More down under details

Dear Friends and Family                                                               7/27/08 The first week back to  school has come &  gone. Things are going good and time is flying by even for Mom. We have a new student from England who is studying  at Canberra University for a year. Her name is Anna Fletcher. She was born a member but her parents divorced about 8 years ago and she went inactive. She has only been active again for 10 months. We have a possible new convert at Australian National University. Her name is Jennie. She is Australian, but has just come back from Germany where she lived for about a year. She is in her 4 year  of Uni., and going for a law degree. We received an e-mail from an Elder and Sister Tingey, who are apparently missionaries in Germany and they referred us to her.  We e-mailed her of our institute class and she appeared the end of our 1st class at ANU and said she would attend in the future.  All the other students we had last semester are back. Last Friday we went to ANU to listen to a final concert  recital of one of the YSA. Kylie Loveland is an accomplished concert pianist and is graduating with an equivalent of a Master's degree in piano. She had a back up of a string sextet and played in a concert theater where the BYU Young Ambassadors performed last May. It holds about 2000 people.  The performance was outstanding. She leaves next Sat.  for a month of further performance and study in Israel and then a few weeks in Austria. It is incredible how much traveling the YSA do.  Two have bought round the world airline tickets that allow them to make 6 – 8 stops in certain cities as they circle the globe.  They have 2 to 3 months to circle the globe.  2 YSA took off for Japan for 2 weeks last Saturday. Two others just returned from a 3 & ½ week trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.  One just got back from the Torres Straits near New Guinea.  3 others have either just come back from the US or are still there. They save their money and then literally blow it all on travel.   We went to the Sydney Temple last Saturday and took some YSA with us. The petrol (gas) is about $6.20 a gallon(sold in liters here) and it costs about $70 in petrol  to make the 600 Kilometer( 360 mile)  round  trip. We take our car and I have to do all the driving. We leave at 6:30 AM, do 1 or 2 temple sessions and then return, and get home at 5PM the same day.  It is a 600 k. round trip where close 600,000 words were spoken by the 3 women who rode with us. The male YSA  and I spoke about 60 words. Even though this is the equivalent of your January, the trees are budding and flowering here. Sydney is even milder and you see  flowers, even at this of the year,  they are  everywhere.  As I have said before, many of the plants are entirely unique to Australia.  All is well here and we miss you all!                          Love Dad Elder Mac