Australia Sunday October 26, 2014
Dear Family and Friends,
What an amazing week we have just finished. We are so blessed to be here in this
Beautiful Country and especially the marvelous people here. We have really been spiritually fed with all
that has happened.
Monday night was Family Home Evening and we served the
dinner of barbecue chicken sandwiches, it cooked in the slow cooker all day,
and sweet potato salad that was made Sunday night. Can’t get much easier than that. It was very good and we had very little left
so it was a hit with everyone. It was
Elder Feil’s birthday so Sister Archibald had the table decorated. They had cake and ice cream for dessert. After all was cleared away they put us in a
circle and had a soccer ball with questions on it that Kailee had made up for
an activity while she was here. It was
thrown to each person who read the question and answered it. They were all about yourself. Lots of fun.
The Feil’s leave the mission this Thursday and they are really going to
be missed. The Williams are going to do
great to take their place, and will be very happy to move into the house.
Tuesday morning Dad and I left to pick up the plaques and
grabbed a sandwich while out. The
plaques turned out so good. When we got
back to the office Elder Smylie and Dad left for the airport to pick up Sister
Rogers and her son Lester and take them to the hotel in Parametta. They got back to the office and we all worked
for about an hour, and then left to go to the hotel to have dinner with the
Rogers. The restaurant in the hotel
looked good so we just stayed there. It
was a lot of fun getting to know them, especially for the Smylie’s. The dinner was good and we visited for a
couple of hours. We told them we would
pick them up about 11 the next morning and spend the rest of the day with us at
the office. Wednesday morning we ran
across the street to get chips, tarts and juice for lunch, they have taken
Subway out where it was and moved it down closer to the food court and they
aren’t open yet so I ordered the sandwiches from a Subway over on North Rocks
Road. We ran over and got them, came
back to the office and put them in the refrigerator, and went to the
hotel. We got back to the office and
showed them how we do the photographing, and let them do about 200 cards. She kept saying that by writing on the back
of some of them it created more work for us.
We told her we have a system so it doesn’t take much more time. We had lunch and Elder and Sister Allen
joined us. They are the ones that wrote
the article for Mormon Newsroom Australia.
After lunch Mark presented
Sister Rogers with the plaque and she was very pleased, and especially that we
were able to find a picture of her husband.
They stayed at the office visiting until about 5 when we all left to go to
dinner in Parametta at the317 restaurant.
It was very good, then we walked down to the corner, across the street,
and then back to the cars. Sister Rogers
wanted to attend the temple Thursday morning so we told her we would pick her
up a little before 9 for the 10 session.
Lester stayed in the office with us for about an hour, then went over to
the mall to walk around. When Sister
Rogers came back from the Temple, we got in the car and went over to the mall
for lunch. We drove because the men need
to leave for the airport. We ate a quick
lunch and they left, and Sister Smylie and I ran back across the street to the
office. It was such a great experience
having them here. We now have 2/3 of a
box to finish the entire project, we are hoping to be done by Wednesday night.
Friday we took the day off to do some more traveling. We left around 9 went up the coast towards
Salt Ash. We got off the motor way as
soon as possible and took the back roads.
We found the Lakehouse café at Murray’s Beach for lunch. We had delicious fish and chips outside. We then found Stockton Beach and walked along
it and found two bags full of shells. We
then watched a huge tanker filled with coal being towed out to the ocean from
Newcastle port. There were 3 tugboats
pulling and pushing it out. We just
happened to be there at the right time.
Several other cars in the lot watched it and then left. It must be a big thing, we really enjoyed it. We then left and went to the hotel I had
reserved for the night and got there about 5, it was the Sir Francis Drake
Comfort Inn in Heatherbrae. It was
beautiful, really nice room with a jetted tub, and a wonderful restaurant. We were tired of being in the car so we just
stayed there to eat. We walked around
the beautiful grounds before going to our room.
Saturday morning we left around 9 and drove to small towns
in the country. We found a little café
around 11 for brunch and ordered sausage and onion rolls. They were so good. We ate outside where they had lots of fun
signs hanging. One was “No we do not
have Wi-Fi, talk to each other.” I found
some onion jam I am bringing home and maybe Deven can recreate it if it is
good. We then took off again to the
country and saw beautiful ground. Around
5 we got to Gosford where we had reservations for the night. We walked down to town and got chicken
sandwiches for dinner. We like eating
only 2 meals when we are in the car so much.
This morning we left around 7:30 for the Toukley Ward. They have a beautiful building and had about
50 people in attendance. The Bishop has
been a member about 10 years and has been Bishop for 6 years and they all just
love him. His oldest child is 8. All the meetings were wonderful, the lady
that led the music in Sacrament Meeting taught the Sunday School lesson and the
Relief Society lesson. There are 2 sets
of sister missionaries there, and one of them was in the Blacktown Ward with us
for about 6 months. It was so good to
see her again.
After the meetings we followed Malcolm and Helen Arvidson to
their home. He retired from the service
center a couple of months ago, and went back to Toukley where they had a
home. It is such a nice home and they
have and are doing a lot of work on it. We
ate a delicious dinner of Barbecue chicken on the grill with pineapple and
asparagus on the grill, and 3 salads.
Malcolm then showed us a book that Helen had made for him for his 6oth
birthday. It is of a lot of the pictures
he has taken when they have traveled. It
was beautiful. They then gave us a book
to take home “Landscapes of Australia” and it has beautiful pictures. We had taken a crystal nativity set for
them. We then got in their car and they
showed us a lot of the country for a couple of hours, beautiful beaches, a
lighthouse, and some forested area. What
a fun day. We are going to miss
them. We got home about 6:30, got
unpacked and had a sandwich, I wrote a spiritual thought for meeting in the
morning.
We love you all and appreciate the love and support from
each of you.
Mum and Dad
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