HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

September 5, 2010 Sunday

Today is Father’s Day. I guess they don’t want to celebrate Labor Day because one of their major political parties is the Labor Party, so they moved Father’s Day to the first Sunday of September. It really isn’t commercialized to the extent that it is in the states. I know that because the Branch President asked us to come up with something for the men in the branch. He said to make up 10 of them. Last year they filled mugs with candy. He said we could spend $100 on it. (I’ll bet there isn’t another unit in the church that spent $10 per person on Father’s Day; but because our branch is so small and struggling, there really isn’t a lot of programs to spend our money on. Primary really has been the only one for quite a while.
So when Target advertised the 400 gram Toblerone fruit & nut bars for $5.00, we bought 9 of them. One of our active members, Raphael, is diabetic, so we bought some colored pencils for him to use to mark his scriptures. He’d mentioned in scripture study last week that he wanted to get some. Then we attached a small LED flashlight to each bar. We used ribbon to tie a small piece of paper on it that had the scripture, “Let your light so shine…” and “Have a Delightful Father’s Day from the Broome Branch.”
We ended up with 5 extra, so President Robinson asked us to deliver the extras to some of the inactives. We ended up having a great visit with Richard Brown and his partner, Janelle, and their daughter, Tory. He’s from New Zealand and is Maori. She is from there, too, and looks like she’s from northern Europe. We really haven’t had a good gospel discussion with them before. They had lived here quite a while before he identified himself as a member to the elders who were here just before us. (Broome’s a good place to hide out.) There’d been a big earthquake in New Zealand, so we got on the subject of disasters. That led to the last days and prophecies. They were really interested in it all. It was a great visit.