the end of January at home. It certainly is pleasant now, but may be much warmer come summer.

We are off to Lusaka, Zambia for the next chapter of the saga. We are being reassigned, so this should be a little more permanent (hope! hope! hope!). We have spent the last two weeks in the Southeast Africa Area Office, Sister Reynolds calling in search of lost members, and Brother Reynolds imaging new laptops and desktops to be distributed to Seminary Administrators all over southern Africa and Madagascar. This makes a total of 7 weeks we have been in limbo since being invited to leave Zimbabwe back on 6/6/13. We have made some wonderful new friends, and had a chance to say goodbye to a number of them at a "luau" this evening. We will miss the SEAA group, but are looking forward to meeting President and Sister Ericson in Zambia tomorrow 29 July. No pictures with this post, we are packing to leave. Sister Reynolds remarked that this is the 7th time she has packed the suitcases since March.

It's almost a month since our last post. My how time flies. We continued to work in the temple until it closed for extensive updates to the air conditioning/heating. It will not reopen until September 10. We had a retirement party for Sister Victoria who is in the center of the photo. She had worked until she was 93, and it was sad/happy to see her go. She has been a stalwart saint for many years.

We are still awaiting visas for Zimbabwe, and although some of the younger missionaries have finally gotten extensions, there seems to be no movement on ours. We have agreed that if we don't see any immediate opportunity to return to Zim by the 15th of August, we will seek reassignment, probably to Zambia. In the meantime, Sis. Reynolds is working in the SE Africa Area Office, helping locate members with whom the Church has lost contact, in hopes that we can rescue some lost souls. Bro Reynolds is working in the IT department, imaging Laptops and PC's for distribution to staff throughout SE Africa, from Angola to Mozambique and all points in between. Much like our short stay in Zimbabwe, and in the Temple, we have been fortunate to find a place of great need and be able to help. We are anxious to be back in the field, however, so this is just another holding pattern. Perhaps we will have more news next month.

We have now been in Johannesburg (Jo-burg)for almost two weeks and are still not sure of our status or destination. We were asked where we would like to serve in case we did not get back into Zimbabwe, and Bro. Reynolds said we would be glad to serve in the Jo-burg Temple until we could return or be reassigned to another area. So now we are installed in the temple missionary housing and working full-time in the temple, possibly until it closes for some extensive renovation from July 15 through September 9. We are happy to be serving in the House of the Lord again. It has been especially gratifying to just be a worker, since the coordinator positions we held in the Seattle Temple took us away from serving directly. Elder Reynolds has had opportunities to serve in many assignments in the last two weeks, and is really excited to be back in the swing of things again.

The temple senior missionaries take their Mondays off and go adventuring.

We are authorized to use the temple buses, and today we loaded both of them up and went to the temple president's home for a light breakfast of muffins, juice and meat rolls.

Then we visited one of the animal parks and got to walk right in with the animals. There are no predators, so it was really neat to walk up fairly close to the animals and take pictures. You asked for some pictures, so here's a sample of what we saw.

The impalas were quite shy, but some of the other antelope were inquisitive.

The zebras (say short e, not zeebras) were pretty tolerant.

The ostriches came right through the group on their way to and from the fountain.

Sister Reynolds got a picture of Sis. "Tata" in the trees.

Then we had lunch at a tea garden, out on the grounds by the duck pond. It was all by way of saying goodbye to those who will be going home when the temple closes next month.

This has been a topsy-turvy week, indeed. On Monday we were told there was a possibility that our Visas for Zimbabwe might not be approved. On Wednesday afternoon, we were told that we would be leaving the country at noon on Thursday. So by Thursday afternoon 6/6/13 we were in Johannesburg, SA, with no assignment or idea where we would end up. We spent several days in the Sunnyside Park Hotel, and finally on Monday we found out we would be temporarily assigned to work in the Jo-burg Temple as temple missionaries until the Brethren decide where we may be re-assigned. We are still hoping to be able to return to Zimbabwe, but hope is dim due to the unrest and confusion attending the elections there. We were joined by another couple on Saturday along with three young missionaries, and there will be an additional couple tomorrow. The next contingent of missionaries who were to arrive next week will be diverted to other missions, with the exception of two native Zimbabweans. This is a difficult time, but we are not discouraged, just disappointed that we may never see our beloved Zimbabwe again.