Australia Sun Dec 8, 2013
Dear Family and Friends:
Here it is 9:15pm and we just got home from Tamworth about
15 min ago. Will tell you about the trip
later. We have unpacked and put
everything away, turned the air conditioning on, and Dad just put some
Christmas music on the computer.
Last Monday night was Family Home Evening and we sat 16
people for dinner. We had 8 at our
dining room table, 4 at the Moore’s round patio table, and 4 at our patio
table. We were not crowded and we were
quite surprised. I had table cloths for
all of them. We have 4 chairs, the
Williams have 8, the Moore’s have 2, and Archibald’s have 2, so it all worked
out. The Williams did dinner, sloppy
joes, potato salad, 7 layer dip with chips.
It was yummy. After dinner we
took some of the chairs next door to the Moore’s for the program, we watched
Ephraim’s rescue, and then Sister Moore said there was someone in the room that
was an extra in it and we had to guess who.
We each put a name on a paper, and I was the only one who guessed right,
it was Elder Archibald. I got a big
chocolate Santa. He got to be an extra
because one of his grandfathers was Ephraim Hanks. T C Christensen let anyone who had relatives
from the rescue be extras. That is such
a good movie, if you haven’t seen it you need to. After the movie we played a game, guessing
some Christmas questions, and they were really hard. I got 2 right, Australia often celebrates the
day after Christmas as a holiday---what is it? And In last year’s Mormon
Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra Christmas Performance featured a famous
veteran. What was his name? The winner was Brother Jeff’s, he got 8. It was a really fun night. We got the tables and chair’s returned and
everything cleaned up before too late.
We had put the love seat and chair over where our table normally
is. Everyone that came in commented on
our felt Christmas tree and the ornaments.
We told them it is half bare because the rest are in the mail we hope. We have 2 Christmas presents from Loren and
Tami so we put them under our little table tree, and wrapped some empty
boxes. Looks cute. Will send pictures as soon as we get all the
ornaments.
We couldn’t have the committee meeting for the party on
Monday because Melinda Kelly was sick.
We met for a few minutes on Wednesday, and finalized the
decorations. They liked my idea of
ornaments in vases so we are going to use that.
I had 2 vases, and ornaments I am not using because they are too big for
our little table tree. We are also going
to put Christmas Candy on the table between the vases. We got an email on Wednesday morning that the
area Presidency Christmas Devotional is next Wed the 11th, at
9:30. Of course this is the day of our
Christmas Party so LeeAnn decided we will just sit at tables for the
devotional. We will just get the tables
decorated and everything else done right after it is over. We are very glad it is being catered. Sister Williams and I are in charge of
getting the questions for the game written on cards. She found some big cards at the mall, so we
will use those. They are cute Christmas
ones. LeeAnn is going to email us the
questions tomorrow. Will tell you more
about the game next week. It is going to
be so fun.
That night is our night to work at the art show so it will
be a big and tiring day. We have to be
there at Buckland House at 7 pm to train the Elders and Sisters, turn on the
music and video. Then it opens at 7:30
until 10:30. There is getting to be more
and more people every night. We are
going to try to get some pictures posted this week, we just ran out of time
last week. We wonder where the time
goes. Mark was out sick Monday and
Tuesday, and then was in on Wed for a half day, and then had meetings Thursday
and Friday.
Friday was Zone Conference and it was absolutely wonderful,
talk about being spiritually renewed. It
was held at a Stake House about 20 min away.
We went with the Williams. We
didn't go to the office as we had to leave about 8:30. We got the hard drive ready to go on Thursday
and to the mail room. The assistants
took care of the morning session of conference because Pres. and Sister Howes
were at the airport picking up an Elder.
They got back about 11 and introduced him. He is from Germany and had left the Provo MTC
on Wednesday, remember he lost a day coming here. The assistants talked about a survey and
asked who had been using it and was it successful. It was interesting to listen to them. There were about 50 young missionaries there,
then us the Williams, Feils, Tanner’s, and Moore’s. They had lunch and it was sloppy joes, chips,
fresh fruit, cookies and water. Those
Elders can really put the food away.
Sister Howes and Sister Archibald do the food for the conferences so
they make it very simple but good. In
the afternoon the fleet elders gave safety training with a game. It was really fun to watch them. Then Sister Howes talked about Faith, and
President Howes finished with talking about Jesus Christ. Very, very good. We got out about 5. Sister Howes got a text from their son that
she interrupted Pres to read to everyone.
Their 6 year old grandson that was diagnosed a few months ago with
kidney cancer, tumors in both kidney’s, had just finished a scan, and they are
gone in the right kidney, and shrunk a lot in the left, so they are going to
finish the treatments before deciding whether to remove the left one. They have known all along that it would be
removed so they were very pleased. She
wanted everyone to know because they have all been praying for him. They have certainly been blessed.
Saturday morning we went to the office for a few minutes to
print our talks. We change them every time
we give them. I wanted to put a
Christmas story in mine, THANKS Tina for finding it. I think she went through every Christmas book
I have, and that is a lot. We loaded the
car and took off. We stopped about 2 ½
hrs into the trip to walk around and there was a Vinny’s so we went in and I
got a skirt and 2 pair of shorts. We
stopped for fish and chips around 1 and got to Tamworth about 5 and checked
into the motel. Tamworth is the Country
Musical Capital of Australia. We stayed
at the Golden Guitar Motel. We took a
ride to find the Church, about 15 min away, and then parked down town and
walked around for a while. On the way up
to Tamworth in the car we were listening to Music and the Spoken Word on
CD. The message was about Family
History, and fit in perfect with Dad’s talk so I got out my pad and pen and
wrote it down by starting and stopping the cd.
I only had to listen to it twice to get it all. When we got back to the room I wrote it out
so someone could read it. It was really
hard in the car. Dad put it into his
talk and said it was inspiration that I chose that cd out of about 15 we
have. I think so too. We walked next door to a restaurant that the
Williams told us to eat at and had a steak dinner that was really good. We just studied our talks until time for
bed. We got to Church about a half hour
early hoping to hook up on the internet but I couldn’t get my iPad or Vonage to
work all the time at Church. We thought
Church would be large because it is a Ward, but they said they average about
30-35 people. There was about 45
yesterday. Mark and Melinda Kelly were
raised there so we met Melinda’s mom, and sister and family. Her dad is in hospital. It was a great ward, we really enjoyed our
time there. The missionaries are
teaching several people. One Elder is
from St George and one from Arizona.
We decided to take another route home, but didn’t do much
homework on that because it ended up being 4 hours longer so a total of 9 hours
in the car. It was a beautiful ride
though but a lot in the hills and forest with a very windy road. Dad was glad to get off it and back to the
freeway. It was a long day!
We could not find any Christmas Music on the radio at
all. Hard to get in the mood for
Christmas with no music, not many decorations on houses, and it is 85 degrees
outside.
Happy Birthday to Krey on Friday, going to be 9. Glad Bob is doing better after his surgery,
and Deven likes his new job. Life is
good!
Love you all and pray for you:
Mum and Dad
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