Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone,

We hope this finds all of you enjoying this beautiful season.  We are finding that this is a wonderful time of year to be serving the Lord full time.

This was a construction sign on the road going up to "God's Window" the other day.  I have never quite seen a sign asking drivers to be careful.

This is such a beautiful place.  Some of the mountains remind us of the Grand Canyon.

We welcomed home the first missionary from Motupa.  Elder Makwela was a great missionary in the Durban mission.  He will be a great strength to the church in this area..

Also sent the first Sister missionary from Motupa.  She is in Atlanta Georgia now and doing great!

We hope all of you are having a wonderful month.

We love you and are thankful for your prayers.

Hurrah for Israel

Elder and Sister Campbell

Johannesburg South Africa Mission

Third time is a charm>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dear Family and Friends,

I do not know how much time I will have to share this blog with you today.  Our time is very limited these days.  I have tried to write this 3 times but maybe this will be a charm.  I need to hurry before the Elders come for dinner.

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We did.  We were able to attend the temple (5,5 hours away) on the Saturday before Thanksgiviing.  This is how we have done it many times before with our Stake in Prescott.  We were able to go with our branch.  Their were two sealings and wonderful experiences. I will show the pictures:

It was a great day.  There was one family that are not in the pictures since they had to leave early.  All their children wanted for Christmas was to go to the temple.  

We then enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings with the young elders.  There were 10 of them and 8 of us.

Apple pie turned out good but the sweet potatoes were a little strange.  Their yams are whitish and the marshmellows are pink.  It made for a strange concoction.

The turkeys were really expensive, around $5.50 a pound.  They were quite small but it all tasted really good.  

We are doing a  Canadian tradition of saying wht you are thankful for an throwing a rock over your shoulder.

This is Siter Campbell with the Primary children, minus three, after our Sacrament Meeting program.

Here is Elder Campbell and his first baptism.  He is a boy that we traveled 1.5 hours to teach.  His mother wanted him baptized.  The two of them are the only members in the township.  He is a joy!

There is so much to tell you but I must go and make the biscuits for dinner.  We love you and I will hurry bak!

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder and Sister Campbell

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!!!

Dear Friends and Family,

We are sorry that we have not posted in a while  We are really busy here and then our password was not working.  We have a new password and all is well, we hope.

We have had a most wonderful two months.  In November, we were able to go to the Johannesburg Temple with 20 people.  What a wonderful time we had.  We realized that this was the Saturday before Thanksgiving.  We had attended the temple the weekend before Thanksgiving for many years with our Prescott Stake, as a day of Gratitude and Rejoicing.

Happy Thanksgiving

Lions, Zebras, and Giraffes, Oh my!!!!!

Dear Family and Friends,
This week started off with quite a bang.  We live 90 minutes from the famous Kruger National Park.  This is where you can lodge or buy a day pass and drive through the park.  The park is quite large so you try to find the entry that is closer to you.  Whenever missionaries come here they want to see this park before they are transferred.  This happened to be the best time for a visit.  So Monday we loaded up three senior couples car and one bakti (truck)  and headed off.  These are some of the animals we were able to see.  In Africa, they have which is known as the Big 5.  This includes, elephant, rhino, leopard, lion and hippo.  We were able to see all except for the leopard.  They are very hard to find.
                                                                         

We started the day off with some wart hogs.  Go Puma Go.  They are so interesting.  There were about 8 to 10 of them.  This trip we saw a lot of them.

Next came the beautiful giraffes.  They are so fun to watch.  They are so graceful.  It was like they were having a lunch date together.  You rarely see a giraffe by itself.

This is a red bill something.  It is endangered.  I am sorry I forgot the name but it is really ugly.

We then came upon the water buffalo or cape buffalo.  We have heard them called by both names.  They are especially ugly and their horn are so interesting.

The zebras are so beautiful!  We could almost put our hand out the window and touch them.  (That is not allowed).

We saw this cute turtle on the side of the road.  Elder Campbell even turned around so we could get a picture for Spencer.  It is so interesting that the shell even looks african.  WOW!  The designer of Africa really did a terrific job!

These are two interesting creatures.  We stopped for a rest spot and saw this Cheetah and thought we would take a picture for all of our fast runners.

Here are some of our wonderful missionaries representing, Mexico, England, Australia, Kansas, Missouri, Utah, and Idaho.  They are great!

Ba

boons!! At first we could not see this lovely lion in the trees.  Thank goodness the young Elders have much better eyes than we do.  We is just relaxing!!!  We saw some lionesses later we will show you.

They were sunbathing and napping by the water.

Our rhino taking a nap in the sun.  He looks so cute there with his eyes closed.

We ended the day with a trail of elephants walking across the road.  There were baby ones and all sizes.  We were the last car so we did not get the picture of the baby ones.  Just picture about 8 of these walking across the road.  Fascinating!

It was a great day viewing some of God's creations in their natural dwellings.

Now

Have you ever wondered where we get Cream of Tartar?

Your worries are over.  This is the plant that it comes from.  They grow here and hang from a tree.  The people here take the white stone inside and suck it while they walk kind of like we do a pebble.  The cream of tartar is a powdery substance on the stones.  They harvest that and we get 

Cream of Tartar!!!!

You may already know this but Elder Campbell broke his eye piece one night cleaning it.  We did not have a replacement as they are so expensive.  The only place they make them is in Boston at Harvard.  We ordered one and it cost $750. We had it sent to Elise as she was the closed.  To send it cost $200.  When it finally arrived in Johannesburg it took $150 to get it out of customs.  Then it took a week to get up here to us.  South Africa does not have mail service now as they are on strike.  This has been going on for 4 months now and probably will continue.  When the package came they had sent the wrong one.  Oh Dear!  We called and they sent another one.  They paid for the lens but as of now they have not paid for the shipping.  We are working on that.  This is Elder Campbell opening his package.  This time it is the right one and if working good.

One day we went to the fabric store for something as we decided to buy some fabric and make african skirts.  Here we are at District meeting with them on.  Sister Meldrum is from Canada, Sister Heyen is from Oregon, and me.

This is our week.  We hope you are doing well.  We love you and pray for you.  Thank you for your prayers.  We feel them.  They help us be better servants.

Hurrah for Israel,

Elder and Sister Campbell