It's Hot

It is hard for us to believe that it is January as we go around sweating. It has gotten very hot here this week. We thought that the rainy season had come last week as we had two days of fairly hard rainfall that put down about 12 inches in two days but we found out that it was the result of a tropical storm that has hit along the north coast of Australia. The rainy season is from the monsoons that everyone assures us will come. The flooding and foaming that you may be seeing on the news is about 600-800 miles south of us but is from the same storm. We know that only 2 missionary apartments have been flooded.

We did our first traveling for Enoch to fulfuill his calling as a district councilman to a town called Bowen.It is about a two hour drive. We found a very small Branch there with about 10 people attending church. They are Tongan and have many struggles to keep the Branch going. The Tongans came to Australia as migrant workers and many continue to do that but the Branch President is studying to become a diseal mechanic so that he will not have to move his family around. He was called as the Branch President when he was single so he went back to Tonga for Christmas about 4 years ago and asked a girl to marry him and come to Australia with him to help him in his calling. They had only met once before this proposal and she was not to sure about it but she said she would go if her parents said yes. The young man is a returned missionary and seemed okay to the parents and so they said yes and marraige plans were made and the couple were married the next week in the Tongan Temple and they moved to Bowen.They have 2 beautiful little girls 1 and 2 and will have a new baby next month. The 1 year old was born premature and only weighed 2 lbs but was found healthy by the doctors and sent home 2 days later and she has thrived. Where this woman lived in Tonga the church is very large, almost all the people on the island are church members (she went to Liahona high school) she said the first Sunday she just assumed everyone was late getting to church but said when she turned around and realized that was it, she started to cry. She said they will not give up though. Bowen is a beautiful small town on the ocean and has the Whitsunday islands in that area. Many wealthy people live there as there a couple of mining towns about an hour away. This Branch will swell to about 60 people April - November when the migrant workers return but for some reason there records don't ever come - no one really knows how to get them we think is the problem.

President Langland visited on Thursday and we made lunch for him before the business he came to take care of. It was nice to see him and visit with him. 35 new missionaries arriving in March, we don't know if we will get more up here or not. The work here is hard as we visit less actives and invite them back, we haven't had many yeses, some have joined other churches. When we get discouraged we have to think about Jesus and the fact that he didn't have much success either!

Enoch was in charge of "man making" this week and it was quite successful about 20 attended. They learned barbecuing tips and ate their samples. Enoch took baked beans to share and they were a big hit. The men all made bean sandwiches!

We are off to help clean the church.

Just another week

We had a few different things happen the last week or so.  Last Sunday, Jan 13th, we went to a town called Ingam, it is called the sugar bowl as they grow lots of sugar cane in that area. It was settled by Italian immigrants and the houses all have an Italian flare to them with arches. etc. They have an Italian Festival in May which we will plan to attend.  The reason that we went there was to hold a Sacrament meeting.  It takes about 1 hour to get there and they have about 8 church members there and  are a dependent branch and only have meetings once a month when someone from Townsville  travels there.  So any of you that want to be considered fully active but only have to go to church once a month we have found the place for you!  Unfortunately when we were there four people were sick and one lady is due to have a baby any day so only 2 people attended but it was a great experience and well worth the trip.  We took occassion to drive to the highest water fall in Queensland but it was not too great with the lack of rainfall, was not more than a trickle.

Then last Monday we drove to Cairns for a mission conference. Because the elders car is still not fixed we had to transport 2 of them with us so we did not do much sight seeing.  Elder Watson of the Seventy was there and it was all good but a long drive in a Corolla with back seat passengers  It took us between 4-5 hours each way.  We were quite disappointed at Cairns because all of the photos make it look so inviting - but I think all the photos are taken of Beaches out on the Great Barrier Reef as the beaches in the town were non existent - the tide was low and so it was just a lot of mud out to the water - no sandy areas at all.  The boardwalk was filled with tourists, many Asians and Europeans, they have a lot of big hotels and restaurants, some of the restaurants only had chinese menus, no english. We concluded that Townsville actually has a nicer beach area with two netted swimming areas (to keep out the jellyfish) and is very family friendly with a splash park, play grounds etc. We took occassion to stop at a town named Cardwell where we  have about 4 members, found two of them and got a forwarding address for 1.  The two there were not missing the chuch too much.

Enoch has been trying to get the work moving forward on getting the elders car fixed - the first 4 weeks was because of the holidays and now it is that the insurance did not get the bid from the body shop - the body shop maintained they sent it but has since discovered that their e-mail is not working. They promised to get the bid off last Wednesday - so we are trying to wait patiently.  It really affects the missionary work because some of the areas are really far away from the elders apartments. It may actually take more patience living in Australia than Africa. People are either layed back or agro!

Next Sunday we will travel to Bowen where Enoch will be the speaker in his assignment as a District Councilman. That will be a 1 day trip about 3-4 hours each way, church starts at 11:00, but it sounds like a long day.

The long promised rains still have not come, only an occassional shower, so for the most part it is hot days.  We always get asked how we like the weather - to which we always say we like it better than the cold. Today is cloudy with 50 % chance of rain. It is the first day without the air conditioner, however, I can feel the sweat trickling down my back.

Well need to get going. want to make a visit to the hospital so see a Branch member.

Til next time,

Enoch and LaRue

Bugs, bugs, bugs

Life goes on

It is much harder to write this blog than it was the last mission because many things happen slower here as far as the gospel is concerned and there are no crazy experiences to report as life is pretty much the same as at home.  We spend most of our time visiting those who have not been to church for a while - we found a man this week in his 40's that had not been to church or had any contact from the church since he was about 13. His house number was wrong and lived a few doors from where people had attempted to find him. We also visited the sweetest aboriginal lady that we fell in love with. They were very active in church about 20 years ago and brought about 30 relatives into the church with them and then the husband went back to their his old ways and all are now no longer attending. She has the sweetest spirit about her and it makes us feel a bit like being in Ghana again. She is very artistic and actually had some aboriginal artwork accepted for display at the church museum. She says we can keep coming to visit -  one son is in juvenile detention and we tried to visit him but haven't been able to get in yet, we may become mentors there.

Everyone at church is returning from holiday and we had a huge turnout on Sunday and one of the best testimony meetings I have ever been too - one of those days when you say, why are we here?  But then others things happen and we see why. The holidays just keep going here as it is also summer vacation and so people who are teachers are still on holiday for another 3 weeks.  We received specific  assignments from the district president, Enoch is a district councilman and that means that once a month we will be traveling either to WhitSunday, Charters Towers, or Ayr. That entails 2-3 hours of travel each way and then we will both speak in church and be prepared to teach whatever class might need teachers.  These are all very small branches that do not have missionaries serving in them - hopefully we'll get more here soon. We are both serving as district welfare specialist with work on family, food storage, budgeting, etc. so we have many things to keep us busy. Enoch is also chairing up a new activity the men are doing called "man making" get it? Homemaking for men - I personally have always thought that should happen. They are teaching home, car repairs, gardening etc, all you women know 

what I'm talking about. That will be fun to watch this unfold.  With the numbers in the branch and with 3 units in Cairns (cans) you really can see a stake not too far away.

I suppose you have all been hearing of the extreme temperatures in Sydney, Tamania, melbourne and others, because these are usually cooler wet places there are massive amount of brush to burn now that it is dry and no rain seems to be coming.  Our temperatures up north are usually hotter but not this year we are only about 33 c, although we have only had 3 rainstorms. Usually there is torrential rain fall at this time of year. All of the houses close to the ocean are built on stilts, we live on the hillside of Mt Louisa and so are high enough to avoid issues if there was heavy rain. The mountain did have a fire that burned off all the underbrush while we were in Sydney. We have several rivers in the area and the locals assure us that we will not have a water issue even if there is no rain. The last two years there have been cyclones hit Townsville, consequently everyone is taught about 72 hour kits, water storage etc.

We are going to Cairns next Monday for a mission conference with Elder Michael Watson and the mission Pesident, it will only be us and the 4 Townsville elders and the 6 serving in Cairns.

We hope you are all enjoying the New Year and wish you happiness and prosperity.

Til next time

Enoch and LaRue