Tales From Down Under

May 17, 14

We have had a quiet past couple of weeks. We chose not to start any new classes right now; we are just working with individuals. We also taught a workshop at the Young Single Adult conference this week. Will Hopawate was there; he didn’t have a game that night. It’s interesting to see how, even though he has a million dollar rugby contract, he’s just ‘one of the guys’ when he comes to church.

We are preparing for the arrival of the Area Director of Self Reliance who will be flying in tomorrow night from Auckland, New Zealand. He is technically our boss, since our ‘real’ boss is still a mission president in Samoa. Even though we are not church employees, we’ve been doing his job and ours until he arrives July 21st. Paul, the Area Director, will spend Tuesday with us touring the city and seeing what we’ve established for the Self-Reliance program in Australia and will look at location possibilities for the Self-Reliance Center to be created. Right now, our ‘office’ is in a hallway in the service center building. This location, understandably, limits what we can do. I can’t wait until we have an actual center with the capabilities we need. We’ve done ok with what we have though. In the three months we’ve been here, we’ve managed to build our program from nothing to where we are competitive with the other Pacific programs that have been in place for triple the time we have. It will be nice though to have a real office with a classroom and an actual service center area with computers and such.

I thought I would share a life story I heard this week. Twice a month, on the second and fourth Monday of each month, the senior missionaries get together for a group Family Home Evening. We have dinner together and then spend about an hour in some sort of activity, usually a short lesson on a gospel topic followed by a game or a movie. We end the evening with dessert, of course! Every couple takes a turn providing either the dinner for everyone, or the activity and dessert. This past Monday night it took quite a while for the dessert to get assembled so we had about 15 minutes to just visit while we waited. The Sydney temple President and his wife join our group quite often, and they were there this past Monday. Somehow the topic of immigrating to Australia came up and President Barr shared his immigration story. I thought I would share it with you because I enjoyed hearing it. President Barr is in his 70s . He is someone I like very much. He is kind and funny, and always happy. Here is a short version of his story:

He was born in Lithuania during the WWII. He lived in a city (can't remember the name) on the boarder between Lithuania and Latvia.

He was the youngest of three children. The family was Catholic, not Jewish, so they weren’t persecuted, but were still barely able to stay alive because of the lack of food. His father had a drinking problem and never was much of a support to the family, so managing the health and welfare of the family fell to his mother. President Barr began his story when he, Peter, was 10 months old, still a babe in arms. The war had been going for quite some time (I don’t know the exact year his story begins) and everyone in the city was starving. He said that when the air raids would sound, all the mothers with children were the last ones into the shelters because they would purposely stay outside until the very last minute so they could steal food from the stores and people who had already left for the bomb shelter. Stealing food was sometimes the only way they were able to feed their children and keep them alive. The mothers risked being hit by a bomb in order to be able to steal food. Peter was very sickly and scrawny because of the lack of food; his mother was unable to nurse him, she had lost her milk because she (and everyone else) was starving. Peter was actually days away from death from malnutrition and starvation at this time. One day his mother took all of her children and her husband out into a field just outside of town because there were some cows there and she hoped to be able to be able to milk one to feed her children for one more day, especially her baby, Peter, as he was in the worst shape. She was unable to get the milk though because the cows were so stressed from the bombing that had been going on that their milk wouldn’t let down. While the family was still in the field, many people from the village came running down the roads and through the fields and yelled to them to run because the Russians were marching down the road on the other side of town and would be in the city to take over momentarily. His mother took her little family and ran into the forest. All they had with them were the clothes on their back; there was no time to go home to get anything. He said they spent about two weeks in the forest making their way to Germany, moving from one German camp to another begging the soldiers for food. I cannot imagine his mother’s burden, she had a husband and three children she was responsible to feed and to keep safe. He said the Germans would usually share food with the children, but not always did they feed the parents. The family finally made their way into Germany where they were taken to a refugee camp. They lived out the war and several years post war in various refugee camps in Germany. Finally, in 1950, they were able to board a ship bound for Australia. Australia, like many countries post WWII, agreed to take in refugees from the war. President Barr said he was nine years old when they landed in Australia. He had spent eight of those nine years living in refugee camps. It took two months for the ship to reach Australia. They went through the Suez Canal and across the ocean. Once the ship reached Australia he said the ship would pull up to the various harbors in the port cities and disembark a group of refugees and then move on to the next harbor city. His family was unloaded at Nelson’s Bay by Newcastle (about a three hour drive from Sydney). When they landed here they spoke only Lithuanian and German. The goal was for everyone in the family to learn English. He said all the parents were sent to work and the kids were sent to school and taught English. They in turn taught their parents. It wasn’t long until the whole family could speak English and were well established and working.

Several years ago, President Barr was called to be the mission President in the Baltic States. Lithuania is one of the Baltic states, and so he was able to return to the home of his birth. His wife told me that when they drove their car over the boarder into Lithuania he stopped the car by the side of the road and got out and gathered some of the dirt from a field next to the road and kissed it. It meant so much to him to return to the home of his birth. When he left he was literally carried out in his mother’s arms near enough to death that his survival was considered a miracle. Some other time I will share his wife’s story and their love story.

It is fascinating to me to hear first hand stories of people and how and why they came to Australia. The Stake President in one of the Sydney stakes told us how his family ended up coming to Australia. This happened about 40 years ago; at that point Australia was still ‘recruiting’ citizens. His family lived in Argentina in a small mountain village. He and his brother were just little boys when the family was taught by the missionaries and were baptized. A few months later they heard of a program where, if the father of a household had a trade and could make it to Lima, Peru, the Australian government would fly the whole family from Peru to Australia and give them citizenship. His mother and father sold everything they had and scraped up enough money to make it to Peru. From there the Australian government sent them to Sydney. Once they landed in Australia his father got a job immediately and they all learned English and assimilated into life on this continent. Right now he is a stake president and his two brothers are bishops. His parents just returned from serving a mission in Australia. Interestingly enough, there is a Spanish ward in Sydney too. I don’t think I will ever cease to be amazed at the cultural diversity in Sydney. I’m sure most big cities in America have this same phenomenon, but I’ve spent the last 32 years in Fruitland, Idaho where the cultural diversity is pretty slim, so I’m easily amazed I guess.

We took a little drive Saturday afternoon and went up the coast. There are so many beautiful beaches here! The coastline drives are gorgeous.

Grandkids:

Here's a sign in the parking garage we use when we teach downtown. It's another example of the little ways Americans and Australian's say things differently.

We say speed 'bumps' not humps

I thought you might like to learn about emus this week. Emus are only found in Australia. They are the second biggest bird in the world (an ostrich is bigger). They are 6 ½ feet tall. They can’t fly, but they can run really fast, about 30 mph. Imagine an emu running along beside your car while your mom is driving down the road to the store! Dad emus weigh about 75 pounds; mom emus weigh about 85 pounds. Do you weigh as much as an emu? 

Emu eggs are much bigger than chicken eggs. They are dark green. After the mom emu lays her eggs she leaves. The dad emu sits on the eggs for about 8 weeks until they hatch. He stays with them for the next year and a half until they are big enough to be on their own. It’s kind of interesting that the dad emus raise the babies! You can watch a baby emu hatch on this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL-r3KjSouA
I hope you have a happy week. Remember, Grandma and Grandpa love and miss you!