Dear Family
and Friends:
Here we are
on Sunday afternoon in our flat. It is
good to stay home for a weekend after traveling 2 weekends in a row. It is so fun to see new areas and meet new
people, but it is nice not to be driving home on Sunday afternoon. It was good to be back in the Oatlands Ward
again after missing 3 weeks. There are
now 6 sets of missionaries in the 2 wards that meet in our building. The Chinese sisters have an investigator who
is being baptized this Saturday. He
speaks pretty good English. The other
set of sister missionaries have a young investigator who is being baptized on
the 23rd. One set of Elders
had an investigator there also but we didn't get to meet him. We found out today that the mission decided
to put Elders in our old flats, a set in ours and Jorgensen’s and use the
Williams for storage. We met a couple
who have just been married a few months that live downstairs from us here. She was so excited to find out we were all
here, when I told her there were 3 other sets of Sr missionaries, and one more
coming in Jan. They were supposed to be
here in Dec but they are on visa delay, as well as some young missionaries.
Thursday
after Deven helped Elder Williams with his computer, thanks Deven, the 4 of us
went to Costco. It is about 20 min away
and was bigger than Layton’s Target.
There were so many people there you could hardly get around. We got paper towels and laundry products and
a ham that we cut into 4 pieces to freeze.
We then stopped at Hungry Jacks for a hamburger, they are exactly the
same as Burger King. The Williams drove
because we had planned to go, so we rode home with them. We decided we don’t need to go there again,
the traffic is bad also. We will just
get what we need at the grocery store.
Yesterday
after we cleaned the flat, we went with the Williams. They guys dropped Sister Williams and myself
at Vinny’s, and they went to Bunnings, a hardware store to get a rod and shower
curtain. The glass on the shower is
not big enough to keep the water in and
I am tired of mopping water up every morning.
We are sure whoever designed it never took a shower in it. The curtain works wonderful, no water outside
the tub this morning. I got a couple of
shirts and 3 Santa Clause figurines.
They were only $2.00 each. Dad
also wanted some containers to put his plants in to hold the water, so I got a
couple of plastic bowls for $2.00. They
picked us up and we drove to Elizabeth Farm not too far away. This is Australia’s oldest surviving
homestead. Yesterday was a free day so
we didn’t have to pay anything. The farm
was established in 1793 as a sheep ranch.
It was established by the Macquarie family. At one time he had 2,000 sheep. He had 9 daughters and 1 son and would leave
and go to England and sell the wool and was involved in politics there. He would be gone for months at a time, and
his wife and daughters would run the farm.
When his son was old enough for school he took him to England where he
said he would get a better education, and his mother never saw him again. The house was decorated in the period, and we
could go see everything from climbing a latter to see the original shingles in
the ceiling, and going in the cellar and tasting homemade sauerkraut, that they
were making there, homemade peach jams and homemade rhubarb jam on little
pieces of bread. In the garden you could
see where they had cut the rhubarb off the plants. There were huge cabbages growing. It was fun to see the history and read the
signs they had prepared. The grounds
were beautiful with huge trees and shrubs.
They also had a little kitchen where you could have tea outside. We drove over to another old farm but didn’t
want to pay $6.00 to see about what we had just seen. We drove to Harry’s for a pie with peas and
potatoes and gravy. The Williams had a
fireside in the afternoon for Temple workers so Dad put up the shower rod and
curtain and then drove to Salvos to take some things we didn’t need. They are so happy with every donation. Dad found a couple of golf shirts, and we
drove to Target and got a little red fleece blanket for the love seat. It needed a little color over there and if
the air conditioning gets too cold for me I can wrap up in it. We also shopped for FHE tomorrow night. We got the buns for the roast beef sandwiches
and chips. Now we don’t have to go tomorrow.
This morning
I put cashew chicken in the crockpot and we had it with rice and fresh
beans. There was enough to make lunch
for tomorrow and one other meal. It was
very good. Of course anything with
cashews is good. Last night we had parmesan
crusted fish and baked potatoes. That
was really good also. I am still trying
to try at least one new recipe a week.
Tonight I am going to make fiesta ranch salad, slice the dill pickles,
and make the sauce to go on the meat. We just finished the salad. I was going to tell you they do not have
black beans here, just kidney and garbanzo.
Thanks Tina for the dressing mix.
I did look it up on line and it looks pretty easy to make if I can find
all the ingredients. We will have to
borrow the Williams crockpot for the roasts.
The meat is cooked with balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing mix, onion
soup, (thanks Amberlie for the soup mix) and Italian seasoning. Hope it is good. We will go to Buckland House early in the
morning to take everything and then go over right after work to put it all
together. It is a lot of work to take
everything from here but it is so worth it when it is all over. We have 2 bags by the door to take and I
don’t even have the dishes I need ready yet. I am also going to make bread pudding tonight
for a treat and if it turns out we will probably take some to the Williams,
Archibalds and Moores. We will see. The bread pudding came out of the oven just
perfect, so while I was making the sauce to go over it Dad went next door to
see if the Moore’s were home. They were,
with Elder Archibald so we took 3 plus 2 for us and ate with them, then were
going to take some up to the Williams.
Just as we were finishing, the Williams came down with plates of watermelon
for us and the Moores, so we gave them 2.
We told them all we wanted to share the calories. Sister Archibald is on her way to Korea
taking home an Elder from the South Mission.
She is a nurse so they asked her to accompany him. She will be back Wednesday. The watermelon looks very yummy, we will have
some later. We bought a cantaloupe
yesterday to have for breakfast.
This week we
have the Christmas committee meeting tomorrow and a devotional on Tues morning
from the area presidency. We are staying
at the Temple late Tuesday night to do sealings. Hopefully the end of the week we will get a lot
of cards captured. We will be a third of
the way through the cards, by the end of the week if we can do 3 boxes. We are still finding some very interesting
things on the cards. We are surprised at
how many young men lost their lives in France in WW1 and also WW2.
It was fun
to talk to Logan on Friday and he was very surprised it was his birthday here,
and Halloween there. Thanks to all those who posted Halloween pictures, it is
so fun to see the kids, other than Andy!
We also called Ann for her birthday and Dan was very surprised to hear
Dad’s voice.
It is 8:00
and I should have time to do some indexing before getting the rest of the
things ready for morning.
We just got
to the office after taking everything to Buckland House and starting the
crockpots. It took 6 cloth bags and 2
crockpots to get it all there, but it will be so worth it.
Love you all
and pray for you.
Mum and
Pop
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