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From Returned Missionaries
Dwayne N. Andersen-Excerpts from Autobiography
SEMINARIES AND INSTITUTES IN SOUTH AFRICA
Part 36
After arriving home from this mission, I resumed my sealing assignment at the Provo Temple, sealing two days a week. Also President Bateman asked me to give patriarchal blessings again, so I started the blessings. On September 23, 1991, Don and Milja Harper called and wanted to stay with us a day or two. They were in Provo for the annual Church Educational System conference at BYU. Their purpose was to ask Peggy and me to go back to South Africa and help him with the seminaries and institutes. I told him that I did not have any real seminary training or experience. He replied: “ I know what you both can do after being with you in South Africa on your temple mission.” Brother Harper was very excited and persistent in the fact that we could be a great help to him.
Peggy and I had been considering a mission to the Jerusalem Center, after talking several times with Louie and Ruby Fife, our dear friends, who were already there. It seemed that they could really use another couple, but there was no housing available. After receiving confirmation that there would be no further calls to Jerusalem at this particular time, we then began to think and pray about the offer Bro. Harper had made. We filled out the missionary forms and sent them to the C.E.S. department. It wasn’t long before we received a call from the First Presidency to serve a Church Education mission in South Africa. Our supervisor would be Don Harper. Our call was to begin sometime in January. My church responsibilities here at home came to an end in 1991.
The church had a hard time getting visas for us, so we were not able to leave SLC airport until the last of January 1992. This would be my seventh mission and Peggy’s fifth. We were just as excited again as we were on any other of our missions! Our flight was to New York and then on to Johannesburg with a stopover in Windhoek in Namibia. Don, our supervisor, and his wife, Milja, met us at the airport and took us to our apartment building owned by the church. This building also housed the temple missionaries and couple missionaries from the Johannesburg Mission. It was a larger building and a much nicer environment than our temple mission had offered us. Our assignment was to supervise the seminaries and institutes in the Johannesburg and outlying areas. Our area of responsibility extended up to Pretoria, the capitol, on the north and down to Bloemfontein on the south. We were to work with the local church authorities to find the best teachers and then to train them on an ongoing basis. We were provided with a new white Toyota car for our travels. The former couple had “totaled” the former car in an accident.
Most of the seminary classes were early morning; however a few were after school; and some institute classes in the evening. We were constantly on the go to make visits to these various classes, morning, afternoon, and night, checking on their progress. In our area we had three institute classes, plus both white and black students in seminaries, making a total of 44 groups we were to watch over. On a regular basis, we held what is called a “Super Saturday.” This was where we spoke to both students and teachers; and then afterwards we taught the teachers alone. Of course there were refreshments and games, etc. at the end. The C.E.S. furnished us with the car and some gas, so that we could visit all the various places. (We paid a monthly fee for the car ourselves, too.) The black seminaries were in black townships located just outside of large cities, Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Bloemfontein. There was also one black seminary in the city of Maseru in the independent nation of Lesotho.
I was very impressed with the black students, being most attentive and eager to learn. They loved the scriptures and were experts in memorizing passages of the scriptures. We loved these black students; and many of them we adored almost, just as if they were our own. The black line just seemed to disappear. We heard many faith-promoting stories from our black students as they stood up for their moral and religious convictions.
Gladys, who was one of our teachers in the Soweto area, told us of an experience she had. She and her sister were on their way home one night after doing an errand for their mother. They were attacked by black hoodlums. Because of their refusing to submit to them and her faith and courage and calmness, she was just stabbed in the back with a knife, and left alone. The sister who was unharmed helped Grace stumble home. Upon getting inside their home, the first thing Grace said was: “Let us pray and thank our God for his protection.”
On another occasion, this same teacher was very ill and asked me for a blessing. We entered this tiny home, not fancy, but quite clean, and there she lay upon her bed. She was so glad we had driven all that way to come to her. I gave her a blessing and then later she told us “immediately she began to recover.” She was so thrilled with the power of the priesthood. As we visited some of the outlying seminaries, we stayed overnight with teachers or members. They treated us just like royalty. Because of this close contact, we developed a great love for all people: black, white, and colored. Overnight stays were not permitted in the black townships, so some areas we had to stay in a hotel.
When we went to Richard’s Bay to visit our seminary there, we had to pass through the center of the Zulu Homeland. We always held our breath, with prayers in our hearts, and gave sighs of relief when we had passed the edges of Zululand. It is impossible to include all the special spiritual and inspirational experiences we shared with our seminary students and their parents. We built a great bond of love and respect with these choice people.