The Cell Phone Analogy

Dear MacPherson teenagers, and others,   I thought I'd share with you this analogy I came up with  for one of our recent Institute classes. I first asked the students these questions about their cell phones(called mobile phones here). How many of you carry your cell phones almost everywhere you go? How many of you check your cell phones many times a day for messages on them? How many of you pull out your cell phones when you have nothing to do and use them? How many of you tell others what you have just learned from your cell phones? How many of you panic if you can't find your cell phone?   The answers where almost unanimous that they did all of the above!   I them asked the very same questions, except I substituted SCRIPTURES for cell phone? Very few hands were raised! I smiled and said, "Is there an important message here about where our hearts are?   I pointed our that in medieval times many regular members of the Catholic Church that were caught having or reading the bible would be imprisoned, excommunicated, tied to a stake, had their bibles  tied to and hung around their necks, and burned at the stake. Many good people died this way. We take for granted the PRIVILIGE  we have to read and study the scriptures whenever we want to.      I wonder what kind of people we would be like if we used our scriptures a much as we use our cell phone?                                                        Love Elder Mac

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

Paddocks of Wallabies

This e-mail has been approved and recommended for all future missionaries. That means anyone who reads this!   Dear family,                                                                                         7/18/08 Well today we saw a mob of about 30-40 Wallabies (small species of kangaroos) grazing in a cow pasture( called a paddock here) right next to a suburb of Canberra. One of our YSA is on holiday for 3 weeks up in Cape York, which is as far north as you can get in Australia, and is driving a 4 wheel drive jeep type vehicle. He called back on his mobile phone that he had hit and killed 3 kangaroos on his way up. Some of these kangaroos can weight up 400 lbs. Luckily he has "Roo bar" or some times called a "Bull bar" on the front of his car. This is a curved steel bar round in shape about 3 inches in diameter and chrome plated that is mounted in the front of many vehicles here. They save the vehicle from a lot of damage.  We just fed two of our elders and they said that they saw mob of kangaroos on a hill, 2 days ago, right in Canberra about 1 mile from our flat.   Australians love their holidays ( we call them vacations). Almost everybody gets 4 weeks paid vacation each year even if you are part time worker. Men and women  get paid maternity leave and most get paid sick  leave that can be as long as 5 weeks per year. On top of that, Australia has more national holidays then almost any other country - about 12 per year. There is even a holiday for Good Friday and Easter Monday and Melbourne Cup Day – a horse race that is similar to our Kentucky Derby.  We had our opening social for the 2nd semester Institute class this last Tuesday. We had it in one of the chapels because it is cold out. We played volleyball , had a karaoke machine which they call "Sing- Star" and then I had a Old Testament treasure hunt that was similar to my Easter basket hunts . They had to use their scriptures to look up OT verses to find the next clue. I. E. Exodus 17:6 "thou shall smite the rock and there shall come water out of it, that  the people may drink"  This clue led them to the chapel's water fountain where the next clue was.  There were 4 teams and each had 5 different clues that lead them to the treasure of a bag of Solomon's gold coins. (Chocolate, shaped like coins and covered with gold foil.) They really get into it, get very competitive, and really seem to enjoy it. We then had 16 Dominos pizzas and hot fudge sundaes. We closed the social with a testimony meeting in the primary room.  The other 2 Institute socials are outside in the autumn and summer ( remember we are in winter)  and we have a testimony meeting at the end of these socials around a campfire.  So I put about 20 chairs in a circle and borrowed 4 split logs from a member and cut out flames from red construction paper and taped them to the logs and then put a flashlight in the middle that shone through the red paper. I then turned the lights off. The effect was great and we had a great testimony meeting.   Next week all the universities start up again so it is back to the usual schedule of 4 to 5 classes a week.  Hope all is well with all of you.               Love Elder Mac   P.S.  We went through a yet another mission transfer(companionships are split up and missionaries are transferred into different locations and paired up with a different elder or sister)    and I STILL have the same companion! I guess the mission president thinks we work well together. Now all I have to do is convince my companion of this.

Missionary Story

Burr -  Send blankets and hot water bottles!  It dipped down to 29 degrees today.   Missionary Story from Down Under, Last Monday we went to Family Home Evening with the YSA as we usually do. That night we had 2 full time missionaries there with their investigator with them. One was Elder Vhang  the 1st missionary ever from Burma and other Elder Kallaraga  from the South Pacific Island nation  of Kiribati or also known as the Gilbert Islands. He is black like the Fijians are. The investigator was Ong  who was a Burmese man in his thirties who has lived in Australia  for 14 years escaping Burma because of the same Military persecution that exists there today. The FHE lesson was on the importance of Fasting and Prayer. It started off with the New Testament story of the apostles trying to cast out an evil spirit from a boy and having failed. Jesus came along and cast out  the evil spirit. Later the apostles asked the Savior why they could not do it and Jesus said "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting." Mark 9: 17-29 One of the YSA, a returned missionary, then told of this experience he had on his mission while serving in Boston, Mass.  A new convert sister of less than a year, and only member in her family, called them one day, and said  her grandfather was gravely ill and would they administer to him. The grandfather had some kind of cancer, and was in tremendous pain and was on a morphine pump that lessens the pain but also put him in a stupor unable to understand or speak.   Her family was very antagonistic toward the church, and had refused her requests to have her grandfather receive a priesthood administration of the sick. Finally after seeing him suffer so much they agreed to have the elders administer to him. The elders agreed to administer to him, but only after a 24 hour fast, in which they did a lot of praying. When they arrived at the hospital the next day, some of the family was in the room with them. The member sister had told them that the elders would use their priesthood power and would heal her grandfather. The YSA  RTM told us that he had the  felt spirit so strongly that he truly felt that the Grandfather would be healed. His companion anointed the grandfather, and then this elder sealed the anointing and was about to say the words to heal the grandfather when the spirit stopped him and then told him through the still small voice, that he was to bless the grandfather that the severe pain would soon leave his body, but that he would die and not be healed, however he would be mentally cognizant for 1 week and then die a week from that day. A sister of the member after hearing this, and expecting her grandfather to be healed, said "What the hell was that?" The elder answered and said "That was what the spirit told me to say." A few hours later the grandfather's morphine pump was cut back, and eventually stopped because it became apparent that he was no longer suffering pain. He became alert and in the next week the family members were able to visit him and essentially say goodbye to him.  He died  exactly 1 week later just as the elder's blessing said he would. The family had the grandfather buried in a town near Boston and asked that the elders attend the funeral which was conducted by a Roman Catholic priest. The family was catholic. At the end of the burial the priest came up to the grandmother and asked if he could be of any spiritual help. The grandmother at that time was standing next to the elder who had given the blessing, and said putting her hand on the elder's shoulder "No thanks we have all the help we need."                                      Love Elder Mac

Happy 4th of July

Hey Family: Not sure if this cute attached message that came from the states, will  bounce back to the states, but see if you can bring up the attachment. We celebrated July 4th, not, because it isn't Australia's indepence day; but yesterday, the 4th in Aussie land, we attended a wonderful district/ zone missionary meeting. Then we taught an Eternal Marriage class and had 6 couples attend and it was fun to see all the participation and hear all the thoughts of these couples. Two of the couples have pregnant wives, and they have each just been married very close to when we came over here, now 12 months ago. Gee, how time flies when you are having fun being worked to death by Elder mac, the workaholic/ churchaholic that he is. Hope you all had a great July 4th. Enjoy the attachment if you can access it. Love, Mom/ grandma mac aka sis mac

Missionary moments from down under

Jun 26, 2008 Dear Family and Friends, Another week rolls by and some interesting  spiritual experiences occurred. We had  a double Zone Conference last Thursday here in Canberra. Usually there are one to three missionaries going home after serving for 2 years. Last Thursday 5 missionaries were going home in the next few weeks. It is a custom to have them bear their testimonies in the Zone before they go. The first was a missionary, Elder Broadbent, who seemed very distant or shy and gave the appearance that he was mentally already home. However, when he bore his testimony it was apparent that that he was very knowledgeable in the gospel and had done well on his mission. We found out that the mission president, when apparently finding out about his intelligence, asked him to learn Samoan on his mission and serve in the Samoan Wards; which he did.   There are almost more Samoan's and Tongans in Australia than there are in their own islands. If you remember in one of our first letters, we went to a 4 stake seminary scripture mastery activity near Sydney and I mentioned that over 90% of the seminary students there were of Polynesian descent.    Another missionary got up to bear his testimony, an Elder Sutton. He was one of the assistants to the mission president. Normally there are 2 Elders that are assistants to the president. This time there were 3 because he was going home in a week and the President had already called his replacement. The AP's usually do some teaching in the zone conference and always accompany President McMasters and his wife when they come to our zone conferences. As he was leaving, his replacement did the teaching and Elder Sutton was assigned to check out the all the missionary cars in the parking lot (called car park in Australia). At each zone conference elders from the mission office go over the missionaries cars looking to see the if elders are keeping up with their car's maintenance and cleaning. There were 14 -  2007 White Toyota Camrays in the lot.   . He collected all the keys from all the missionaries and while we were in the first part of our 4 hour meeting he checked the cars. As he was checking the cars,   a middle age Chinese couple walked through the car park taking a short cut through the lot to get to shopping center (called "the shops" here). The shops are across the street from the chapel. Elder Sutton waved at them and said Hi, but they just looked at him and said nothing. He waved again and said "Hi' again and this time they smiled and waved but said nothing. They continued to the shops and Elder Sutton went back to work on the cars.    About a ½ hour later, back came the Chinese couple with some groceries in bags and this time they stopped and looked at the row of white Camrays,  all looking exactly alike. Elder Sutton looked at them and felt prompted to go up to them and said Hi again, but they said nothing. He then felt prompted to say Hi in Chinese. He knew only a few Chinese phrases which he had learned because the Sydney area has ten's of thousands of Chinese. They smiled and immediately started talking to him in Chinese as though he was a fluent Chinese speaker. He stopped them and then using his hands and a few words, communicated to them that he knew only a few Chinese words. They shook their heads and smiled and walked away. As they walked away Elder Sutton realized that one of the elders inside the chapel spoke Chinese fluently and had in the trunk(called the "Boot" here) of his car a Chinese Book of Mormon and some missionary pamphlets in Chinese. He knew which one of the cars was the Chinese speaking elders', but he had in his pocket 14 sets of keys and had no idea which of the sets was the right set unless he looked at a number list that was in the chapel. Franticly, while saying a quick prayer he grabbed a set of keys out of his pocket and pushed  the trunk opener button. Miraculously, the trunk of car of the Chinese speaking Elder popped open. He ran to the car and fished around in the elders back pack until he found the Book of Mormon and the pamphlets in Chinese and then ran after the couple who were almost a block away by this time. They stopped when they heard him yelling. Elder Sutton, after about 5 minutes of using sign language, was able to convince them to take the missionary materials and to hopefully read them. They smiled at him and apparently thanked him and as Elder Sutton walked away he turned around and saw them looking at the materials. He finished his work and then came in and a few minutes later bore his testimony to us what had just happened and thank the Lord for giving him one more missionary experience. .   In that meeting was a new Sister missionary from Nepal. She had just come from the MTC  in which she had learned English. She is the only member in her family and speaks 5 languages. Her bible is in Hindi( Indian), and  her Book of Mormon is in Nepalese, She also  speaks Japanese, Chinese, and English,.      It is amazing how many times the spirit will prompt you when you are doing the Lord's work. Last Tuesday while preparing a lesson on King David from the Old Testament, I was not feeling good about the way the lesson was coming together.  We don't have an Institute teacher's manual so we use the seminary teachers manual to get ideas on what to teach. However, their manual has 5 lessons of 50 minutes each for  a week and we teach only one lesson of 90 minutes a week from the 5 lesson material. Many times, it is hard to put together a lesson from this. During this prep time I prayed for some inspiration,  and  I got the idea to compare David and his encounter with Bathsheba  to Joseph of Egypt's  encounter with Potapher's  wife, and  listing  of consequences that occurred because of David's bad decision and Joseph's good decisions. It all came to me very quickly, and I wrote them down as fast as I could write. During the lesson it  became a powerful teaching moment and I could feel and see how the spirit was effecting our students, especially as we pointed out to them that similar small decisions we make can have eternal effects on us also. It turned out to be one of our better lessons.   We are now officially in our down time. We only have 1 lesson a week for the next 2 weeks and then 1 week of no lessons, just an Institute opening social. Back to the genealogy and trying to learn  about the New Family Search Program. We went to the Sydney temple today( Sat).   Miss you all, Love Elder Mac

Elder Mac's Aussie Aboriginal Adventure Account

Dear family and old, old friends,
Things are slacking off a bit as the winter break season is here. Our university classes are done for 6 weeks, the institute class 1st semester is over next week and we will be off for 3 weeks. The only class still going is our married Eternal Family class.
We decided to take the day off after last nights institute class. So we drove to Tidbinbilla nature reserve about 30 kilometers for where we live. It is about 15 square kilometers of wilderness area nestled next to the Brindabella mountains. (mountains that look like the Appalachians mountains in Pennsylvania). There we saw dozens of kangaroos, and wallabies( smaller kangaroos) and emus (ostrich-like flightless birds). All are native to our area. We walked along paths through woods and wet lands and visited an ancient aboriginal camp site whose main feature is a huge 10 story high and wide round boulder. They would camp under it to protect themselves from the rain. They came to this area to hunt for native mammals, birds, and huge moths which they ate in great abundance during the moth season. They would roast them by covering them with fire heated sand and then eat the whole insect. Yum, Yum, doesn’t that sound delicious.
The Australian aboriginals have lived in Australia for 1000’s of years and pure bred aboriginals are very dark skinned. They have great respect for their elders, and I have been told by one of them that it annoys them when they see our young LDS missionaries with badges on that say Elder so & so. He said they are obviously not “elders” that need to be respected. I wanted to tell him that I begged to differ.
The land of Australia was & is divided into 100’s of aboriginal tribal areas and many times when a celebrity or especially a politician performs or speaks, the custom is to say “ I want to express my respect to the such & such tribe (the Ngunnawal tribe in the case of the Canberra area)” before they perform or speak.
At one of our YSA outings a part aboriginal YSA , who was about to play the didgeridoo but was not of the Ngunnawal tribe said “ I wish to give my respect to the Ngunnawal tribe before I play”
As I said before, almost all the animals, birds, and plants are different . Also the sky, especially at night, where the constellations are totally different, No north star, big and little dipper that I learned as a boy scout, but directly overhead is the Southern Cross that is also displayed in the Australian Flag. We are in the middle of winter and many of the trees, usually gum trees, like the eucalyptus tree, have their leaves on. They don’t loose their leaves each year but shed their black bark in big long sheets sometimes 15-20 feet long. This leaves a trunk that is a white as a birch tree but very shinny. The temperature ranges from a low of 30 degrees to 65 here in Canberra but in Sydney 3 hours north and on the ocean it is between 45-75 in the winter and the trees and flowers are in full bloom all winter long. Here in Canberra they planted the pansies a month ago and they are a winter flower here.
I understand that you have had a little rain in the Midwest. The Aussies are jealous and wish some of that rain would fall here. Canberra is in an almost decade long drought. Our water reservoirs are only about 45% full, and we have water restrictions all year around.
Rugby, Australian football league, and soccer are in full swing now. Cricket (BORING) is finally over. Cricket matches can last for up to 5 days(morning to Sunset). Not even a diehard Cub fan could handle this game.
Well, we have had another missionary transfer period and we still are in the same area as we started and I still have the same companion. The mission president must think I’m married to my companion.
My scriptures look like they are 20 years old even though I bought them in late 2004. We are in them every day, and many days for hours. I am, however, getting pretty good at knowing where various scripture verses are. Sister Mac & I are currently reading in Proverbs in the Old Testament. We have read the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price and most of the D& C since we have come out on our mission and I read and wrote a verse by verse summery of the New Testament right before I left for our mission. I have also completed a written interpretation of Isaiah in my own words. Well so much for the bragging.
I miss you all, but I do love being here and serving the Lord in at least a small way. It gives me joy that the Lord has chosen Mom and I to serve him here in Canberra. Hopefully we have had some positive influence on some of the people living here in Canberra. To Geof, Ryne, Josh, Jordon, Nathan and soon to be Brandon, my Aaronic priesthood grandsons, WHEN you go on your missions you will find some of the greatest happiness you will ever know, especially when you realize that you have brought the opportunity for eternal salvation to at least 1 soul. I realized just now that I have 15, and soon to be 16, “Sons of Helaman” that will have the great opportunity to serve the Lord on full time missions.
Love Elder Mac aka Dad & Gandpa