16-03-2017
It is the end of day 8 in beautiful Sydney Australia. We have been assigned a lovely 1 bedroom, 1 bath, large living and dining area with a well equipped small kitchen home. Our house attaches to President and Sister Checketts home. The mission home sits next to the Sydney Temple. The campus once was a Boys Orphanage. It has since been renovated. It has beautiful mature trees that our filled with many different types of birds and wonderful smelling blossoms. We see cockatoos all over the lawns pecking for worms. They have an unusual squawk in the morning and evening. The grounds are very well manicured and is delightful to walk to work each morning. It takes about 3 minutes to get from home to office. We pass the Self Reliance Building/Office, and Family History Building/Office.
Our building/office has a complete Service Center downstairs that services all of Australia. (This use to be the Area Presidency Offices). The first floor also includes the Church Attorney Brother and Sister Grant from Oregon and the Public Affairs Personnel Brother and Sister Merrill from Eagle Idaho. You then climb approximately 28 steep stair to get to the Mission Office. There are 2 Senior Couples and 2 Senior Sisters that work on this floor. One of my most favourite things about this majestic building is all the old wavy glass panes that we get to look through. My office has a wonderful view of the Angel Moroni that I get to view every time I get up and out of the office.
The Mission President works from his home office as he has had 2 knee replacements and a hip replacement and it is difficult for him to go up and down the stairs. Of course he travels a lot for all the Zone Conferences etc. We stop by his home to take mail for the missionaries whenever he is headed to a new meeting.
Monty and I have only ventured out on Saturday to get some grocery and home supplies. I am glad we work in such a beautiful area because we are not leaving the office very often. At least I am not. Monty is getting out a little more since he is in charge of "Flats" aka apartments, houses and repairs. He has so much office work to keep up on I don't know how he has time to meet these other responsibilities. I pretty much stay at my office and desk with responsibilities of ordering supplies (it is massive amounts of missionary literature), recording baptisms, sorting mail, and updating files and missionary lists. It doesn't sound like much but it is really keeping me on my toes and falling into bed exhausted at night.
Being in the mission office we get to see the Assistants frequently, they are 2 very impressive young men. Elder Ball from Palo Alto, Ca. and Elder Lamb from Syracuse, Ut. So amazingly impressive young men and they always ask if there is something they can do to help. And other missionaries that come in for a driving tests, or dropping off baptism reports are equally impressive AND helpful. Today while one Elder was taking a 3 hour driving test, the other one helped me pull supplies for a massive order for our downtown district. I feel like Heavenly Father sent them specifically to me and for my benefit as I would have had major problems reading all the different languages, pamphlets, Books of Mormon etc. We put together 5 big boxes that I could not lift if Elder Muh from Hawaii hadn't helped me. Very grateful.
With that said I need to head home it is 6:45. Time to make dinner, clean up and happily fall into bed.
Love to ALL of our Family and Friends.
