Mmmmm, Barramundi

September 9, 2010 Thursday

The favorite fish for eating over here is called Barramundi. You see it advertised as the “Come On” for restaurants and also in meat markets. The other night when I picked up Neenya for Scripture Study, she gave me a plastic container with a big piece of Barramundi in it. She said she uses flour, salt & pepper on it and fries it. She cautioned me to not cook it that night because it was still too fresh. (Can you imagine having fish that is “too fresh?”) She must have caught it earlier in the day. The aborigines know where to go at high tide, throw a line out (no fishing poles for them), and catch a bunch of fish all the time. So I cooked it for lunch today. I just salted and peppered it and put it under the broiler. Oh, my goodness, it was good. We are going to praise Neenya a lot for it. She once offered to take us fishing, but we’re afraid she’d make us clean our own fish. We are wimps when it comes to that!
Tonight we continued Personal Progress with the Young Women. Jessi, Carolyn’s non-member friend, came tonight. She was all excited about Personal Progress because Carolyn had explained everything to her from last week. We gave her a set of the inexpensive scriptures and then she asked about making scripture bags. And then a pink bag to put their Personal Progress books in. Then they all got excited and wanted to make zipper bags like a regular scripture case. I asked them if they wanted to just buy a scripture case (it would have been a lot easier), but they want to make their own. Now I need to find a sewing machine I can borrow and come up with a pattern. We’ll have to do it on a Saturday afternoon, I think. We continued with personal progress and I had them go to the 2nd value experience under Divine Nature. It’s all about learning about “feminine attributes.” We read the scripture in Proverbs 31:10-31 and they chose their favorite verses. One girl was busy writing them down in the notebook she bought for Scripture Study. We then turned to the Family Proclamation that’s included in the Personal Progress book now. I was going to have them find parts that referred to a woman’s role, but they wanted to read the whole thing! They are so gung ho. I hope they keep their enthusiasm. I said that we’d work on Personal Progress once a month. One of them said, “Hey, everyone who wants to do it more often, raise your hand.” All four of them raised a hand. It’s amazing. Tammy, who struggles with reading, is worried she won’t be able to do it. I assured her that I would be happy to have her come over to help her or that her mom would probably be willing to help her. One more thing they need to do for this Value Experience is read 2 talks from conference reports about women or womanhood. I gave each girl Julie Beck’s talk, “Women Who Know” and President Kimball’s talk, “The Role of Righteous Women.” Hope I can stay one step ahead of them!