Port Durnford

I have been requested to be First Counsellor to the Branch President at the Port Durnford branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This is a really challengeing calling and I am really enjoying being Counsellor on the Presidency. I know that taditionally Port Durnford is a black branch, but that does not really matter. I love the members there and feel that they respond with love!

It is an interesting experiment. The chapel is a really large wooden shed and this is being improved the whole time. The Physical Facilities authority has installed electric connction and is busy with paving outside the chapel door.

Our nearest branch (Esikhawini) is a short trip down a really badly erroded dirt track and they have a prefabricated chapel, imported from the USA. We were originally assigned one of these and it arrived in Cape Town. There was a delay in acquiring the land we have the chapel on, and the Area Office reassigned "our" portable chapel elsewhere. This actually turned out to be no problem as Physical Facilities relocated the chapel we were using, added to the size and we have a fairly decent structure.

I used some bricks left over from the installation, to pave a small area outside the door, so no dirt was tracked in! Our Helping Hands project was where the members replaced the door (+ frame) and 2 complete windows in the home of a destitute family. Taking the one window out, the wall colapsed. I collected all the surplus bricks on the Church lot and with a bit of effort, 15 adults rebuilt the wall and replaced the door and windows.

The whole effort - whilst not nearly professional - added significantly to the quality of life for this family. It amazed me the speed that the "Homes for Humanity" projects in the USA are completed, but even so, they are built at a comparative snails pace! Sure we did not achieve a high quality finish, but it was at least as good as it was before - and it had stood for a while!

Next door to the chapel, in a week, someone has built a tiny 1 roomed shack. This was done in a week. Sure it is not fancy, but is far better than the shacks that are regularly burnt down in Soweto township fires! It is patently obvious that need is not as imperative as housing!

What kind of stuns me is that the house of concrete blocks on the same plot, that was started after I was assigned to Port Durnford, has electric lights, and the Church was advised that it would take anything from 4 to 6 months for our electricity to be connected. We have paid so how come the delay? For sure if we dont pay the bills 2 weeks after they arrive, Eskom will discontinue the power supply! Why do we have to wait 6 months and they will not wait longer than 2 weeks? That kind of reeks of double standards.