Senior Couple Conference at Livingstone and Victoria Falls.

In February of  2016 a Senior Couples' Conference was held in Lusaka.  We had two days of great instruction from President and Sister Erickson and learned more about what each missionary couple is doing.  All 7 couples were there:  Cindy and Howard Bodily (Humanitarian), Craig and Terry Salmon (Self Reliance), Wendy and Vince Hull, (Copperbelt MLS), Carol and George Beal (Blantyre MLS), Lynn and Sharee Birrell (Lilongwe MLS), President and Sister Erickson and us (Office Couple.) It was the first time we had met the Birrells and the Beals and it was great to get to know them.  They are doing wonderful work in Malawi.   The Birrells stayed in our flat with us and we had a great opportunity to visit with them and to get to know them. They now want us to visit Malawi.  We'll see if that works out or not!

After the days of instruction, we all loaded into vehicles and drove to Livingstone to see the famous Victoria Falls.  And it is spectacular!  It is so long you can't even see all of it at one time.

One of the greatest attractions in Africa and one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world, Victoria Falls is located on the Zambezi River, the fourth largest river in Africa, which is also defining the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.

 
Victoria Falls is the only waterfall in the world with a length of more than a kilometer and a height of more than hundred meters. It is also considered to be the largest fall in the world.
 
The noise of Victoria Falls can be heard from a distance of 40 kilometers, while the spray and mist from the falling water is rising to a height of over 400 meters and can be seen from a distance of 50 kilometers. No wonder that the local tribes used to call the waterfall Mosi-o-Tunya “The smoke that thunders”.
 

The mist is so heavy that we felt like we were getting rained on.  We wore our rain coats--mostly to protect the camera--and found that an umbrella worked well until there was too much wind. Alan and some of the others hiked to the Boiling Pot down a long and steep set of stairs.  LaNice thought she could make it, but only made it a little more than half way and realized she would have to hike out again so turned around and went back.  I guess there was not much to see at the bottom anyway!

While some of the couples returned on Saturday, we stayed longer with the Hulls and the Salmons.  On Sunday we had our own devotional and then visited the Livingstone Museum and the walked over to Zimbabwe to see the falls from that side.  It was a pretty day.  There was a bunjee jumping and long swing business from the top of the bridge down into the gorge.  It looked fun to some, but not to us.  We were happy to stay on the bridge.  None of us actually did either event.


 
It was very beautiful looking down into the gorge and seeing Victoria Falls from a different angle.

 
We had to walk down a little hill and so Alan and Elder Salmon decided to have this taxi driver pedal them to the top.  He definitely earned that money!
 
In Livingstone we stayed at Chanter's Lodge.  It was a small and older resort, but it certainly met our needs.  Breakfast was included in the reservation fee which was only $35 a night!  Pretty cheap.

Dorothy Sashin is a recent convert in the Matero Ward.  She is originally from Livingstone and we delivered some things to her son, David. He, Goodson and Chris came over to Chanters to pick up the delivery.  We had a chance to visit with them several times and they are very nice young men.

We ate at this little Mexican type restaurant, which wasn't too bad.  Alan ordered fried caterpillars.  Everyone tried a few.  They weren't too bad, but I think they were a little over cooked and tasted a little burnt.  That's probably the only time we will every eat caterpillars--but at least we can say we DID!