Australia Dec 1, 2012
Dear Family and Friends:
Wow, another month is gone and we are now officially into
the Christmas season. We sang Christmas
Carols at Church today, and we have been listening to a few this week. I still haven’t got Dad convinced it is ok to
listen to them before Thanksgiving. We
did get Christmas decorations up this week and our flat looks cute. We will post pictures as soon as we get the
rest of the ornaments for our tree. Hope
you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving.
We thought about all of you and really missed being together as a
family. It was good to see a few of you,
thanks Tina for calling. Today we are
having a kind of Thanksgiving dinner, I stuffed a chicken and it is in the
crockpot. The sweet potatoes are cooked
ready to be put into a casserole, we are having mashed potatoes and gravy and a
vegetable. This is the first time in
many years I have made stuffing from scratch, I really missed the mixes we get
at home. They have no idea what they are
here. I tried to find poultry seasoning
and no such thing, but I found sage and thyme so it tastes pretty good. We will eat in a couple of hours, about 6.
Happy Birthday today Mandy, hope it is wonderful. We are
hoping we can see you tomorrow on the video chat.
This week has been busy as usual. It rained Monday and Tuesday so we drove to
work. It was so good to get back to the
Temple and get hugs from all the workers.
Wednesday and Thursday we walked to work and took a walk
after work. It was really warm on
Thursday. Friday morning we woke up to
rain so we drove. Mark got home from
South Africa on Thursday and we took about an hour and a half in the afternoon
to see some of his photos. They were
great, really beautiful land, and he saw lots of animals, wild animals. His son Aaron served a mission there a couple
of years ago, so after the conference, he flew over and they were able to visit
some of the people and places he served.
Friday we had the birthday morning tea, and I was the only
one with a November birthday, so they sang to me and I got to go get the food
first. They had pumpkin pie, in honor of
America’s Thanksgiving, which was nice.
Hot dogs and buns, potato chips, strawberries and kiwi fruit, cookies
and little candy bars, red vine licorice, and lemonade, Pepsi, and water. We decided we didn’t need to eat lunch after
all that because we were supposed to eat before the couples conference started
at noon. We had to get the hard drive
ready to go to the mail first thing in the morning after I transferred the
folders we did on Thursday. We normally
don’t take it down until about 2. This
week we did over 17,000 images.
We had the couple’s conference in the Birthday room at
Buckland House because the art show is set up in the regular conference
room. There were 9 couples there. The Tanners had to go to Canberra for an
embassy official holiday to make a presentation. We had the 2 couples that work in the city,
and a new couple from Star Valley originally but came from St. Louis 2 days
prior. They will be up North about 6
hours away doing member support. The conference
was wonderful, other than I had to give a 3-5 min talk. President Howes called me Tues morning and
asked me to talk. I could choose the
subject from the following:
1- How I
have grown spiritually since the beginning of the mission.
2- What
I expect to gain from serving this mission.
3- How
serving this mission is strengthening our relationship.
4- What
I can do to feel like a ‘real’ missionary.
I chose # 3 and I suppose it was OK. I really do not like to talk in front of
others, and especially to prepare talks.
He had 4 missionaries talk and 3 of them chose the same as me, but very
different talks. We really enjoyed
them. The assistants to the President
did some training from Preach my Gospel and the missionary lessons, Bringing
others unto Christ, and How to role play with the Spirit. They were very good. Next we had training for the Christmas Art
Show and Lights. We are in charge of
training the Elders and Sisters that will be working with us on our
nights. We have to start the music, get
the DVD ready to play, make sure the counter is counting the people on our
night, and then record the number before we leave. The hours are 7:30-10:30, and we have 3
nights. It opens tonight. We then had a break, apples, granola bars and
water. Sister Howes then gave some
training, and President Howes finished up.
They are incredible people, and they truly love all the missionaries,
and they in turn love them. After closing
prayer and blessing on the food we went over to the conference room to be
trained on the electronics we will be in charge of. We then walked a couple of blocks to La Botte
for dinner. It is an Italian restaurant
that has been there for over 30 years and still owned by the same family. It was really good, we will definitely go
back there again. Dad and I shared a
pizza and pasta. We also brought
leftovers home for another meal. We then
walked back to the Howes home for dessert.
It was good and fun to visit. It
was raining a little on the walk back so we thankfully had our umbrella. Just a wonderful day. President Howes said this is the first
couples conference he has had, because usually they only have about 4-5 couples
in the mission. We are hoping they have
them again. One thought I wrote down all
of you can use in your everyday lives:
C- Church
P- Praying
R- Reading the Scriptures
Yesterday, we drove to the Rydlmere Station to catch the
river cat down to the quays. The Moore’s
rode with us and the Archibald’s rode with the Williams. The Tanners met us there. When we got to the quays, we caught a ferry
over to Watson Bay. It was noon by then
so we ate fish and chips there on the pier, then began our walk. We first walked up to a place called the gap,
which is a little washed out cove of the cliffs, most of them are at least 90
ft tall. We could look over the ocean to
the east of Australia at the entrance to the harbor to Sydney. There were lots rocks and this is where a
ship (the Dunbar) wrecked during a storm in 1857 killing 121 of the 122
aboard. They found the anchor about 50
years later and brought it up and it is on display. We could see the lighthouse in the distance,
and I mean in the distance, and began the walk up Jacob’s ladder. That is what the trail is called. It is a beautiful light house and the walk
was incredible with the view of the ocean, we saw sail boats, and other boats,
and Elder Williams and Dad could see a cruise ship in the distance with their
binoculars. The weather was overcast for
most of the time, with a light breeze blowing, and blowing hard up by the
lighthouse. It was a perfect day. We walked back down to the pier and caught
the 4:10 rivercat back home. We took our
car with the Williams and went right to the grocery store as we all needed to
shop. We got home after 6, and after
putting the groceries away, Dad and I went to the office to pick up some things
we needed. We finally got home about 8
to eat. It was a very wonderful day, and
we really appreciate the Williams for putting it together. The Feils were going to go but they had to
get the new couple on the road to their assignment.
Tonight we are going to up to Buckland House to make sure we
know how to work all the electronics if we are going to train the young
missionaries. There will be one set of
missionaries working in the DVD room and one set in the art show, and on busy
nights we will have another set of elders, and they will be roaming around
outside at the nativity and lights. We
are just to walk around and talk to the people.
We are really excited to do this.
Our first night isn't until the 11th. Last year there were over 10,000 people that
came through. The workers were still
working on the display of the nativity outside Friday night about 8 when some
people came and wanted to see the art show, so Glen called the Moore’s and they
went over. They are in charge of the
whole thing this year.
Tomorrow night is Family Home Evening and we are hosting the
dinner because we have more living space than the Williams and the
Moore’s. We will have the dinner in here,
and then go to the Moore’s for the program and dessert. They are right next door to us. Williams have the dinner and Moore’s the
other. In the morning we will move the
couch and chair over where the table is, and move the table over there. We are also going to have to use the Moore’s
patio table, we think 14 will be here.
Tomorrow after devotional we are having a meeting for the
Christmas dinner. We are going to lay
out the room. It will be in the birthday
room. We are now back to a caterer, the
one who did it last year, and was supposed to be out of the country this year,
is home and called and asked if she could do it. It will be within our budget so it sounds
good to us. Now we can focus on the
decorations and set up for the program.
We are getting very excited.
This Thursday we have zone conference all day. Us and the Williams are going. President said we may be able to help with
the food at lunch. Sister Howes and
Sister Archibald always do the food for all the zone conferences. This is our first one so it will be fun being
with all the young missionaries in this zone.
We just finished dinner and it was very good. Dad took a picture, we will probably stay
late one day this week to post them or we will wait until next week. We will see.
He got some great pictures yesterday as well, and the ones he takes
tonight.
Mark got permission to close the office through the
holidays, so we are going to leave with the Williams on the 26th, (Boxing
Day) to drive to Canberra and see around there, it is the capital of
Australia. Then the next day we will
drive on to Griffith the Church Ranch and Farm.
That will be a fun trip. We will
be back on the 30th so we can go to Sydney for the New Years Eve
fireworks.
We are excited for Deven starting a new job tomorrow. Congratulations! We are sure it will be a change, but change
is good. We are hoping Loren’s family
had a good Thanksgiving Holiday in Florida.
We were thinking of you on the beach.
Ezra comes home tomorrow to be with Kaylee for a month and the birth of
their first child, a boy. We will be
anxiously awaiting the news. There are
certainly many birthdays in December to hit, or just give him his own day. I doubt she will want to wait until the 28th
for Tina and Tyson’s. Hard to believe
Deven and Michelle grandparents of 2.
It was good to be back in the Oatlands Ward today. There were about 25 in Relief Society and
that is really good. Two of the sister
missionaries that have been here for almost 5 months are being transferred
tomorrow. We are really going to miss
them. They are both pretty nervous. We told them some of our speaking assignments
are in the South Mission so maybe we will see them. We got the new speaking assignments for next
year, and we will only be speaking once a month because we have enough couples
now to spread us out. Next week we go to
Tamworth, about 4 hours north. It is a
ward. I need to make motel reservations
tomorrow. Dad spoke to the Bishop last
night and he wants us to speak. We are
supposed to go on the 29th, but we will be gone. Today in Relief Society the teacher gave me a
2007 calendar of pictures of Christ by Mark Mabry. If you have a minute look him up, the
pictures are beautiful. This was a
calendar made for the Parametta Stake, but I think it was also made and sold in
Deseret Book. On the website he tells
how he took some of the pictures. The
site is www.reflectionsofchrist.org.
We send our love and prayers for all of you,
Mum and Dad
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