Two weeks ago Elder Cook came to Australia to speak at Notre Dame, the Catholic law school in downtown Sydney. He spoke on religious freedom. While he was here he spoke to lots of different church groups, and it just so happened that we were able to go to every one; we heard him speak five times. He was one busy man the week he was here. Accompanying him was President Kevin Pearson, the Pacific Area President. He is an amazing man and a very inspiring speaker. He toured with Elder Cook for a week, went back to New Zealand for a conference on the weekend, and then came back to Australia on Monday for a three-day tour of our mission. We got to hear him speak a couple of times during his tour, plus four times the week before. We feel very fortunate that during our year and a half in Australia we've been able to attend meetings with Elder Nelson, Elder Bednar, and Elder Cook. I've been up close and personal more often with General Authorities in Australia than I ever was at home!
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865630075/Elder-Cook-visits-Australia-New-Zealand.html
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| Both North and South missions attended as well as all the senior missionaries |
We spoke at a Relief Society women's retreat a couple of weeks ago. It reminded me of church camp for women instead of for girls. The women had a 3 day retreat at a really nice lodge in the mountains. Well, I say mountains in a general way, Australia has many 'over the top' scenic places, but they don't have what Idaho would consider to be a proper set of mountains; their mountains are just really large hills! However, they are really beautiful. It's winter down here, and I love how Australia does winter, it's just cold enough to make the leaves turn color on the few trees they have that aren't evergreen trees. Winter down here is just like a beautiful fall day at home. Rarely do you even have to wear a coat! We had a few days last week that were really cold, not Idaho really cold, but cold nonetheless. But after about 3 or 4 days of cold it went back to balmy and beautiful.
On our way home from the women's retreat we stopped at a place I've wanted to go to ever since we got here. Now that we know we're leaving soon, we're trying to see all the things we have put off seeing because we didn't feel like we had time. On one of the main streets we go down to travel home, is the most elite of all the boy's schools in Sydney, well, I think it's probably the most elite in all of Australia. It's called The King's School. It has a huge campus, as big as some small college campuses at home. Besides the classroom buildings there are several dorms-- lots of students come from outside the Sydney area, and some of them from Sydney live too far away to commute easily day to day (Sydney covers a huge area, it's a really big city!), so they live in the dorms while school is in session. The little boys, grades K-6 don't board, but the older boys, grades 7-12 do if their parents choose to have them do so. Tuition is $30,000 a year and tuition with boarding is $52,932 a year. As we drove through the campus, we were amazed at the top notch buildings and facilities. There is an Olympic size pool, many sets of tennis courts and rugby, cricket and football (soccer) fields. There happened to be a big rugby game going on while we were there, so we stopped and got out of the car and watched for a while. A man standing by me told me that the game was the big playoff game between the top two boys schools in Sydney. The King's School won, so I guess they are the best in Sydney!
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| The boys have to wear their uniforms to all school events,.I snapped a picture of this young man so you could see they even have to wear their uniforms to games! |
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| My little pocket camera just can't do far-away shots well, it's just too little. You can see the boys in the bleachers all in uniform. You can see from the picture below how far away I was, so this picture is pretty blurred, sorry. |
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| This is the rugby field, you can see how far away I was! It's interesting to me that, in spite of all the rich people who send their kids to school here, there are no bleachers, the fans just stand around on the grass around the field. |
Last Saturday we drove out to one of the more rural suburbs in the area and went to the sheep dog trials. We'd gone to sheep dog trials in Utah with Aaron and Jessica and really enjoyed them, so we thought we'd try the Australian version. The part we liked best was the Yard Dog Trials. It was held apart from the Sheep Dog Trials. In the regular sheep dog trials, the dogs have to herd the sheep through different areas and up and down hills and be able to cut a certain number of sheep out of the herd etc. The Yard Dog Trials on the other hand, are held in a very small area and the dog has to get the sheep into a pen, bunch them up, back them off from the gate, then herd them through the gate and back out into the pen, and then do it all again going the other way. The shepherd (I guess that's what they call him, it's the dog's owner/trainer) can't touch the dog or the sheep, he can only give the dog verbal orders. The part we saw was the novice dog trials, so the dogs were young and were just learning. Most of them were pretty obedient, but the dog I filmed was so excited to do his job that he didn't always obey his trainer, he was especially bad at the 'down' command, he just completely ignored it. Some of the other dogs we watched would get down when they were told to, but then they'd slither forward on the ground when they didn't think the trainer was watching. It was pretty funny to watch them.
Most of the dogs we watched were Australian Kelpie dogs. They are the true Australian sheep dog, they were bred in Australia as sheep dogs. The dogs we watched in Utah were almost all Australian Shepherds, which interestingly enough, are not Australian at all, they were bred in America and are American sheepdogs:)
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| Waiting for the signal to 'go' |
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| The dog and the sheep are actually running really fast, you just can't tell it in the picture. |
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| This is the Australian Kelpie-- all the dogs we watched Saturday were Kelpies |
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| These are the kind of dogs I'm used to, the Australian Shepherd. I wonder how they ever got the name Australian Shepherd when they were never bred in Australia??!! |
Here's the link to the Yard Dog Trials I filmed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjrp4dFLNzU&feature=em-upload_owner You can tell this dog is young and not very experienced, the sheep escape quite a few times before he gets them all in the pen. All the sheep have to be completely behind the gate line before the trainer can shut the gate. You can see this little guy has lots of enthusiasm, but needs a lot more experience before he's ready to compete with the big dogs!
We were invited out to dinner the other night with some friends of ours, Dave and Rashika and their daughter, Devmone. They are from Sri Lanka. Dave works for a big manufacturing company in Sri Lanka. They manufacture clothing for Victoria's Secret, Macey's, several sports clothing companies, and various top brand clothing lines. They moved to Sydney a year and a half ago so their daughter could have the opportunity to receive a quality education. She attends Tara, the girl's side of the King's School. Actually, Dave doesn't live in Sydney full-time, he's based in their home city, Colombo, Sri Lanka. The company he works for has plants in Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh. Dave travels internationally quite a bit, so he pretty much just visits his family in Sydney as often as possible. I've been helping Devmone with her English essays and speeches, so they took us to dinner as a thank-you. We had a wonderful evening. Dave is very, very knowledgable, and we learned a lot of world history that night! Living in Sydney has made me realize how narrow most American's knowledge of the world is. Most everyone I've met over here, whether they are Australian, Chinese, or Sri Lankan, knows more about the world than most of us Americans do and they all know more about America than a lot of American's do. It will never cease to amaze me.
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