July 1, 2014

This was a busy week for us. We spent Saturday evening teaching a Stake youth group ages 12-18 and their parents about goal setting related to education post high school. Most of the audience were Polynesians. Their culture does not value post high school education, the emphasis is just on getting an entry level job as soon as possible after high school or, hopefully, becoming a professional rugby player. The goal for many, if not most, Polynesian boys is to become a professional rugby player. The pressure is much more intense for them than most US high school football players to play college football. Instead of trying to convince parents and thereby, the young men, that they should play rugby for fun and concentrate on getting training/education now, we are just focusing on teaching them to have a 'Plan B' so in case they get hurt, which by the way is extremely likely, then they will have something to fall back on. We are starting to make some headway, I think. It was great, because today we had three young men who are playing rugby in what is the equivalent of what would be the minor leagues in the US, basically feeder teams for the professional teams (there's not much of a college team level here, most universities don't have sports teams) come into the office today. All three realize that they need to get some education now while they are trying to break into the professional team situation. They also realize that their dream of a life as a professional rugby player might not come true. One actually had his arm in a sling because he got hurt in his game last weekend. They were delightful young men, all return missionaries, looking toward the future and knowing they need to prepare now. It was fun to work with them. We just started with resumes today.

Sunday was a busy day. We have been asked to teach the Temple Preparation class in Sunday School. The class is almost entirely Chinese students. We also are in charge of the Young Single Adult FHE group, so we spent time with them trying to undo the confused program we inherited. Little by little we are making progress.

Our supervisor has just returned to Australia, one day ago to be exact. He was serving as the mission president in Samoa and was just released this past weekend. We haven't met with him yet because he technically doesn't start his job until the end of July. I will be happy when he shows up; it will be nice to have someone else to help out. However, his area to supervise covers New South Wales (which is us), South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria. I'm not sure how one person is supposed to actually cover that big of an area. We are the only Self Reliance missionaries in Australia, so I'm not sure what that means for us either. I hope it means we get to go to the capital cities in these areas to help get things going!! I guess time will tell.

Grandkids:

Last weekend when Grandpa and I were driving home from our long trip, we saw a rancher herding his sheep from the pasture (in Australia they call a pasture a paddock) on one side of the highway to the paddock on the other side of the highway. Watch the dog herding the sheep, he is very good at moving them. There is also a llama in the herd of sheep. The ranchers keep the llama in the herd because llamas will kill a fox or a coyote if they try to kill a sheep or a baby lamb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD8sPyCIp9g&feature=em-upload_owner

Look what came into my yard this morning, this very big bird... what do you think it is? I had to ask someone to be sure I wasn't wrong, because it sure did look like a mama turkey to me. Guess what, I was right! This is called a bush turkey. They are wild around here. I've seen lots and lots of birds around here, you can't ever go outside anywhere in Australia without hearing and seeing lots of different birds, but this is the first time I've ever seen a turkey! 

On Saturday morning, before Grandpa and I had to go teach a class in the afternoon, we took some time to go downtown to a place called Darling Harbor (it's the harbor we were at a couple of weeks ago for the Chinese wedding). They have a really great Maritime (that means things, especially ships, connected with the sea) Museum. We spent four hours outside looking at the ships, we will have to go back again sometime so we can see the things inside the museum. We got to walk around inside a WWII submarine, go on a WWII destroyer ship, go inside an old restored 1800s ship, and best of all, we got to go on Captain Cook's ship. Some people in England searched through the old records in a shipping company that has been building ships for over 300 years and they found the blueprints and instructions that were used for building the ship that Captain Cook sailed when he sailed all around the world discovering places (and naming them) in the South Pacific Ocean. We liked learning about this ship; we spent about two hours on it. I will show you my favorite parts of the ship.

This is a replica of Captain Cook's ship

Here is Grandpa pretending to steer the ship.  Look how big the steering wheel is, almost as big as Grandpa!

How would you like to sleep in this hammock bed?  I think I would like it! The mattress is stuffed with straw though, I don't think straw would be very comfortable to sleep on. These beds look kind of fun though. 

Look at all these ropes, do you think you could figure out which ropes went where???

This is the back of the ship, see if you can find the little seat with the hole located in the edge of the decking.  What do you think this is??  If you guessed that this is the ship's toilet, you are right!  Captain Cook liked to keep a very clean ship, so when the sailers had to go to the bathroom, they had to do it outside on this toilet right in front of everyone.  The hole just hangs out over the ocean so everything just falls into the sea.  The sailors had to use a piece of rope for toilet paper, how would you like that? If you have ever heard of a part of a ship called the 'poop deck', it came from this kind of toilet on Captain Cook's ship. If you were on the toilet you better hope that a big wave doesn't jar the ship too much, you might get bounced right off the toilet seat and into the ocean! Right below the 'toilet' there is a bucket of water.  The sailors had to wash their hands once they were finished going to the toilet. Smart man, Captain Cook.

The food for the sailors was kept in barrels. In order to keep enough food for a whole shipload of sailors, they loaded on hundreds and hundreds of barrels of food before they left.  In these barrels are potatoes, sauerkraut, and meat. Since they didn't have refrigerators, they kept the meat in brine, or salted water, so it wouldn't go bad. I think I would get tired of eating so much meat, sauerkraut, and potatoes, what about you?

These are the tables the men ate at. The tables could be pulled up against the wall so the hammocks could be lowered at night when it was time to go to bed.

These are the hammocks the regular sailors had to sleep in, they aren't as nice as the other hammocks the more important crew members got to sleep in.

These are the plates the sailors ate off of. If you've ever heard anyone talk about having a square meal, life onboard a ship is where that saying came from.

This is another example of a saying we use nowadays that came from life onboard a ship.

Also related to the ocean, last week when we were on our trip up in the north part of NSW (New South Wales, the state we live in) we watched humpback whales swimming by. Right now all the whales that live in the oceans by Antarctica are swimming up past Sydney and going to the ocean by the Great Barrier Reef. Look at the map at the beginning of this post and see if you can find the Great Barrier Reef. The whales make this big long trip every June because it's winter down here at the bottom of the world and the ocean water is cold in Antarctica, so the whales swim up a little ways past Sydney to where the ocean water is warm. They have their babies in this warm water and then, in about October, when their babies are a little bit bigger and stronger, they swim back to the cool waters in Antarctica because October down here is springtime and the water is warming up. Grandpa and I watched whales go by when we were up at the lighthouses because lighthouses are always up on the high part of the land so you can see out into the ocean where the whales are. I don't have a very good camera, just my little pocket camera, so I couldn't get a good picture of the whales, but here is a picture of a very famous whale who swims up to the Great Barrier Reef every year. This is Migaloo; he is an all white whale. He is the only white humpback whale in the world, all the other humpback whales are black.

This is Migaloo

Grandpa and I were hoping to see him swim by when we were out watching the whales. There were lots of people out watching with us because Migaloo had been spotted swimming by Sydney on Friday, so everyone was hoping to see him on Saturday morning, but sadly, we didn't; he swam by sometime during the night. Here is a video you can watch about humpback whales. This video was made in Alaska though, not in Australia. Humpback whales live in Alaska too and they swim to Hawaii where the water is warm to have their babies. The humpback whales in Antarctica swim to the warm water in the Great Barrier Reef to have their babies.
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/whale_humpback
Have a good week. I hope you all are having a good summer.  Lots of you are in Las Vegas right now, I wish I was there with you!  Grandpa and I love you and miss you all very much!