October 1, 2011

Good Morning!  We are back at the church this morning.  It took us about 10 minutes in the daylight that took about 45 minutes last night!

One of the problems is that there are very few stop signs, just lots of roundabouts, some of which have 2 lanes.  You have to indicate before you enter one and then again when you want to change lanes inside it or exit the same.  If you get off at the wrong exit, you might end up at the beach, like we did last night!  Also, the light beams on these cars is so short, you can't see very far ahead.  Road signs are all in pictures instead of words, so we're always guessing their meanings.  And you wouldn't believe how hard it is to think of checking to your right instead of to your left for oncoming traffic!  Many of the names of streets are derived from the aboriginal, so they are strange sounding.  Well, enough about all that...

The flowers and trees here are so beautiful.  There are many palm trees and all varieties of gum trees,  which are really eucalyptus trees.  We have been doing a little walking in the early mornings this week, and we are just amazed at the beauty everywhere.  The birds' songs are all unfamiliar, and sometimes wake us up in the mornings, now that the sun is coming up earlier.  I am waiting to hear a kookaburra (sp?) laugh.  There are very few dogs or cats.  Evenings are quiet here in the country.  Every day is a little warmer.  But down here in Albany the evenings are quite cold still.  We have a small gas heater in the front room of our flat and a couple of space heaters.  You have to warm only the area you're in, and then turn them off when you move to another room.  We don't have coolers, only fans.  Up in Perth they use the same little units to heat or cool.  But the weather here is apparently so mild that they don't give us one of those.  We'll see.

When we arrived here on Wednesday we were met at our new flat by Elder and Sister Orth, a missionary couple from Queensland, who have stayed here their whole mission.  Sister Orth had prepared dinner for us, and they had already moved all of their things out.  So that was our first night alone since the MTC.  Yesterday we had them over for lunch, and last night I made a stew in our new flat, so that now it sort of feels a little bit like home, now that I can cook for ourselves.  Sister Orth took me shopping down at City Centre, and was amazed when I spent about $450.00.  I explained that I don't always spend that much for a week; it's just that I need staples and spices, etc. to get started.  All the packages of things are mini-sized, and twice as much anyway.

The Orths are a wonderful couple.  They have already spent several hours in training us for Albany, Bridgetown, Mount Barker, and Denmark, which are the little towns in our area.  This branch comes under the stake, instead of the mission, and Ray will most likely be called as first counselor to the branch president, who is 80 years old.  The second counselor is 26, and needs more experience before he would be able to lead the branch.  He lives about 100 km away in Mt. Barker.

This branch was dying when the Orths came.  But they have put their whole hearts and souls into building it up.  They have activated several young adults since they've been here.  Ray will be starting on Wednesday as their new Institute teacher.  We attended the last class on the day we arrived, where we sat at tables set up in the back of the chapel.  The chapel is very tiny and has chairs instead of pews, making it an all-purpose room.  I'm sitting in the Primary room right now, which is about the size of my bedroom at home.  I will probably be teaching Gospel Doctrine again, but only to these young adults.  They are so new in the doctrines of the church that they would feel unaccepted and out of place in the regular class.  This is going to be very different than my experience at home.  We will be giving several Family Home Evenings to families with children here in Albany.  There will be lots of activities with the young adult people, and even community service one morning a week, which we did Thursday at a primary school here.  The families here are often needy, though we notice plenty of affluent homes around.  (When we are out among them, they seem interested in our name tags until they get close enough to read them.  Then they quickly turn their heads.)

We will have the responsibility of home teaching four families, most of whom are totally inactive or part-member families in Bridgetown, where Ray will be serving as a counselor in the branch also!!  We will be required to go there one weekend a month, and will stay in a hotel there for three nights.  There we will be taking the Aaronic Priesthood boys aside after church for another FHE.  These are just a few of the things we are learning.

If I am speaking with an Aussie face to face, I can usually understand him, partly because they know I'm American, so they slow down their speech for me; but if I speak with one on the phone,  I can't understand a word.  Yesterday when we were on our walk, we didn't have our name tags on yet, and a man called to us from his dooryard as we were passing.  Neither of us understood, so we both said, "What?" at the same time, and he answered with a big long string of Aussie talk which still was indiscernible to us, so we just smiled and waved as we continued on.  I said that maybe he was telling us to go jump in the lake, but Elder Ashby said he didn't look too angry.

More later.  The Elders are back now from buying us a stick for our computer which will allow us internet access at home.  But we will both be able to get on Skype when we come down here to the chapel.  Right now we are 14 hours ahead of you, (Australia does not use Daylight Savings Time) so when would you like to Skype with us?  Maybe at your time 7:00 p.m. on Friday, making it 9:00 Saturday morning for us.

I just liked the looks of this beautiful home in our neighborhood.                                                                  

This is our little place in Bayonet Head, Albany.

                                                   This is our street.  We live at the end.