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.

This is our initial branch, Dombotombo, assignment, in Marondera. The building has both branches meeting here. It is only about two years old, but both branches are now close to 100 members in attendance. The picture of the next missionary to go out from the branch is of soon-to-be Elder Gumbodete and the branch mission leader.

Another week has passed, we are now at the one month mark on our mission. Woohoo! It has gone by so fast it's scary. We had an opportunity to attend a graduation ceremony for the young people who had completed the water sanitation training. Now that they had clean water from their new bore hole (translate water well) which the LDS church had financed, the prefects and class head man were trained so that they could train the other children in the school. The school of 1250 children is well-run, the children seem happy and disciplined, and they were pleased to present a program celebrating the turnover of the well to the school. The choir sang the Zimbabwe national anthem. The pre-school class sang a bouncy song about the uses for clean water, complete with hand actions, first in Shona and then in English. The dance class (which has won national trophies) did a traditional dance of successful harvest, in celebration of the "harvest" of clean water. They were all in costume, and were incredible to watch, and they were having a good time showing off their skills. A PE class demonstrated exercise and tumbling, and of course there were speeches, most of which were quite short by our standards. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera. The children are beautiful, and love to smile and wave to us.

The pictures are from the Domboshawe Branch. Sister Reynolds got to help with the Primary both times we visited there before our assignment to Dombotombo.

The tree silhouette is in the parking lot of the Harare Mission Office, and I felt like this was our new place to call home, and the landmark I will always remember.