August 18, 2013

We're celebrating 42 years of marriage on the 19th.  Who'd have thought it would be in Brisbane?  Extremely busy here with all the new missionaries arriving.  The growth in missionaries also means more apartments, more furnishings, more bicycles, more cars, more of everything.  Some days seem like a week's worth of work and there's no time to squeeze in much else.  You have to get innovative to put 36 hours into a 24 hour day.  So, you do things like take the "city hopper" ferry to do sight seeing.  Here's some pictures from the city hopper which is a free ride on the Brisbane river through the central part of town.  The free ferry only does the most central part of town.  If you want to go further in either direction, you get on a catamaran type ferry, called a city cat, which is very fast.  Of course you can also go pampered and slow on a paddle wheel style river boat.  The attached pictures start on one end of the free ride and show the tall apartment buildings where many live on the river bank and have beautiful views.  The Brisbane ward bishop lives in one of those pictured.  From there we go under the Story bridge that connects Kangaroo Point (where we live) with the central part of the city.  We drive across the Story bridge every day.  In one of the pictures you can see people who've taken the stairs to the top of the bridge for a view of the city.  As darkness descends the city takes on a "New York City" kind of appearance, with very tall buildings lit up in the town.  On the southbank of the river there is a long stretch of park like facilities, including a ferris wheel and on the opposite side of the river, there's a beautiful, spacious arboretum.  Between the southbank and the arboretum is a footbridge and you can see folks crossing from one side to the other.  You'll also see a fuzzy picture of the top of the Brisbane temple.  And then there's this amazing "light show" that appears to be light bulbs in the sky changing colors and moving shapes.  I don't know how that works physically, it's like the lights are connected on

hanging on wires, but from what you don't know.  A few years ago stuff like this would have been called flying saucers or close encounters with aliens.  The pictures end with a shot of the Story bridge at night when it's all lit up in different colors.