DAMPER

Bran Nu Dae Care Center
October 12, 2010 Tuesday

Another vocabulary lesson: “Damper” is a bread type thing Australians mix out of flour, water, and leavening. They wrap it in foil and cook it in a fire pit. Sounds like sort of a biscuit thing to me. I’d read it in several of the books I’ve read about the early days here in the northwest. Today at the nursing home, someone mentioned it so I asked about it. We did a crossword puzzle with the residents. The puzzle didn’t seem any more difficult than the one we did last week, but it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to give answers. I looked around and realized we had only 2 Australian patients around the table and the rest were Aboriginal. Of course they didn’t know “to claim” is to “avow!” Ida, the lady sitting next to me, mentioned she lived in an orphanage here in Broome as a child. Often single moms would drop their kids there while they would go out of town to work if they couldn’t find work locally.
Life’s been slow the last few days. Lots of tracting without many results. We did have 2 visitors at church; they brought the total up to 10! One was Karen Wylde’s mum and the other is a fellow from New Zealand who will be working in Derby for the next two months. He showed up in work clothes, disappeared into the restroom and came out ready for church. Rodney seemed very shy—didn’t look you in the eye. But when he made a comment in Sunday School, he went on and on and on with tons of quotes from past conferences and church history and the scriptures. He was amazing. We had “ice cream Sunday” after church, but he took off without so much as a “Ta, ta.” We hope he comes back. He’s very sharp. Orson said he came specifically so he could pay his tithing.
After church, we and the Robinson’s were invited over to the Wyldes for “lunch.” My goodness, Karen is quite the cook. We were stuffed by the time it was over. And she’d bought a “Mud Cake” for dessert. I figured a piece of that was worth a headache. It was sooooooooo good. And I didn’t even get a headache. Afterwards, the kids played inside and out, and we played, “Mouthful,” a funny game of Mormon phrases spelled out in strange ways that you have to figure out. A few of the phrases were definitely American Mormon phrases. Nobody but us knew, “Oh, my heck,” for example.