CARLESS

Shots from Mangrove Hotel in Broome which overlooks Roebuck Bay


November 2, 2010 Tuesday

The battery died this afternoon. We were tracting a little way from our house. Orson finished a long cul-de-sac and got back into the car. I tried to start the car and it wasn’t happy. We’ve been doing a lot of tracting close by home lately with lots of starts and stops. Also, we have the AC on all the time. I guess the poor battery thought it was being picked on and decided to go on strike. So we called Simon, one of our good aboriginal members. He has an old truck so we figured he might have some jumper cables. He didn’t, but he found someone who did and showed up in about 20 minutes. We went to Broome Toyota where they told us they needed to keep the car overnight to charge it. We cancelled scripture study tonight since we pick up 2 of the 3 folks who generally come.

J-DUBS

November 1, 2010 Monday

This morning while tracting, we pulled around a corner and stopped just across from a house where a couple of young men were standing on the porch talking. Orson got out to go to a house on our side of the road, and I noticed these two guys leave the porch and walk around the opposite corner into a cul-de-sac. I commented to Orson when he came back that I thought they might be Jehovah Witnesses. One of them had a bag slung over his shoulder and the other had a small pouch in his hand. We went on down the street and saw a couple of young women in dresses walking toward us from a cul-de-sac. At some point, Orson and the girls came face to face so he stopped them and, sure enough, they were J-Dubs. So he asked them why they were so “hung up” on the name Jehovah when Christ address the “most high God” as “Father.” Their explanation was that Christ is so familiar with God (Jehovah in their minds) that he could call him “father.” Anyway, being the good missionary that he is, he proceeded to tell them about the Council in Carthage in 397 AD when a bunch of “church” leaders got together and proceeded to decide which of all the books of ancient writings should be put together into a bible. They had no clue about that. This led to telling them that John’s statement in Revelation wasn’t meant to say there must be no more scripture. Then he read to them 1 Nephi 29 which tells them that God is the God of the whole world and he can talk to any of His people anytime He wants and it can be recorded and considered scripture. The young men had come back at this point and joined the conversation (lesson). And I looked for our camera because I wanted to record this historic moment—it was in the house, drat it! How often does a Mormon missionary get to preach to Jehovah Witnesses? They must have talked for 40 minutes or so. We sure would like to go to their Wednesday night “missionary” meeting and hear what is reported ;0)
Tonight we went back to Jhun and Evangeline’s ready to teach the plan of salvation. We had gone there last Monday but not been able to really teach anything because Jhun was so wound up and had to expound his beliefs that he’s gleaned from the Bible. Many are right, but there are also many where he’s taken a left turn on something and needs to be turned around. So the last couple of visits have consisted of him giving us his “take” on various Gospel issues and us reading scriptures to him from modern revelation to straighten him out. It’s become evident that he’s not really reading and praying about the Book of Mormon even though he accepts the Joseph Smith story as being plausible. So we started of with the pre-mortal life. He asked some questions about it that brought up the plan that Jesus Christ would come to earth to atone for the sins of all mankind. Then he said, “I cannot accept that Jesus had to die on the cross. He could have done so much more to help all mankind if He had lived and was able to teach people for a long time.” It was all downhill from there. We tried to read 2 Nephi Chapter 2 with him, but then he didn’t like the explanation of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. It didn’t jive with his. Then he complained that we weren’t giving him definite answers and details on everything (but he wasn’t giving us time because he kept interrupting). Finally, he gathered up the Books of Mormon and pamphlets and very politely thanked us for our time and said he hoped we could continue as friends but that we would not discuss religion anymore with him. It’s so sad—he had the dream that was clearly linked to the restoration and a second book of scriptures; but he’s become a law unto himself and is not willing to consider that ALL of what he has figured out from the Bible is not accurate. It just kind of shows you why there are so many “Christian” churches out there. We just hope that someday he will come back to studying Mormonism with an open mind to modern revelation.

HALLOWEEN IN BROOME

Member girls and little brothers

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

October 31, 2010 Sunday

And they do celebrate it here, but not nearly like the crazy masses in the US. We only saw a couple of stores that had costumes or decorations. They were the shops similar to dollar stores in the states. The Halloween stuff only appeared 2 weeks ago. Nobody decorates their house. It’s 7:20 and we’ve only had 3 groups of kids. Actually, a single kid came who comes to FHE. He was heading out to find his friends. Then the Shires kids came with their friend Jessi. She had put black liquid eyeliner across her dogs back and said he was a “Tasmanian Tiger.” And one other small bunch of teenagers and that’s it so far. We are handing out popsicles (after all it was 100 degrees in the shade today). Actually they are like Otter Pops in the states. All the kids need to do is take them home, pop them in the freezer, and enjoy. However, Michael Shires did drink his “punch” while they were here. Then they all asked for drinks before they left. Quite a change from the cold trick-or-treating the kids do in the states.
I gave a talk today in Sacrament meeting today and Orson taught the Sunday School lesson. President Robinson brought a map over today he’d gotten from the Map Department of the church. It is of our branch’s area which makes it our proselyting area. For us to drive in a straight line from one end of it to the other would take about 15 hours. He told us that an LDS family has moved into the furthermost city of our area. They used to live in Broome, moved away, and have now returned to the northwest. He wants us to visit them. They are a very sharp family and are the only Mormons there as far as we know.

SLOW WEEK

October 28, 2010 Thursday


A couple of days ago in the late afternoon, we ran into Clive. He is just a very friendly guy who loves to talk to folks. He’s in his late 50’s and teaches school down in South Australia. He now works in a program where they take boys out into the bush for a month long campout to teach them “how to be men.” He and his wife live up here because she has a job up here working with different aboriginal communities. He was very admiring of the US and hopes to visit Utah someday because he also paints scenery. He loves history and is very well read in it. He’s an atheist and just goes by what he can study and see. It was an interesting conversation, and then we got to politics. He described the difference between Australia and the US: we were founded on the idea of the liberty of the individual and everything over here is judged by how it meets the “greater good.” He finally called it socialism and then eventually admitted that it is very close to communism. He thinks of medical care as a “right” and that the rich should give a who lot of their money back to the community or government. He even gave us a cold drink of mineral water! (Yech!)
We went to the care center on Wednesday this week because they had someone coming to sing on Tuesday. Alas, Janet, the great activity director was on holiday. Nothing was organized. The guy taking her place didn’t know what we usually did. So we found the puzzles, while he and another gal went to get the patients. We started with a word search this time. Other than Henning, the fellow from Denmark, the others were all aboriginals. A couple had had strokes, so they couldn’t even draw the lines! Orson, Bruce, and I ended up doing all the work. We think we are going to take some cards and see if we can play cards with them. The aboriginal people just don’t have the same basis for vocabulary games.
Tonight we had Young Women. Just Tammy and Dale came. They made thank you notes for the people who were so good to them at Youth Conference in Perth. I made Peanut Butter Chews while they did that. BUT, they don’t have corn syrup here. So I used honey. The mixture ended up being dry and crumbly so I added some water—too much. So then I mixed in some more powdered sugar and powered milk. I finally just dumped it on a tray and put it in the fridge. (You are supposed to roll the mixture into bite-sized balls.) It tasted okay, but I learned that honey and Karo syrup on not interchangeable.

NET BALL, MOZZIES, & BAGS

October 23, 2010 Saturday

Earlier this week we had invited Tony to bring his family to our place on Friday night for tacos. He thought it was a great idea, but said his daughter (from an earlier partner) was playing net ball, and he was going to coach the team at 6 pm. We told him we’d come and then we could all eat dinner at our house afterwards.
He called yesterday about an hour before the game to tell us that Claudia didn’t want to come for dinner. We’d already cooked the meat and bought a gallon of ice cream. Oh well, we can always use the meat and Orson was excited he didn’t have to share the ice cream after all ;o) So we went to watch the game anyway. Net ball turned out to be basketball. There was another inactive member of the church coaching his daughter’s team in the earlier game. Claudia was pretty cold—I think she’s worried that Tony is spending too much time with us. Perhaps she’s jealous. So I didn’t get to hold the baby :o( But their little boy, Manahki, who will be 3 in December, sure was cute. The basketball courts, 4 of them, are outside. And the mosquitoes, “mozzies,” were hungry. Everybody was spraying themselves with repellent. Luckily we had done that before we left the house since we’d seen a few while out tracting the last couple of days. The girls were 12 & 13 and really played well although they weren’t as aggressive as our granddaughters’ teams are. It was fun to watch.
Today, Karen Wylde came over with her sewing machine and a whole bunch of fabric scraps. The two Rollason girls, Tammy and Dale, came and they made scripture bags. It was fun and the bags turned out really cute. They did a good job on them with a little coaching from Karen and me.

STUFF

October 24, 2010 Sunday

Just a few of notes. Today in church President Robinson asked that we all fast and pray for two active families to move to Broome. He said that he is sure the reason he and his family ended up here is because Elder Fox, a senior missionary who was also the branch president, prayed them here.
Also, my computer crashed last night. I got the “blue screen of death” 3 times when I tried to boot it up. So after church today, my honey and favorite IT guy worked it over and now it works again without any of the problems it had even after Justin, the real IT guy in the branch, had worked on it. My keyboard was even restored! I’m not using that other thing we bought on top of my laptop. It is sooooooo nice.
Another thing I don’t think I’ve mentioned is the alphabet here. It’s the same as in the US; however, “H” is pronounced “haytch” and “Z” is pronounced “zed.”
The other day when we taught the Filipino family, they gave us two packages of frozen “pearl meat.” He works at one of the pearl farms and he said one of the ship’s captains had given it to them. Evangeline said she didn’t know how to cook it, so they were giving it to us. Tonight I called a couple of folks in the branch and ended up talking to Simon, an aboriginal member. He says pearl meat is “really fine” and I can cook it just like any other fish. It’s oyster meat taken from the oysters that aren’t making good pearls anymore, I guess. He said he’d been in one of the pearl shops in town the other day and saw a sign advertising pearl meat for $140/kg! So I suppose we have $250 worth of pearl meat in the freezer. I guess I’ll try cooking it, but at that price, I’m already nervous about it.
This week, as we’ve driven around, we’ve seen all kinds of junk from people’s houses and yards sitting on the curbs. Somebody told us it was “cyclone cleanup.” But that really didn’t make sense since we haven’t had a cyclone. The article in the weekly paper the other day explained that they want everything disposed of that might become “a flying object” during a cyclone. That makes more sense. Today we noticed that all the old appliances have been picked up. I guess they are doing it by recycling categories. We all have a recycle bin that we put out to the curb just like back in the states.