One wonderful year...

Dear Friends and Family,
     We have been here one whole year now.  WOW!  What we have learned.  We have been taught by some amazing people about faith, mostly.  We have met some most celestial people here.  Most of the people here are first generation members.  There were quite a few members of the church during the appartheid here in Tzaneen.  When the appartheid ended many left for various reasons.  Some left because of work.  In Tzaneen proper we have about 4 families.  The other branches came off of Tzaneen, Lenenye, Modjodji, and the Motupa Group that is included in our Tzaneen Branch.  We are hopeful to someday make these units wards.  It is very hard because of Prieshood leadership.  We get so excited when we meet 'Father lad families'.  It would bless the people so much if they could be a Stake instead of a District.  We hope before we go home that we can strengthen this area.  Every missionary tries very hard.

   This month we were able to take our youth to the temple to do baptisms.  IT was wonderful.  We hope it was a wonderful time for them.  They are the future here and if they can stay strong they will be a great blessing to the church in this area.

We left on Tuesday morning.  The youth traveled by taxi.  The driver, Johannes, is the husband of Portia Mohale from Motupa.  It was really nice because the youth all knew him.  He was very kind.  When we arrived (it took about 5 1/2 hours to get to Johannesburg) we got settled into our rooms and then we took pictures.  Dinner was waiting for us so we stopped and ate.  After dinner we had a fireside about the blessings of the temple.  We also talked about the blessing of doing family names.  When the fireside was over we played games in the lunchroom.  We played UNO and Scrabble.  It was really fun.  The youth were worried that we were too tired so they took the games to their rooms and played so we could go to bed.

The winners of UNO were Sharon and Sakeo.  they were very happy.

We met this cutest family from the Republic of the Congo.  They were wonderful.  This is the cutest little face.

It looks like we have a duplication going on here.  Oh well, you cannot get too much of a good thing, right?

Love to all of you,

Elder and Sister Campbell

Johannesburg South Africa Mission.

Beautiful July

Dear Friends and Family,
     How we have loved July!  The weather is lovely.  It is cold at night but perfect in the daytime.  We have two little portable heaters that we move around in the evening and they do just great.  This month we have had more "Load Shedding" as they call it here.  It means that they turn the power off in different sections of South Africa to save power.  This month we have had it many times.  One week it went off 4 times.  Sometimes it is off for 2 to 4 hours.  We are still trying to figure out which section we are in.  Maybe we will find this out at the end of our mission.

Here is a picture of our branch on Father's Day.  The sisters in the branch made scones and Rooibos Tea for the fathers, (All were able to share in this.)  Rooibos Tea is new to us.  They grow it here.  It is an herbal tea with not caffeine.  We are not used to tea but it is pretty good.  Here are most pictures of Father's Day in Tzaneen.

Here is Paballo and Rea.  We have two deacons now which is really exciting.  Here they are.

This is Abiwell and Rea.  The next picture is one of a recently returned missionary.  President Manzini's son.  He originally was in Sierra Leone but was taken out with the missionaries when ebola struck.  He finished his mission in Cape Town.  He is a wonderful missionary.  I wanted the  young boys to have a picture with him because he is such a good role model.

President Campbell, Abiwell and his father, Albert Ndlovu.

Transfers.  We got to keep Elder May but had to send Elder Clegg away.  He really is away now because he is in a new mission.  Our mission was divided.

This is Elder Leman from Belgium.

Elder Stilgoe from England.

We love all of us so much.  They are wonderful teachers and love the Lord.

We got a call from Baby Loretta's mother.  This is the baby that was named after me in the hospital when we went to give baby kits from the church.  She called me and said, "Can we meet you in town?  I have Loretta with me an she wants to see you."  She is beautiful!!!

This is our last District Meeting with President and Sister Dunn.  In this picture you can also see Elder and Sister Butler.  Elder May was our District Leader.

They came all the way from Joburg to tell us that the mission was being divided and we would need to go to Pretoria the next Sunday for a big meeting.  The Elders did not know until Sunday but the Dunn's wanted the senior couple to know personally.  That was so kind of them.  We will miss them.  Here is a picture of the Elders that were moved to the Botswana Namibia Mission.

Elder Bryner from Salt Lake City.  He served in Motupa and has now been called back to Motupa.

Elder Smith-Holley from Australia.

Our new Mission President and wife.  The Wilsons from West Jordan.

All the missionaries that have served in Tzaneen.  Elders Stilgoe, Bryner, Garnica (Mexico), 

Elder Smith-Holley, Elder Olson, Elder Lybe, Elder Novotny (Chezk Republic).  It was fun to see them again!

Sisters Allred and Thompson from the office.  We will miss them.

Please do not tell anyone but Brother Nish cut this flower for us.  It is the official flower of South Africa and we could be put in jail.  In this picture it was almost dying.  We had to hide it in the garbage.

Now comes the wonderful temple trip for the youth.  We had a wonderful time.

Here are we leaving from the church.  We had no problems.  We had 13 youth go.  It was great!

Our bus driver, Johannes, Portia's husband.

Sharon Makgopa

Tsoaledi Matlou

Donald Mathipa

Elphas Ndlovu (returned mmissionary)

Phetole Sebetola

Cumgwello Sekgobela (I did not spell it right)

Nevil Sebetola

Lebo Makgopa

Sakeo Sekgobela

Mamie Sekgobela

Nkomi Sebetola and Creselda Mautlala

These were pictures in the cafeteria in Temple Housing.  It is so nice to have the Temple Housing right there.  It only costs each person R50 which is like $5 in US money.  The rooms are very nice.

We had a little fireside chat about the temple the night before.

Then we played some games. It was fun!

On our way up to the temple.  We were baptized for 15 family names plus each person did about 5-6 names of other families.  Some were French.  There was a group from Western Africa and we helped them.

Abiwell Ndlovu

Abigirl Ndlovu

This is a beautiful family from French-speaking Africa.  They were beautiful.  They did not speak English and we did not speak French, (A tiny).  Look at this next cute face.

On that happy note, we will say goodbye.

Sala habotsie!

Hurrah for Israel

Elder and Sister Campbell

Botswana Namibia Mission

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