Australia Sun Sep 22, 2013
Dear Family and Friends:
Another week gone by and it seems we are busy every
minute. The weather is beautiful, we had
rain Monday and Tuesday and sun the rest of the week. Still a little cool in the mornings and
evenings, we remind ourselves that it is March weather, changing but getting
warmer. The trees and shrubs continue to
bloom with vibrant blossoms of color and the flowers are really starting to
grow. It is a joy everyday to see the
changes. Dad’s tomatoes are doing good,
a little behind where they would be at home, he puts them outside every morning
on the deck, and we bring them in at night.
We have one avocado seed that has sent a root out and the other two are
looking like they might. We put them
over the heat lamp each night. It is
still pretty cool in our flat so they don’t grow fast. It looks like we are moving for sure, around
the middle of October. It will be good
to be able to walk to work every day. We
still haven’t seen all of the flats, they are going to get 4. We know they are only 1 bedroom so we will be
downsizing. I have been going through
bookcases and getting rid of things we don’t want to take with us. Most of it is things that have been left by
other missionaries. We did take a
printer and some books to the mission office this week. I have a stack of books to go to Vinny’s and
some old magazines to go to the garbage.
This week I need to start on the kitchen, there are so many utensils
that I have not used and a few dishes.
We will give those things we don’t need to the mission office and they
will share them with the young missionaries if we think they will use them,
otherwise they will go to Vinny’s. We
did meet the fleet elders the other day who will be moving the furniture, etc. Had no idea we would be moving when we got
here but we are excited about having heating and air conditioning.
We sent our hard drive in Friday with just over 13,000
images, not bad for 3 ½ days. We are
really enjoying the history that is on some of the cards. One told of a plane crash between Sydney and
Melbourne and was not found for 27 years.
The plane was the “Southern Cloud” so Dad looked it up and it had
crashed in a very wooded area. One card
said a 15 year old boy was killed by a tree falling on him whilst riding his
horse with his father. That was in 1859. We just finished a box on Friday and that
makes 11boxes we have finished. We will
go get 3 more tomorrow or Tuesday. We
still have almost enough cards to copy tomorrow, depending how long we talk to
the family. Last week was a very long
week without video contact. Thank
goodness we have been able to talk to some of you, get emails and text
others. Today I was talking to Amanda
for a few minutes and she said she was sick so I told her to get better so she
could go to school tomorrow. She said tomorrow
was Sunday, and I said no it was today because we had just got out of
Church. She said that was weird.
We talked to Tyson for a minute before Church and he said
the Memorial Service and picnic after for Aunt Imogene went well, about a 100
people at their house. She will be
missed as we always enjoyed going to Logan to visit with her.
Yesterday Dad and I went for a ride in the country after
cleaning the flat. We went north about
50 miles and saw beautiful farms and ranches, greenhouses, orange groves and
flowering trees and shrubs along the roads.
We stopped at a roadside stand and bought oranges, they had a little
metal box nailed to the wagon to put the money in. They also had egg plant there. The trees were all just loaded with oranges. We traveled a lot of the way along the river
and through heavily wooded areas where you could see they wouldn’t find a plane
that went down in 1931. We rode the
ferry across the river at Wiseman’s Ferry to get a hamburger at “Convicts
Kiosk” and it was closed for painting.
Talk about disappointed, we had been looking forward to it all day. We went up the street and stopped at a
bowling club, we know they have good reasonable food there and got a
hamburger. Not as good as the other but
it was good. It did have the beet on
it. Of course anything would have tasted
good seeing as though it was 2:00 pm.
We stopped at another roadside stand on the way home and
bought strawberries, they are beautiful, we are going to have some tonight, a
dozen fresh eggs, and a bag of mandarin oranges and they are so good. They also had tomatoes and avocados but I
still had some. I told Dad we will have
to go back. We talked to the lady and
told her we raise vegetables in the states and she asked if we sell at a stand
like that and we told her yes. Last
night we walked down to Harry’s and got another pie. Dad had seafood pie with mashed potatoes and
gravy, and I had chicken with mashed potatoes, smashed peas and gravy. When we move it won’t be as convenient to
come down to get one. We do want to get
the roast beef sandwich one day there, and they will put the potatoes, peas and
gravy on it also. Don’t know about that!
Next weekend we travel to Armidale, about a 6 hour trip to
speak at the Branch there. Dad has to
talk 20 min and me 15, so we have been preparing talks this afternoon. The Branch President didn’t give us a subject
so we are on our own. He does want us to
come to dinner Sat night at his home, and if Dad is too tired to drive all the
way on Sunday, we will come home early Monday morning. We will just ask Mark if it is okay to come
in a little late. We love going around
the mission meeting the people, we just don’t enjoy talking. They normally have about 10 people to
Church, at this Branch.
After Church today the Primary Children were coming out with
cupcakes, they looked so good I was wishing I had been in Primary.
On Thursday the door bell rang, and seeing as though we were
the only ones in the building Dad answered it and it was President and Sister
Sadler from Coffs Harbour. They came in
a visited for a while and saw our operation of capturing the cards. We walked over to the Mission Office to see
if President Howes was in town, they know them, but they were in Sydney,
however the Sadlers knew the Sister Missionary that was working in the office
so they had a visit. It was good to see
them again, and they asked us to come stay with them again. Hopefully we can before we leave.
Sister Jorgensen is getting things cleaned out because they
go home Oct 16th so she gave me her crockpot last night and I am so
excited. It is a much newer one than was
here in our flat, so today I had 2 crockpots working, just like at home. We had a really good beef stew in one, and
sweet potato mash in the other. Then we
cooked fresh beans. Everything was fresh
vegetables except the beef. Can’t get
any better than that. She also brought
over 2 camp chairs for us.
Vaun and Mandy
called Friday because they left for Mexico yesterday. It was good to see them and the kids, and he
took us on a tour of the new home. That
was fun to see, they have a beautiful home with lots of room. Deven said that Loren came in on Friday
afternoon, Tyson picked him up at the airport and Deven, Loren, Tyson and Vaun
golfed in the glow ball Friday night.
Loren went to Penrose Saturday morning, and Tina said they had dinner
Saturday night with Onalie and family, and Tyson and the boys and Dallen. They also had lunch on Sunday before Troy
picked him up to go to Boise for a conference.
It was probably pretty quiet at Penrose with no TV or internet. Maybe he needed some downtime. I doubt we will see him tomorrow but maybe
Tami will come on.
We love you all and pray for you continuously.
Mum and Pop
No comments:
Post a Comment