| Dear fab family & friends: Excuses, excuses, excuses! For the past week or so, our computer has been down more, than up. The Friday before Mother's day, the computer totally crashed and Dad called our YSA President to ask him to help us and he got back some of the computer, including our church website e-mail (which is not really e-mail friendly and much more labor intensive); but NO msn.com website. One of our sons called on the day before and we had a nice chat and then another son called on Mother's day in the states, which was actually Monday AM; and you two son's made the day for me. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Sunday evening I cooked dinner for a young couple with a baby, who attend our eternal marriage class and two of our YSA's and one of their Mom's. And Christop ( the young married Dad) even worked on the com- puter after dinner and couldn't figure out what to do to retrieve out personal e-mail. Monday evening after returning from family home evening around 9:30PM and at the suggestion of the YSA, who had helped Dad that past Saturday, Dad called the states and talked to someone at MSN about getting our e-mail up and running and voila' he got it unlocked and printed out a stack of lovely e-mails from family, which I read while taking a long bath. THANKS, THANKS, THANKS! Life doesn't get much sweeter than that. I felt of your love! Want you to know, you all bless our lives. I will try to catch up on personal e-mails probably later, than soon. Last week, we taught 5 different classes, one everyday; with 4 separate preparations. Thursday, we though it might be a somewhat slower day, as we were down to last prep time for that week and your Dad ended up doing a blessing for a YSA, troubled by the death of a co-worker at work that morning and then later in the day, we drove over to the hospital, where I had had my two knee surgeries ie arthoscopic to give a blessing to the same YSA's girlfriends Mother, who was going into surgery within a couple of hours. I think our days never ended earlier than returning after 9:30 PM and we get a bit beat. I told Dad I'm looking forward to a rest in a hospital, as I hopefully get the right knee really fixed upon our return. We had two of our YSA young women over for supper tonight, which was nice. After Institute this past Tuesday, Kali said she really wanted to spend some time with us, as she will probably move to Melborne to date a young man, who is seriously interested in her and vice versa; but the distance is not working; so she will move near him in the near future. He is a return missionary and currently has two sisters on missions, one in Nauvoo for 6 months, then on to Califorina and one on the west coast, Spanish speaking in Oregon and they don't want their brother to marry until they return. The sisters are 6-12 months away from returning. We have grown close to Kali and tonight she asked if we couldn't extend our mission for another 6 month period and of course we agreed. NOT! Don't think I want to miss any more baptisms of grandkids at this time and we would miss the twins ( Jacob & MaKayla), Kaiden's & Katelyn. Dad may stay back, as their is a single sister, close to our age, who just arrived from Scotland and they could probably pair up. JUST KIDDING!! We are the only missionaries in our zone, who never get transferred!!! And of course oh well we shouldn't. Hey, I heard Rob quote his son, RYNE who said on a vacation no less, " Is this eternal family thing really a good thing"? Dad is the most patient, I have ever, ever, ever seen; but somehow this "luxury" ie teeny, tiny flat is too small for me. Usually, it is men who are known for looking for a little private space, not here, it's me: NO BASEMENT! NO ATTACHED GARAGE! NO PAT'S OWN CAR, I know you all get the picture. Eteranal joy, but in cramped, as well as expensive spaces. But, again thank goodness for Dad's patience. Last Sunday, during one of the two 3 hour blocks we attend, one of our YSA young women asked if I would be willing to skip RS so she could talk to me and I said she was more important than RS at that time. Saw her again at Institute Tuesday and then this morning she called and asked if she could come over to our flat and talk with both of us. She had invited us to a graduation this past Thursday night as a personal trainer and we had attended. She is a fairly recent convert of maybe 5-6 years from a divorced family (she said today, her parents divorced when she was a teenager) and she is the single Mom of a 10 year old and she just turned 30. My heart so goes out to so many of these wonderful YSA's, who come from such difficult backgrounds and have such a struggle themselves. She talked about Mother's day being no different than anyother day with both her & her Mom and also with her and her daughter. She works and goes to school and really has quite a struggle. Tomorrow is Sunday here with two - 3 hour blocks of church meetings, followed by another couple of hours of YSA meeting which is always every 3rd Sunday. This next week, we only have 4 classes to teach and 3 preps as we teach one class, same material at the 2 uni's; but we will attend 3 early morning seminary classes, which means we will be up at 5:15 AM three mornings this next week. Sure seems like we're burning the candle at both ends sometimes. Well our dinner guests left @ 9:30 after a group hug, Kali has me hug Elder Mac and she hugs me from my back. She is amazingly affectionate, she is a beautiful half Chinese/Astrailian, probably 5'10" and I feel a bit squeezed in the middle of Dad and Kali; but it sort of reminds me being hugged by Frank's wife, Elaine. When Elaine gave you a hug, you knew you were being HUGGED! After Kali and Charissa (she is the sweetie who was just bapized by Dad no less, just a couple of weeks ago) left, Dad said he had a migraine and went straight to bed, I remember thinking his eyes looked tired, but instead it was the migraine. Oh my gosh, it is 11:45PM and I am whipped. It is a good thing I can sleep in. NOT! Life is mostly good. We feel blessed to serve and continue to pray that we can do some good over here, even in such small ways. Thanks for your loving support. You are all in our prayers. Hope this finds you all well. Love, mom Mac/ grandma mac/ & of course aka sis mac  |
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Update from down under
Monday, May 12, 2008
Update from Austrailia Part 2
Dear Friends & Family, Well the mission is going great, and we are really busy. We are now teaching our 4th course. We teach 5 days a week one week, and 4 days the other. We have 4 lesson topic preparations for the 5 classes. Our first Eternal Marriage class was on Friday May 2, and we had 5 married couples show up. 2 of the couples have only been married for less than 6 months. It went very well with a lot of discussion. The next class is this Friday, as we teach it only twice a month. All the other classes are weekly. The attendance has been good and we have had a lot of good gospel discussions. On Tue Apr. 29th, I baptized a 25 year old young single sister Charissa McCabe. She came to our opening social with Bett Lacorna in November and has been fellowshipped by many of the YSA's for the last 6 months. She has been coming to our institute classes for about 2 months and Sister MacPherson (Aka Mom / Pat) and I have sat in on 2 of the discussions with her. She came up to me a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I would baptize her. I had to baptize her twice, the first time I got all of her under the water except for the pinky finger on her right hand that she was holding on to my left arm with. She was a little flustered when one of the witnesses told us she had not gone entirely under the water as is required in baptism, but I immediately repeated the prayer and took her to the bottom of the baptismal font the 2nd time, pinky and all. There were 80-90 people at the baptism, more than are at sacrament meeting in some of the smaller wards. Mom made some taco soup and cookies and others brought more food and the was nothing left at the end of the night. Except for Sat nights we have been out every night in the last 2 weeks. Sun Apr. 27 we had a YSA Fireside and testimony meeting in which 3 of the 4 involved in the bad auto accident we previously wrote you about, bore their testimonies. We also had 3 short talks and 3 musical numbers. It was one of the most spiritually powerful meetings I ever attended, almost all were crying at some point in the meeting. One of the girls involved in the accident sang the primary song "Heavenly Father are you really there". All those present knew that this same song was song by her while they were waiting for the rescue squad after the accident as she held Eddie's head up to keep him from aspirating his own blood. Many cried as she sang the song in the fireside. The testimonies could not be stopped so we went 2 &1/2 hours then socializing and Food. We left at Mon Apr 28 was Family Home evening with YSA's where we had some great scripture study discussions, games. and food; Tues night is our regular Old Testament institute class, with socializing and food; two Wed nights ago we had Seminary in-service class with a seminary teacher and then a meeting with member of the Stake presidency who is over the institute and YSA programs and Dinner with both of them who are married to each other. Thur we had 4 YSAs over to the flat for Dinner and discussion . Two of them were leaving Wed May 7th the BYU Young Ambassadors came to This last Friday we attended a YSA dance session in which they were learning Salsa and Bollywood dancing. Last night for, Mothers Day, I took Mom to dinner at the Tonight, Sunday we are having people over for a Mother's day dinner. .We are truly on a CES, party and food mission. Eddie Canton, the one that was hurt so badly in the auto accident is progressing slowly after making a miraculous recovery from massive head and brain injuries. We visited him a couple of times last week and he is off all life support, is conscious, but sleeps a lot – 20 hours a day. He has full use of his left side, but is still paralyzed on his right side. He has hearing, and sight, but is still unable to speak. I asked him if he knew who I was and he shook his head yes. He can only communicate by nodding his head. Prayers still go up for him in almost all the YSA and church meetings we attend. The doctors said his progress, if it occurs, will be very slow from here on out, and should take up to a year. They are waiting for a bed in a special neurological rehabilitation hospital near Our computer crashed and the Church will not supply us with a new one. We apparently supposed to supply our own. One of the YSAs, who has a lot of computer experience and works as a information technician, supplied us with a used computer that we are now using. However, so far, we have been unable to use our mac9pcom@msn.com e-mail address as it will not accept my password or my special question answer. We are going to use our macphersondr@ldsces.org e-mail site until I can figure how to change passwords. All it does is tell me that the new temporary password has been sent to my e-mail address which I can't access. If any of you know what I can do further from here let me know. Otherwise, the Lord has blessed us with better health which means less joint pain. I have realized that we have had no spells of flu or colds since we have been here. Macpherson adult kids, please e-mail mom some Mother's Day messages as she has not been able to receive anything in the last 3 days via e-mail. |
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Update from Australia
| After our old computer crashed last week, we are now up and running. Oringinally we were unable to get the MSN email up but finally last night after calling MSN in the states or India( who knows where these call centers are) they were able to verify who we were and they unblocked our email account. It became blocked after it would not accept our email password for some reason. You can use this account again to email us. Mom thanks you all for all the Mothers Day emails. Elder Mac |
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Sunday, May 4, 2008
Having problems with our computer
HI Fab family & friends: Last weekend our computer was down thru Monday, when we got some help from YSA's to bring it back up; yesterday one of the same YSA's came over to download our important computer data, so it doesn't get lost. Our CES Coordinator told us if it crashs we won't be able to get it replaced and will need to go to the chapel or ? and we can actually understand that to a degree. But we use it to obviously get and send e-mail from and to family, as well as get supplemental info for our classes. We are also very dependant on our e-mail to the YSA's. Evan, the YSA, who has been helping us, etc is fairly certain he can get us a used one that is not as old as the one we use; so we are hopeful we can get a new/ used computer in place within the next several business days. We have fallen behind in e-mails and probably won't do a missionary update until the computer problem is worked out. Last week was one of our busiest weeks with Uni classes/ Institute class/ BOM class/ Seminary Inservice class/ 1st Eternal Marriage class/ Dad baptizing Charissa, a 25 yr old/ young Aussie gal; we were out 5 out of the last 7 nights with an Institute fireside/ testimony meeting included. We weren't back in our flat most of those nights until 9:30 to 11 PM, whew can I say we were tired. But true to form, Dad, the perpetual work-a-holic loved it all. I did too, but just find it a bit tiring, especially the night work. One of the nights we weren't out, we had our Institute President and YSA VP over each with friends for supper to thank the President of Institute and VP of YSA for their fabulous service, as one flies to the states and the other returns to her native New Zealand. So now we are in the process of getting them replaced, which will be hard as they were so excellent at what they did; and as always the problem in this stake, is it is small and manpower is always an issue. Adding to that shortage, is many of our YSA's tend to hold key stake positions. I am afraid this computer may fail as I write; so need to close. You are all in our prayers and we feel and appreciate yours. We miss and love you all. And hope you are all well. Love, mom/grandma mac/ also friend Pat aka Sis mac |
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