Kasane

Last night we stayed in Victoria falls. You could hear the roar of the falls from our room. We took off early in the morning to cross the boarder into Botswana. We met Cornelia there who is Rachel's cousin. To get us through faster Rachel told them about how we were trying to hurry to church. So Rachel told them which church and they asked us to sing for them....so we sang I am a child of God and God be with you til we meet again. It was a really lovely thing to feel the spirit strongly in a border crossing office. We got to church about 30 minutes late. It is held in a small rented house. There were probably 20 people in the room.... Mostly children. I love church in other countries. It was wonderful to sing with the saints there and hear all our voices fill that small space. My favorite meeting was relief society. We talked about a past conference talk about trials. Nothing is more universal. We didn't talk about anything revolutionary.... We live, pass through trials, trials are for our own good and we must keep our eye on the goal which is heaven.... But the spirit there was fantastic. The kind you find so prevalently on the forefront of the church where having a strong testimony is all these people have. Cornelia was teaching and she shared her conversion story. She is the cousin of Dean who is Rachel's husband and he gave her a book of Mormon one time before she left to go back to Botswana. She read it and gained a testimony and so she called Rachel's dad and said she wanted to be baptized! Since there wasn't a church within a thousand miles she flew to Harare and received the discussions and was baptized all in the course of a few days and then she moved back to Botswana. For 5 years she was the whole church. She would fly yo Harare three or four times a year to attend church. Then two couples who were members moved to her town and she met them by some random "coincidence". They decided that they needed to work on getting more members and so she started with her maid and her children. They would go out door to door. She took the call even without a badge!!! And 5 years later they have a rented building and a group. Not quite a branch yet. Anyway it was amazing to learn from a real latter day pioneer. I cannot imagine how hard that must be. Such a pleasure to have met her and learn from her. Such a pleasure to go to church here!