It is long past that Indian summer/ aboriginal summer here, burr it is cold, cooling.

HI fabulous family and friends: Hopefully, this will be short and sweet. It is Sat. evening and Dad
has wisely gone to bed. We need to get up at 5:30 AM on Sunday to travel down to the South
coast, first Nowra for meetings starting @ 9:30 with Sacrament and then attending a seminary
meeting. THen after that, we will travel along the coast until we get to Ulladulla, where we will
attend early mornig seminary, starting @ 6:00 AM on Monday. Then on the way back to Canberra
that day, on Monday, we will stop in Narooma, to visit some members of the church that manage/ own?
a large resort area. They have 5 children under 7, with twin boys, who are 18 months old. They have
invited us for lunch. Should be a lovely drive going down the coast. We go thru the scariest mountain
pass every time we go to Nowra, which absolutely scares the heck our of me; but once we get thru
the 2nd pass, the view and beauty of kangaroo valley is almost breath-taking. Or is it the scary drive
thru the mountains, that takes my breath away?? It's one or the other. The highway system, just isn't
what we have in the states, but in defense of why not; they have a population of 1/ 10th of ours.
The first part of our week, is always so busy with teachng, again becuase we have 3 separate preps,
the BOM, Old Testament & Pearl of Great Price.
We had our mission president and his great wife in Canberra for a zone conference on Thursday. We
both love and appreciate their great spirits, again always so upbeat and happy.
Last week for Easter Sunday, we had two of our YSA's over for dinner in the evening; I always love
the one on one time with them and wish we could do that more/ most often.
This Sunday, while we are on the coast, our YSA's will see a much delayed replay/on DVD of Sister
Julie Beck's talk given at BYU for YSA's. We received a copy from Sydney and previewed it before
we turned it over to our media specialist YSA. Wonder if Megan was blessed to hear it; I believe it
was live at the beginning of the month. It was on the Abrahamic covenant and on marriage and was
very uplifting and fun. The Church sure does neat CES firesides for YSA's.
Believe it or not, I am really looking forward to seeing a professional rugby game with some of our YSA
men at a stadium here in Canberra this next Friday.
Want you all to know, this gospel is without a doubt the Great Plan of Salvation/ JOY. Our greatest
joys have always been our family-all of you. You are so missed and greatly loved. You are in our daily
prayers and we appreciate your loving kindnesss and support.
Love mom mac/ grandma mac aka sis mac

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resend of last down under update

9Mar. 2008

Dear Friends and Family,

 

     What a week!  It was busy, challenging, but very rewarding.

The first part of the week we taught classes every day.

Thursday Mar 6^th  we taught a University lesson at 11 AM  in the flat  to a girl that missed our lesson at Canberra University on Wednesday. Then we went to Australlian National University to teach another Uni class at 1 PM  We were expecting 3 to come but only 1 showed. However, an investigator came,  Kotai  a 21 year old Chinese young man who grew up in Japan, moved with his family to Long Island NY in 2001 and is here for 6 months at ANU.
We picked him up from our ANU orientation stall 2 weeks ago. I dropped the lesson and we spent part of the hour letting him talk about himself and then the last half on gospel subjects he had questions on. It went very well. We then hopped into the car and drove an hour north of Canberra to Goulburn, NSW to visit a daily home seminary that is held late in the afternoon. The father & mother teach their 2 teenage boys. The father is the captain of the prison guards at the state prison for NSW(New South Wales) one of the  8 States in Australia. He is Samoan. and his wife is Maori.    After the hour lesson, which we observed, they fed us supper and we immediately jumped into the car and drove 2 hours & 15 minutes North to the Church temple motel near the Sydney temple.

By 7:45AM Friday we were at the Baulkham Hills chapel in a Sydney suburb, to hear Elder David A. Bednar speak. When we got there most of the other missionaries were already there even though it was not to start until 9 AM,  All the missionaries that are assigned cars in Australia are issued white 2007 Toyota Camay's.  So in the church car park(what Aussie's call parking lots) were 60-70 white 2007 Toyota Camray's. What a sight!  Even though the chapel was full and the over flow was almost full with about 275 missionaries, because we were senior missionaries they told us to go down front and sit in the very front row right below the speakers stand. So we did. Right before 9 AM in came the mission presidents from Sydney North & Sydney South missions with their wives, then came in three General Authorities, Elder Sabrowsky the Australian Area President, Elder Hilbig his 1^st councillor and then the Apostle  Elder Bednar. All had their wives with them.

The meeting went for 3 hours with no breaks.  Elder Bednar took up about 2 &1/2 hours of it with his wife and the 2 other general Authorities taking up about 20 minutes all together. The rest was prayers and hymns.

Half of Elder Bednar's talk was on some new perspectives on the Holy Ghost and on prayer, None of which I had ever heard before. He supported all his "new' principles with scripture. The subjects are too long and intricate (not complicated but simple) to relate. However, the general theme is that if you use these principles in every, yes every, meeting in Church ( from temple , to sacrament, to missionary lessons , to all gospel teaching classes, etc, members will have  a "Revelatory Experience" with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost will reveal knowledge to the members of these groups based on their adherence to these principles. None of these principles are earth shattering but I never have looked at the Holy Ghost from this perspective before.

The Apostle referred to Sister MacPherson  in a couple of his examples as she was no more then 4 ft away from him as he looked down from the pulpit. I asked him a question to which he responded. About an hour of it were questions by the missionaries and his answers.  At the end of the meeting we all filed up in queue and shook the hands of all the leaders including Elder Bednar.

We then rushed to the car and drove directly to the temple grounds to make a 1PM session to do sealings in the temple. We did 25 male and 25 female child to parent sealings, and 12 spousal sealings, both in moms line and my line.  We then went out to lunch at about 3 PM and then went to a Seminary inservice meeting in the Villawood chapel that night. Villawood is a southern suburb of Sydney. After that we went back to temple motel which in northwest Sydney Suburb of Carlingsford.  Saturday we got up and drove 3 hours plus back to Canberra. Later that day we attended a baptism and in between arriving home and the baptism I had two, yes two, migraine attacks. I think I'm getting more migraines down here because we are "down under" and therefore upside down from you and thus more blood to the head, and of course more migraines! Now there's a great diagnoses. I should have been a doctor!

The leaves are now changing and a tree in front of our flat is dropping leaves, Autumn is here. Yet when we were in Sydney this last week we saw trees 20 -30 ft high, full of large deep purple flowers like we saw in the spring time. When I walk, I go through a grove of oak trees that are full of acorns and large white Cockatoos. They are eating the acorns but in the process they break off the ends of the branches and the ground is full of these branch ends and cracked acorns. There are no squirrels in Australia so the nuts are eaten only by birds. 

Well this is way too long, so I'll sign off.

                 Love Elder Mac

 

 

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Interesting Story

We are also going to a missionary conference talk in Sydney this Fri
to hear David A Bednar. It looks like Australia is getting close to
being translated to Zion! Yep, the rumour is Australia and New Milford
are going at the same time. Love Elder Mac

Part of a talk given by Sister Ann M Dibb the daughter of Thomas S. Monson
Given at BYU Idaho devotional on 19 Feb 2008. The Kellie is Kellie Neill
Brown the daughter of Anthony Neill our CES supervisor, who we directly report
to.

“I’d like to share a very recent example of encouragement. Our son, Mark, served his mission in Australia. One of his companions, Adam Brown, from Adelaide, Australia, came to Utah in order to attend general conference. He attended every session. In between two of the sessions, we introduced him to my father. This is an excerpt from the letter of thanks we received two weeks ago:
“As you were aware, when I returned home from Utah, I planned to propose to my beautiful girlfriend, Kellie. Her family is great, but I was still very, very nervous about asking her Dad for permission. I knew he would say, ‘Yes,’ but I was petrified. I think one of the things that got me over the line, because I chickened out the first two times, was President Monson’s comment when I showed him a photo of Kellie while visiting with him in his office. He said, ‘I approve.’ I gained courage from this. I figured if Kellie’s Dad were to say, ‘No, you can’t marry my daughter,’ I would be able to reply with, ‘Well, President Monson said that he approved.’ With this added courage on my side, I asked, and after the twenty-minute interrogation, he said, ‘Yes.’”
Adam Brown and Kellie were married on February 2nd in the Sydney Temple. My father was pleased to learn that his word of approval may have encouraged a temple marriage! “

An Elder's Epitome from Emuland

Dear friends & family,

 

 Well another month has gone by since I last wrote. Fall has officially arrived in Australia as of March 1^st. They don't go on the same fall equinox system the States use. As a matter of fact it is not even called fall here it is only called Autumn.. Rugby has started and cricket is winding up. I understand you will soon go on Daylight savings time and we   will go off it a few weeks later. That means the time difference will increase by 2 hours. Now it is 6 hours different MTS time 7 hours different CST and 8 hours different EST. When you go on and we go off Daylight savings time it will go 8, 9, and 10 hours difference.

Seminary started a month ago and we have visited all 3 of the Canberra seminaries. This month we go to the outlying seminaries of which there is there is now 6  spread over 300 kilometres.

We also start our regular institute class and our 2 university classes (called Uni classes) this week. Last week we had our opening social at Uriarra Crossing, a park about 15 kilometers from Canberra on a river.

 Canberra is shaped like a giant octopus with the body the city centre, with all the federal buildings, parliament house etc, and all the embassies and central downtown area. Reaching like tentacles from the center are all the suburbs extending for miles away from the centre but unlike other cities there is open space between the tentacles (suburbs) in which are either parks or wilderness areas. Thus you have kangaroos getting in all the way to the centre of the city and when you drive from one end of the city to the other you can drive for 20 minutes at 100 Ks / hr  in these wilderness areas and not drive by one house in the process. A few weeks ago the car in front of me hit a medium sized "Roo" and broke one of its legs and it could not move and was just lying in the middle of the road with it's head up. The government has a kangaroo unit that handles injured Kangaroos and Wallabies (smaller kangaroos). So the unit was called and they responded.    

Anyway, back to the opening social. About 30 YSA showed up. 3 were ANU student investigators. We ate and barbequed Australian sausages, which they absolutely love, but I think taste terrible. They swam in the river, played football, had a scripture proverbs scavenger hunt that I made up, and they roasted marshmallows and had a testimony meeting around the fire and nearly everyone bore their testimony. We even had the 3 investigators get up and had them tell us about themselves. It was a great night that turned out to be very spiritual.

Yesterday(Sunday) we attended two ward blocks for fast day and then went right into a baptism that was after one of the blocks and then as soon as that was over we went the the YSA fast breaker at  the "Belco Boys" home. (Four YSA men from the Belconnen Ward rent this large home). Afterwards  we took one of the YSA's home who lives 40 K's from our flat. We left our flat about 9 AM and got home at 8:30 PM. The baptism was a 10 year old girl of one of the YSA's who joined the church 5-6 years ago. We discovered that she had never been baptised, but was attending regularly with her mother. Her name is Jordan DeAlvia. Jordan MacPherson has a female name sake.

This summer has been almost perfect as the temperature was in the 70"s, 90 % of the time, and in the 90's only 4-5 days with the rest in the 80s. The sun shines about 80-90% of the time. In fact, the big Australian cancer is skin melanoma from the sun.  All primary school children are required to wear wide brim hats or they can not go outside for recess. I have a "Crocodile Dundee" hat that I wear when I take walks. About a month ago I was walking and this "Auaker"(another name for Aussie) about my age came walking towards me in this hat that had a bigger brim than my hat and he said to me " I really like your hat but my hat is much better" he smiled and I laughed and we kept right on walking past each other.

Because of our assignment, we are in the scriptures hours each day. It is amazing how much this very act makes one so much more spiritual. We are constantly being prompted by the spirit to teach this or that, or to call this person or that person who was, as we had been prompted, struggling with some aspect in their lives. We have found that our benefit to those we serve is not so much what we teach them in class, but in the bonding that occurs with these people.  Who then ask us for advice in their personal problems, of which many of these problems we have experienced and hopefully can give them some helpful answers.

I can not tell you how much I love this work, the people, and this place. A mission can give you a tremendous amount of joy and self worth. I recommend it for all my grandchildren. Granted it is not easy but rarely in your life will you feel the spirit so much in your daily life, and get so much satisfaction and joy in what you are doing.    

Well this is long enough.

     I love and miss you all

                  Elder Mac( aka Dad, Grandpa, and Doug)

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