Australia Sunday Jan 26, 2014
Dear Family and Friends:
Happy Birthday Loren in the States!
Happy Australia Day!
This is a holiday to celebrate when Captain Cook first landed in
Australia. Today is the actual date, but
because it falls on Sunday tomorrow is also a holiday. Most of the major cities are having big
celebrations today according to the news.
This week has been an interesting one. Monday was mission conference with Elder
O’Rierdon (not spelled correctly). He is
the Seventy over the Sydney Missions. He
is an Australian originally from Melbourne.
The Elders and Sisters of the mission are told to prepare 5 min talks
for all the conferences and then they announce who will be talking. They have 5 subjects they can choose to talk
on. At the beginning of the conference
they announced who would talk and they all did wonderful. Then we had a 10 minute break, then Pres. and
Sister Howes talked and then Elder O’Rierdon talked for about an hour and a
half. It was so good. We left the conference about 1:30 and found a
place to eat not too far from our office, a new place that has just
opened. It was really good, we will
definitely go there again. Then we went
to office and visited with some of you.
That is always the high light of our week.
Tuesday morning we boarded the rivercat at 6:05 am to go to
the Quays and meet Jennie, Arnold and their friends, the Conger’s and the
Flygare’s. We got them day passes and
got right back on the rivercat to come to Rydelmere Wharf where our car
was. The Williams met us there to
transport some of them to our office. We
introduced them to Mark, they saw our office and what we do. Then the Williams showed and told them what
they do. We walked over to the Mission
Office and Sister Feil explained their duties.
Then to walk to the Temple for picture taking. We gave them the history of Buckland House on
the way over. Then we ran across the
street to the mall so they could see all the shops. Some of them wanted an Australian treat to
take home so we had them get Tim Tams and told her how to make a Tim Tam
Slam. We then went back to Buckland
House to show them the offices and introduce Elder Archibald, the Moore’s and
the Tanner’s. The Tanner’s took 3 of
them and we all went down to see the bats.
They were pretty impressed with them.
We then parked in the park and walked to the RSL club for lunch. It was great and everyone could order pretty
much whatever they wanted. We had
everything from Chinese, Salmon, Fish and Chips, Veal, Shrimp. They all looked delicious. Then we took them back to Rydelmere to catch
the ferry as they had to be on their cruise ship by 5. It all worked out good and it was so fun to
see them. They are now in New Zealand. We got back to the office about 2 and
captured 1,000 cards before going to the Temple. We were pretty tired when we got home seeing
as though we got up at 4:30 am.
Wednesday and Thursday were normal days at the office,
except on Wednesday at noon we went back to the Caner Skin Clinic so Dad could
have stitches out of his forehead and arm. His arm was still infected so he gave him a
prescription. We got it after work and
it still doesn’t look much better so we are going to call on Tuesday. Friday
was the Australian Days lunch we were on the committee for so we were at Buckland
House by 9:30 to get things ready. Dad
and Elder Williams got the grill cleaned and started cooking sausages while we
were getting everything else ready. It
turned out every well and everyone enjoyed it.
We got back to the office about 2:00 and worked until 4:30. We did laundry and cleaning until bed because
we wanted to leave for Grafton by 9 Saturday morning. It did take us 8 hours to drive to Grafton
with 2 stops, one to walk around and lunch for about a half hour. We stopped in a little town not far from Port
Macquarie and had Kabab’s at a cute little shop, The Fuzzy Duck. We checked into our Motel, unloaded
everything then got back in the car to go and find the Church. It was about 15 min away and in a subdivision
in a 2 story brick home probably built in the 80’s. The Church bought it 20 years ago. We then rode around the country and saw some
beautiful pasture ground. As we were
driving I found a sign for an Agricultural Research Center. We turned around and went to it and they were
doing trials for soybeans. Then as we
were driving down the drive I yelled stop and there was a kangaroo looking at
us from a pasture. Dad got pictures
through my window. Then we headed back
to town to find someplace to eat. We saw
people going into a café so we decided to try it out. The minute we walked in we could tell it was
expensive with linen table cloths and napkins.
The menu was on a blackboard they wheeled around to the tables, entrees
on one side, and mains on the other. We
decided to share a steak, we don’t eat that much at night. It came with mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes,
beans, all topped with a creamy mustard sauce.
Oh my gosh, it was the best meal we have had here. The steak was cut with a fork and had the
most incredible flavor. That meal was
$38.00 which is not bad for 2 of us. We
were talking to the owner after and he said they buy all their beef locally and
it is all grain fed, which Dad had already guessed. We then went back to our room and studied our
talks.
This morning we were ready to go to Church by 8:00 and
wanted to get there early to call Loren and tell him Happy Birthday. The Branch President was there as well a
couple of others. What a wonderful
Branch, it was so fun to be there. They
normally have about 20 people attend, but today there was 23. The talks went well, at least everyone said
they were good. There is one set of
Sister Missionaries, one is from West Jordan, and the other one from Tonga, and
she has only been here a little over a week so is still trying to learn
English. For the closing hymn everyone
stood and sang the National Anthem, “Advance Australia Fair.” They have 2 primary children, 1 young men, a
12 year old. The Sister missionary
taught Sunday School, and there was 7 of us in Relief Society. After the block they had a lunch for us
before we left. There were 3 different
kind of sandwiches, a couple of casseroles, sweet and sour meatballs and a
couple of salads. Then they had apple
pies, cobbler, brownies, cake, and others for dessert. Then they wrapped up the leftover sandwiches
and desserts for us to take with us.
That was so sweet. We put them on
ice and drove 4 hours to Port Macquarie.
That is about half way home to Carlingford. We found a room and then went for a ride to
see a light house. Wow, it was a
spectacular view of the ocean. Dad took
pictures then we came back to our room and ate our sandwiches. We are now watching tennis, the Australian
Open, the men’s final. Last night we
watched the women’s final.
We should be back to the office early enough to call you
all.
Happy, Happy Birthday Aunna, on Tuesday!
Love you all and you are all in our prayers.
Mum and Dad
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