Friday, October 3, 2014

September 28 2014 Weekly Letter

Australia Sunday September 28, 2014
Dear Family and Friends,
This has been a pretty quiet week with Mark and the Smylie’s out of the office.  Elder Meyers came in on Monday, but Elder Cummings was sick.  They both worked at Church buildings Tues and Wed and they didn’t come in the rest of the week.  We finished all the cards except for 2 boxes that Mark wants us to keep for the middle of October.  We are going to do the big rework when we get back in the office on Thursday.  Friday was Birthday morning tea and was really good as usual. 
Saturday morning we went to the office to sign some papers and get them emailed to Salt Lake and we called Tyson to see how he was doing with the onion harvest as we knew a big storm was coming in.  He said he was leaving to take the kids to their piano recital, so we ran home, packed to be gone for 4 days, and went back to the office and saw Aunna, Dixon, and Makenna play, then we left to go to Martin Harvey’s home about an hour away by The Entrance.  He is going to carve me a bone necklace and Dad wanted to see how he does it.  He showed us his house and the remodeling he has been doing, then worked on the bone.  It is going to be beautiful! 
We then drove up to Nelson Bay, and stopped for lunch on the way.  We checked into our motel with an absolutely stunning view of the harbor.  I took a picture and didn’t know my Ipad was on video.  Oh well, I got it off.  The Smylie’s picked us up around 5:30, they were up there to help with a family history fair at the Salt Ash Branch.    Elder and Sister Finch followed them so we could all go out to eat together.  They are assigned to the Salt Ash Branch and they love it there.  We ate a really good steak at the Hogs Breath restaurant.  We had lots of fun just visiting for a couple of hours.  The Finch’s are from Mapleton in Utah County and he retired from teaching at Springville High School.
This morning we checked out of the Motel and rode around looking at the beautiful country before going to Salt Ash.  They meet at the Civic Center in Medowie, and the Assembly of God Church meets there in the morning, so the Branch meets at 1-4.  There were about 40 people in attendance today.  Ralph Arvidson, who is Malcom’s older brother is a counselor in the Presidency.  Malcolm used to work in the Service Center and he and Helen had the Sr. missionaries to their home several times.  They live in Toukley, where we talk next month.  The young women sang “Come, Comer Ye Saints”, and they have 1 Laurel who plays the electric keyboard for the meeting, 1 Mia Maid who leads the music, and 2 beehives.  Their advisor also sang with them.  A 10 year old Primary Boy read a scripture, then on e of the Beehive girls gave a talk.  The advisor also went up and helped her.  You could tell she was really nervous and we found out later that she was baptized in February and this was the first time she had ever given a talk.  There were about 25 primary children.  It was so good to be there with them.
After Church we drove to Denman and checked into our Motel and then walked for a couple of blocks, there are really a lot of old buildings here.  We saw beautiful farm ground on the way here.  We also stopped in Maitland to drop a paper off to the missionaries for the Mission office.  Tomorrow we are leaving for a couple of days and just driving around to look at some new farm ground where we have not been before. 
The weather has been beautiful this week, other than Thursday when it was cloudy and we got a down pour around noon that dropped 1 inch in 10 minutes.  We had a river running down the driveway.  We were so glad we were in the office, we had just got back from running over to the mall.  Yesterday and today the temps were about 5 degrees above average.  Hopefully Spring is finally here.  We do have a chance of rain on Friday.
We are going to miss talking to you all tomorrow, but we will be in the office Sunday Morning when Priesthood meeting lets out and you are all eating dinner so we can visit.  Have a good week.  We love you all.

Mum and Dad

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