It takes courage to have faith in Jesus Christ

Dear Elders and Sisters

We think about talks from conference, and we listened to Elder Anderson talking about Courage born of our faith in Jesus Christ. The courage that you have to serve a mission, to teach, and to bear witness, even sometimes to people who are disbelievers, is born of your faith in Jesus Christ. Sometimes the sheep hear and know the voice of their shepherd. Some take a long time, it can be harder still, as the time goes by. Sis Chibota joined as a 17 year old, and her parents were influenced slowly by her example and joined 19 years later.

When I was young we went on at least one occasion to the mission home in Houghton, Johannesburg to listen to General Conference on Voice of America via shortwave radio. Otherwise, we could only read the sessions in Church magazines weeks later. Years later, we received 16mm films of the sessions months after the conference. Years after that we more quickly received video tapes, then DVDs. Now we can watch sessions as they occur in Salt Lake City. The work of spreading the Gospel is indeed increasing in pace.

    

Magazines, short wave radio, 16mm film, VHS tape, DVD, Internet

We are blessed to have the word that the Lord gave thousands and hundreds of years ago in the scriptures, and we are blessed to have His word through living prophets, seers and revelators who speak to our needs in 2026. We are not left guessing about whether space travel, air travel, heart transplants, blood transfusions, motorised transport, and so many innovations of men are appropriate or not. I appreciate hearing how prophets lead us in times of turmoil such as after the 9/11 attacks in New York City. Love, and not hate, were what was shared. Unity, not divisiveness, helping to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, provide health care for the sick, uplifting, enlightening and inspiring those around us, are what we are taught. Jesus was born in troubled times when Romans were colonisers in Israel and most of the world, and He taught to be respectful and loving to the Romans. There is much hate spat out against so many people in our time, but the prophets encourage us to love our enemies, to pray for those that despitefully use us or persecute us.

I am grateful that we can hear such guidance on the very day that it is given. I am conscious that a time may come when the Internet may fail, or power to enable us to charge devices may fail, and we will then need to rely on hardcopy resources, or delayed sources of information, but we need to fill our oil reserves so that we have sufficient oil for our lamps when the Bridegroom returns. We need to be prepared for days when what is normal for us may no longer be normal. We need to live in faith and not in fear. We have a prophet of the Living God who guides us to stand and be counted when the going gets tough and we need to be the tough that get going.

Blessings on you as you share the Living Word of the Living God. That god envisioned by so many that enabled millions of species to 'evolve' disappeared long, long ago and all that we see now is extinctions by the thousands in our lifetimes. But that Creator has not left us alone. He has called a prophet who guides us today. He keeps on winding the Celestial Clock, filling the gas bottles of the lights in the skies, maintaining balances in nature when we make mistakes in our replenishing, subduing, and having dominion over His Creation.

Sister Powrie and I share our testimonies that God does lead His only true and living Church. Other religions have wonderful truth, but God leads the only true and living church on the face of the Earth with which He is well pleased. He knows what we need, and He guides us in this time of need. Blessings on you as you share His love with those new and returning members that you teach, helping them to get firmly on the covenant path, progressing towards the Temple and making and keeping covenants, repenting of their errors as they make them, striving to become one with Heavenly Father. We share this witness in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Your brother and sister in Christ

Les and Sally Powrie

Reflections on as deep a Temple and Garden of Eden experience as possible

It was special to be at the ground-breaking ceremony for the Cape Town South Africa Temple on Saturday 25 October 2025. The land was dedicated from the Temple and for each one of us who will spend time on it.

Sally and me turning the soil

My father particularly loved this picture of Jesus Christ.

I love to reflect on some significant things regarding this special site. 

We could see Lion's Head where the church work started in South Africa, and maybe in Africa as a whole in 1853. The journal of Elder William Holmes Walker

'On May 23rd we all went on the top of a mountain called The Lions Head, the guide for all approaching ships, to pray and council.
'We organized a branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, composed of 3 members. Returning in the evening, we continued making every possible effort to get an
opening, in every direction.'

This site of the Temple would have been close to where these three missionaries walked very often. They may well have walked on the very spot where the Temple will stand.

I love Heavenly Father's sense of humour - across the Liesbeeck River from the Temple Grounds is Devil's Peak. But Pam Cerff pointed out that there are also views of Groote Schuur Hospital, a place of healing, and University of Cape Town, a place of learning. Then someone else pointed out that on the other side of Table Mountain are the Twelve Apostles. 

My father often said (and I love to repeat this ) that Kirstenbosch is part of the Garden of Eden that has remained intact, also in view beyond UCT. DNA studies show that human DNA traces back to southern Africa, and fossils show that stone age people were in the Dell at Kirstenbosch. We don't know if the Garden of Eden was one hectare or a million hectares, or what... Nice to dream about Adam and Eve maybe treading on the soil where the Cape Town South Africa Temple will stand . I love that when we leave Kirstenbosch through Gate 1 we go out from the east side into the lone and dreary world.

Ja well, no fine, I love Cape Town and all that we enjoy here. We look forward to having the Temple here! My first ancestor came here in 1806 when Britain took the Cape, and then formally moved here in 1820. My parents were married here in 1943. I moved here from the West Rand in 1981. And our original ancestors come from 'here', the Cradle of Humankind. What better place to live on Earth? And now we look forward to having a Temple here.

Answering a question about our 'Bush People'

I may not be directly answering the question of a fellow tour guide about the ‘bush people’, and I know that there is a lot that I do not know. But, some things that I understand from my involvement in ecology might be of value to tour guides and people in general that read this boring blog of mine. 

Some bushmen in the Kalahari, descendants of the Khoisan

What I share here applies to people all around the world and not specifically to San and Khoi. Wherever agro-pastoralists have impacted on hunter-gatherers, or extensive agriculture and industry impact on agro-pastoralist, the outcome has been the same – including impacting on indigenous tribes that are going extinct in Europe and Great Britain! 

A hunter-gatherer like the San lives wonderfully in harmony with nature. They exist, as do all organisms, depending on the balance in their ecosystem, and they flourish when all is good and they suffer when the balance is disturbed by natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, fires, other humans, or any disruption. But they thrive as well as does the natural environment. They are wonderful examples of not exploiting the environment and natural resources. I love an insight shared by someone in a tour that I was leading, pointing out that the San would not harvest more than about half of what was available in order to ensure supplies for the future. He compared this to some other tribes such as the Xhosa who just eat everything that is available and then suffer because of a shortage of food. 

It is important to note that hunter-gatherers need hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of square metres per person. Life expectancy is limited due to sickness, wars, conflicts, deaths in childbirth, although their knowledge of natural remedies and living in harmony with each other and their environment do help them to survive very well despite these natural impacts. They cope well in their natural environment.

 

In the mountains of Lesotho the villages have some agro-pastoralism, the cultivation at a low intensity scale.

The agro-pastoralists cultivate the land to produce crops, and they breed herds of animals, and so more people can survive on a square kilometre, but they also have limited life-expectancy due to wars or conflicts, natural disasters and sicknesses. Here they are tilling the ground and eating their bread by the sweat of their faces, being more fruitful, multiplying, replenishing, and subduing the earth. They tend to be in reasonable harmony with the natural balance.

 

Extensive agriculture totally transforms the landscape. Canals bring water to irrigate and enable far greater cultivation as water is less limiting. Equipment, machines, technology, insecticides and fertilisers increase productivity far beyond what could be done just one hundred years ago.

Then there are higher levels of development such as has happened throughout the world and throughout history with colonisation and domination where some stronger groups expand their territory, invade, and dominate over other groups who have less strength to defend themselves. Here there is often exploitation of people and nature.

High density populations are possible, as shown in this picture that I took of New York in 1981, due to high productivity in agriculture, industry, transporting resources, health care, education, and so much more. 

Then one gets ‘civilisation’ with its extensive agriculture, mining, schools and universities, urbanisation, factories, national borders, technology, travel, dams, transportation systems, and so much that we see in our day where natural ecosystems are severely transformed, many irreversibly transformed, even with loss of many species and ecosystems. In some parts of China and Hong Kong, for example, there are thousands or tens of thousands of people in a square kilometre because of the productivity in these developed peoples and access to resources through trade and transport from distant parts of their country, or from other countries. Life expectancy increases, births often decrease and that causes more dependency of older generations on reducing numbers in younger generations, and this and the exploitation of natural resources is all too often unsustainable.

I was impressed by someone who shared with me that the San would not consume more than about 50% of what was available in order to ensure that there would always be sufficient for the future, whereas the Xhosa and some others would eat everything that is available but not produce enough to replace it. I have often observed than many drought-stricken communities look absolutely helpless and in need of food, but there is plenty of open ground that had evidently not been cultivated and I suspect that they could almost certainly have provided something for their future if they had used foresight and practised sustainable utilisation together with keeping enough in storage for future use for future planting as well as for emergencies.

I would suggest that each of these types of communities is to be praised in many ways, but also to be discouraged in many ways. What I look forward to is an altruistic humanity that is more like the beehive that I shared recently in myblog. Here, there is wonderful harmony and each bee works selflessly for the betterment of the colony. I love our motto in South Africa - 'Diverse people unite' and our former motto 'Unity is strength'. Unfortunately, there are many people who seek to divide our people, and that division can be really destructive. But when these diverse people unite, the strength is infinitely greater because of their diversity. 

I look forward to when South Africa and the rest of the world appreciate and love their heritage and environment enough to care for it and be fruitful, multiply, replenish, subdue and have dominion over this world such that it has a wonderfully sustainable future in line with its wonderful potential. The bees do it – I fully believe that humans can do it…