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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