Dear Friends & family,
Today is "Hump Day" The fun is ½ over. Nine months ago today we entered the MTC in Provo. I can't believe it went that fast! Maybe I can get Mom to extend for another 6 months. Let's see - Grandkids verses Mission? Hmm I guess I'll forget that! Grandma will never go for it.
Anyway, today was an interesting day at Canberra University. We were in the middle of our weekly class in the Spiritual Living Centre where all the religious teaching, church services and counselling goes on at the university, when a obviously distraught woman in her late 40's walked in. She asked for the head of the Spiritual Living Centre who was not there. Usually, there is a chaplain of some faith on duty, however, today no one was in the office. She asked if we were Christians and I said, "Yes we were." She then asked if we could pray for her. I told we would be glad to pray for her. At that point she just opened up all her current problems in front of the class. She was a single mother with 5 children and 4 teenage boys, some were into drugs, one was going blind and needed to be placed in a special school. She was on government assistance and was required either to work or go to school. She had chosen to go to the University to become a nurse. The woman named Kate went on for about 15 minutes obviously needing to unload her burden. She was to have a big meeting for her nearly blind son this afternoon to determine if he would get into the special school, In preparation for this meeting, this morning she had an altercation with some government employee who had caused her a lot of frustration.
We knelt in prayer and I said a prayer for her and then Mom & I tried to build her up. Telling her that she was making the right decisions as we understood her and that she apparently was a good caring mother and that the Lord would be with her later in the day when she had this big meeting. Her sad countenance began change and she started to smile and thank us for listening to her and building her up and then she left. We had 5 minutes left in the class so we talked about what just happen and bore our testimonies and closed the class.
Our institute classes on Tuesday night are getting bigger and with much more student interaction. We have changed our teaching style to ask many more thought provoking questions. Last night we taught about Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac.( Genesis 22) We asked questions such as "If God knew with His foreknowledge of all things what Abraham would do in this situation, why would he want to test or prove Abraham? Why was Abraham so obedient to an obvious traumatic commandment? What is the application of this Biblical story in our lives? Etc The students, many are returned missionaries, take off and discuss various thoughts and opinions many times for 5 to 10 minutes until I stop them. They teach each other, they bear their testimony to each other, and they disagree with each other, but they seem to enjoy the experience much more then the standard lesson.
We got back from two days on the South Coast of New South Wales. We have small branches of the church strung along the coast. We visited 2 seminary classes and trained a new seminary teacher. This is the area where many of the Aussie's in Melbourne and Sydney vacation at. There are literally 100's of beaches and resorts strung along the coast in this area. The last place we visited was in Noruma, where we trained a brand new seminary teacher. She is the young woman's president and the seminary teacher. She has 3 young woman and one seminary student. We trained her at a member's home in a Holiday Park they own. Australia has lot's of Holiday Parks that are near the beaches and have prefabricated Cabins some of which are very plush, They also have pads for vacation trailers that contain electricity and individual small buildings that are stand alone, self contained bathrooms with tub or shower. The also have spaces for campers. The one we visited and taught at had spaces of 2 man tents all the way up to 5 bedroom cabins that sleep 18 people. They bought most of these prefab cabins from the Sydney Olympics. The cabins were originally used in the 2004 Sydney Summer Olympics. The weather was perfect and we taught the new teacher outside in the shade. They have very colourful parrots that are "wild" but will eat out of your hand.
Coming and going to the coast we have to go through the mountains. The are covered with huge gum trees that are over 100 ft high and the forest floor is covered with huge ferns some 20-30 ft high. It is very beautiful
Slowly. but surely, we are getting closer to the YSAs, and I can see some positive effects of our gentle influence on them as we bond with them. Mother and I have been invited to go to a professional Union Rugby Game this Friday night with a few of the more red neck YSAs . This sport is more fun to watch then American football. The two we are going with are YSAs that had not been coming to our institute classes until this last month
It is getting colder at night sometimes dropping into the low 40's but each day it warms up into the high 60's or low 70's . And of course 5- 6 days a week we have sun. We go off Day light saving time this Sunday.
We continue to have many of spiritual experiences and our prayers have been answered a number of times. I can not express to you how much I love this mission , the work we do, the people we meet, the different experiences we have had that would not happen in the States because of culture, climate, plants and animals. Sometimes I am like a little kid saying to myself' "Wow I never seen (or heard) that before! Such as birds that can sing so many different notes that you think they are playing a musical instrument.
Keep having the Grandkids pray for Grandma's knee as the insurance will not pay for a partial knee replacement over here. So she will have to wait until we return to the States to have it done with your Medicare dollars.
We miss you all and love the pictures you send us. The walls in our flat are covered with grandkids all smiling at us.
Love Grandpa Mac
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
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