November 16

Busy times in the office lately. We've had busy days and have ended up working several evenings as well. It's all good though, that's what we're here for! Last weekend we had our usual second Saturday returned missionary workshop and then had a big area self-reliance specialist meeting on Sunday. 

On top of the workshop, we also hosted a wedding reception for a young Chinese couple.We met the bride, Sophia, soon after we got here. She was in one of our first workshops. She was about to graduate from university here with her second masters degree. She had just started dating Ian about the time we met her. They decided to get married and got engaged a while ago. They have no family here and didn't want to go to China to get married, so lots of people helped out with their wedding and it turned out just great! She borrowed her wedding dress from a friend and lined up some friends to help out with food and I got busy and lined up a place for the reception. I found out we could use the courtyard outside of the service center where we have our workshops for free, so we had the reception there. We were able to use the nearby kitchen because we were already using it for the missionary workshop, so it all worked out just great! Sofia had friends help with the food and decorating. The decorating was very simple because the courtyard is such a nice place already. I got the missionary couple who do family history to be the photographers; they did a great job. Dave and I were pretty busy running two different activities at the same time though! We did the missionary workshop from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. then we left for the wedding (which was about 100 yards away, at the temple across the parking lot) then Johnny took over and did the last part of my presentation and oversaw the food for the missionaries. As soon as the wedding was over while they were taking pictures outside the temple, I hurried over to the Service Center and I got all the wedding food out and on the serving tables with help from some of Sofia's friends. We got everything out just as the wedding party showed up. We got the dance and cutting the cake etc. over with and then everyone just had a great time eating and taking more pictures. Chinese are really into pictures, I swear every single person who came to the reception had their picture taken with Sofia and Ian!

Grandkids:

Our neighbor, Shaun, has been after us for quite a while to go down the coast and stay at his cabin on the beach. This weekend it worked out that we were able to do so. We had to do some training in a town about an hour away from where his cabin is, so we took off on Thursday and did our training and then spent the next couple of days at Shaun's cabin on the ocean at a town called Ulladulla. We had a good time just seeing the sights and enjoying the ocean. On Sunday we got up and packed up everything and headed home. We went to church in Ulladulla. There were only 13 members in the congregation. Instead of having a church building, they just rent a meeting room in the city library! If all the members come to church there's a grand total of 18 people! Even though it's so small, I enjoyed their church and sunday school meetings more than any I've been to in a long, long time. It was a very enjoyable day. Instead of going home the same way we came down, we took an inland drive home. We went through an area called Kangaroo Valley. It reminded me of an Australian version of the mountains around Redfish Lake in Idaho. We drove on switch-back roads up and down through the mountain passes, but it was all very beautiful. 

This is an old lighthouse that they had to knock down way back in the 1800s. Ships kept running into the rocks and sinking. One year 200 ships sank and lots of the sailors got eaten by sharks (Australia has LOTS of sharks) before anyone could rescue them, so the government decided to knock down this lighthouse and build a new one farther down the coast.

This picture and the one below are pieces of a Bluebottle Jellyfish we found on the beach. 

This is what's left of the top part of the jellyfish. 

 The Bluebottle is also called the Portuguese Man of War. Blue Bottles aren’t even a single animal, let alone a jelly fish, they’re actually colonies of organisms that live together.  Like sailors on a battleship, each organism has its specific task. One type makes the bubble that keeps them all afloat, another takes care of feeding, while others fire the weapons – the stinging ‘harpoons’.  Here's a picture of Bluebottle  when it's in the ocean:

The sting from the Bluebottle won't kill you, but it's very, very painful.  The tentacles can be up to 10 feet long and float under the water, so people can get tangled up in them without seeing the top of the jellyfish first and realizing they are in danger.

The beach by Shaun's cabin

This is a picture of the waves coming up on the rocks by the beach.

This is Shaun's cabin.

This is feeding time at a park by the cabin. These birds are called lorkeets. We have some that come sit in the trees right outside our office window every day. They are so pretty.

This is a termite mound. There are a lot of them just along the side of the road. You see these all over the place in Australia. This one is about three feet high.

 If you want to learn more about the kind of termites that build mounds watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld07xdqnytk  There are only two or three countries in the world where termites build these kind of nests and Australia is one of those countries!!

I thought you might like to see how Australians treat their horses. Almost every single horse you see outside is wearing a 'coat'. Someone told me that the horse owners keep these blankets/coats on their horses because of the flies. There's lots of flies over here.  I don't know if that's the real reason, but it makes sense because horses wear these covers even when it's really, really hot outside, so I'm pretty sure they don't wear them to keep warm!

Can you guess what the name of this cereal is in the United States?  In order to make a good guess, you need to know that sultana is the name for raisin in Australia.  This cereal is Kellogg's Raisin Bran!

I hope you all have a great week.  Grandpa and I love you very much!